Pack Dynamics

by Julie Frost

  “It was just a luncheon. What’s wrong with you?” Janni sat on the bed and gathered him into her arms.

  “Tired. Weak. Dizzy.” He relaxed into her. “Aches, but better now you’re here. Cold. I hate being cold.”

  “Cold? But you’re—” She stopped, alarmed. “He’s burning up.”

  Doc Allen stood with a determined expression. “Okay, that’s it. Bone marrow and spinal tap, now.”

  McFoucher decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Considering their history, being in the same room with Lockwood when people were stabbing him with needles seemed ill-advised. “I need more rabbits.”

  O O O

  Janni’s heart pounded against her ribs while Doc Allen worked. Ben barely reacted to the needles—his arm tightened around her waist and he sucked in a deep breath, but otherwise he was nonresponsive. “Oh, sweetie,” Janni murmured. She’d almost rather see a panic attack, because at least that would be normal.

  “’S all right …”

  No, it wasn’t, she could tell from the way everyone else was acting. “I feel so useless right now,” she said into his hair.

  “Not useless. Keep me grounded. Gotta reason—” He didn’t finish, and after a second she realized he’d fallen asleep in the middle of Doc Allen sucking bone marrow out of his hip with the biggest damn syringe she’d ever seen.

  Allen looked at her through a wreath of cigarette smoke. “You are not useless, young lady.” He pulled the needle out and put a bandage on. “I’m fairly certain he’s fighting as hard as he is because of you.”

  “This is fighting? It doesn’t look like fighting.”

  “Trust me.” He gestured at a mug full of blood, with a straw of all things, on the table beside the bed. “And if you could get him to eat, that’d be great. It’ll help him keep his strength up.” He left to go do whatever it was he was going to do with the spinal fluid and bone marrow.

  “Ben. Time for dinner.”

  He barely stirred. “Just a few more minutes.…”

  “Now, sweetie. Come on, for me.” Using whatever hold she had on him was shameless, but if it kept him alive, she didn’t care.

  “Fine.…” His eyes cracked open, and she held the straw to his lips. He raised his head, but only swallowed a few times before falling back asleep, and surely that wasn’t enough to make a difference?

  Janni slipped beneath the covers, wrapping arms and legs around Ben’s shoulders and thighs and stroking his hair. “Don’t you dare die on me. Not now.”

  The tracery of veins in her wrist caught her attention, and she wondered for a brief second if …

  She squashed the idea as idiotic. It circled back around and came at her again.

  Blood straight from the vein was different from bagged blood.

  Janni remembered that Renee had catered a charity blood drive, and that the bags had an anticoagulant in them. She wondered what sort of effect that would have on a vampire, especially a sick one, and decided it probably wouldn’t be good.

  The place where Ben had broken the railing off had left a jagged edge. His back was to the rest of the room, since Doc Allen had needed to do the lumbar puncture from that side, so the others wouldn’t see her or stop her. Before she could think much about it—because she knew that if she engaged her brain instead of her heart she wouldn’t do it—she sliced her wrist open on the metal and put the gushing cut over Ben’s mouth.

  For a second, nothing happened, and she thought this might have been a terrible mistake she’d have a hard time explaining to the others. Then he swallowed, once, twice, and settled into steady drinking.

  O O O

  Ben was in the midst of a dream where rivers of ambrosia flowed down his throat, and Janni’s scent filled his nostrils, her arms wrapping him in a warm cocoon. Then he realized it wasn’t a dream, and his eyes snapped open and he spat her wrist out and shoved her arm away. “Gyah!” His head was pillowed on her stomach and he stared up at her in consternation, hyperventilating. “Janni!”

  “I’m not losing you now,” she said, examining the quadruple holes his fangs had left in her wrist, top and bottom. “So whatever I can do—”

  “I could have killed you,” he whispered fiercely.

  She scoffed as she grabbed Kleenex off the bedside stand and held them against the blood trickling from her wrist. “Like I would have let that happen. I’m not even woozy.” Her fingers roamed through his hair. “I had a theory about the bagged blood, and I was around all these scientist types, so I thought I’d test it. Turns out I was right.”

  “Son of a bitch.” He closed his eyes. “Please don’t do it again. Please. I know you said once that you’d willingly open your veins for me, but I never took it literally.”

  “But you look so much better.”

  He felt better. “That’s not the point—”

  “That’s precisely the point. The blood from the center has an anticoagulant in it, and it’s not working for you. You looked like you were dying, Ben.”

  He might have been. Might still be, because although he felt better, better was relative. “Doesn’t mean I want to take you with me.”

  He sensed Megan behind him and laboriously rolled over to find her standing next to the bed, with everyone else in the room staring at them.

  “What did you do, Janni?” Megan demanded.

  Janni’s chin came up. “I fed myself to Ben,” she said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Is there an issue?”

  “You might have let us know—” Megan said.

  Janni didn’t let her finish. “And been shot down the second I suggested it? In a case like this, I figured it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

  Megan sighed. “There are safer ways you could have done it. Bleeding into a cup, for instance, instead of risking werewolf saliva in the wound.”

  “Werewolf—” Janni stopped. “Oh.”

  Megan sank into the chair beside the bed and put her face in her hand. “You forgot about that, didn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.

  “Kind of.” Janni looked abashed. Her arm tightened around Ben’s shoulder. “You know what? I don’t care. If it keeps him alive longer so those guys have more time to fix this, I’ll deal. We can be wolves together, if I’m infected and that part can’t be cured.” She raised her voice. “Not only that, but as a werewolf, I can afford to lose more blood than I could as a human. But if you science types would get a move on so I don’t have to do it again, that’d be peachy.”

  “Ah, Hermia,” Ben murmured affectionately. He was tired again. Tired still. And the moon was pulling on him, so he needed to go upstairs and get out of his clothes, and shouldn’t Megan have left by now? “Moon …”

  Megan looked startled. “Oh, damn.” She’d forgotten, too. “Mr. Jarrett, I have to go. I have a thing I just remembered. Flew right out of my head with all this.”

  He’d turned back to his computer. “Go ahead, Miss Graham. We’ll be here in the morning.”

  She gathered her stuff. “You have a teleconference with the Board at nine AM tomorrow. Don’t forget.”

  “Yeah, yeah …” Alex said.

  “I’m serious, Alex. They’re already unhappy with you. Don’t make them unhappier.” She beat a hasty retreat.

  Ben wondered how often her secret had come this close to being blown and would have felt sorry about it if he’d had the strength. “Should go upstairs …”

  Janni figured out what his problem was and yanked his T-shirt off over his head. She dove under the covers and helped him peel out of his jeans and boxers just in time, and rolled off the bed to wait while he Changed.

  A few minutes later, he was looking at her through wolf eyes, still aching and worn out. He dropped his head down onto the pillow and fell asleep.

  O O O

  “Huh,” Alex said a half hour later. He’d switched to Coke from coffee, but hadn’t stopped adding the scotch.

  “Good huh or bad huh?” Michelle asked.

&nb
sp; “I’ve got stem cells.” He rubbed his goatee. “I’d call that a good huh. Can probably do something with them.”

  “Stem cells from a vampire? That’s new.” She sipped at a can of Sprite. “Idna never had them.”

  “Maybe she’s been a vampire too long, or maybe the fact that Ben was a werewolf first was a factor. He came into this with a heartbeat.” Alex leaped to his feet, all manic energy. “We’ve got fresh lycan-vamp-bunnies back there, right?”

  “We’ve got a little of everything.”

  “Excellent. I have an idea.” He practically ran out of the room and came back with a caged bunny, which he sedated and sucked some bone marrow from.

  Michelle stood over him, fascinated. “What are you doing?”

  “I think maybe we’re going at this from the wrong direction,” Alex said, preparing a slide.

  “How do you mean?”

  “We’re looking for a ‘cure’ for vampirism. What if we just, I don’t know, bring the vampire back to life? Has that been tried?” He looked through the microscope. “And again I say ‘huh.’ Make a culture of those for me, Dr. McFoucher.”

  “Bringing people back from the dead never, ever goes well,” Michelle pointed out while she did as he asked.

  “I’ve read my Shelley. But vampires aren’t strictly dead.” His grin had too many teeth in it. “Ben’s even less dead, what with the heartbeat.”

  She glanced over at the giant wolf sleeping on the hospital bed in the corner, his fiancée curled beside him with her arm thrown over his white-striped shoulder. “He’s dying, though.”

  “I know. Which is why I’ll be up all night working on this. Join me?”

  “I’m not sure I should be here if he wakes up as a wolf,” she said uneasily. “I get the feeling he still doesn’t like me much.”

  “And you have a dog to take care of.” He sat back in the chair. “It’s fine. I’ve got experiments to run first anyway and probably won’t know anything concrete until morning. Go ahead on home.”

  “I’ll be back bright and early.”

  He’d already forgotten her. “Uh-huh.”

  O O O

  Ostheim sat vigil over Idna, his tail wrapped around his paws as he watched her sleep on their bed. She had declined frighteningly fast that day, even after he’d made her drink a fair amount of his own blood.

  He rested his chin on the coverlet and decided that his pride needed to take a back seat to her health. As soon as he Changed back to human, he’d call Alex Jarrett, the only person he could think of who might be able to help them now.

  Chapter Seventeen

  By the time the sun peeked over the horizon and Ben was human again, Alex had a protocol in place and repeatable results he was happy with, at least with the rabbits. He’d finished the rest of the Laphroaig while he worked, and he sorrowfully eyed the empty green bottle. He wanted to drink a toast.

  Oh well. Megan wouldn’t be pleased about the fact that he’d lubricated himself that well for two nights in a row, so having more was probably imprudent. Although, he grouched, she should be used to his work habits by now.

  His cell phone rang, causing him to twitch. He twitched again when he saw who was calling, and fumbled his earpiece into his ear so he could pace around and wave his hands, like he had the feeling he’d want to. “Ostheim? To what do I owe the dubious pleasure?”

  “I wouldn’t have called you unless I was in dire straits, Jarrett. I need your help. Please.” The man was practically growling and almost choked on the last word.

  “Funny how that works.” Alex got up and started running some Kopi Luwak through the coffeemaker. “Maybe you should explain why I’d want to help you.”

  “If not for me, then for Idna. She’s very ill.”

  “Yeah?” He glanced over at Ben’s too-still form, frowning. “Can’t say I’m surprised, seeing as I’m dealing with a crisis you caused.”

  “Crisis?” Ostheim seemed to perk up at the word, and Alex clenched his fist.

  “Hold on.” He walked over to the bed and touched Janni on the shoulder, muting his bluetooth. “Can you wake Ben up?” he asked as she blinked awake.

  She nodded, and he sat back down at his computer, checking the results again and de-muting his headset. “Yeah, Ostheim, crisis. Or did you think that your little procedure wouldn’t have any lasting effects on the person you thought of as the secondary subject? That is, if you even thought of him as a person at all.”

  “He looked healthy enough last time I saw him.”

  “Last time you and Idna tried to murder him, you mean? Because you were so disappointed that you hadn’t finished the job.”

  “I was disappointed, actually. He killed my nephew, in case you’ve forgotten, and that on top of vampire politics meant that we needed to go after him.” Ostheim paused. “The boy is very resourceful.”

  “Yeah, he is.” Alex leaped up again and poured himself a cup of coffee, dumping hazelnut creamer into it. “Which is really lucky for you, because that means he’s still alive, in a manner of speaking, and that my first inclination to crush you like a fucking bug is somewhat mitigated.”

  “Jarrett.” Ostheim sounded like he was at his wit’s end. “Help me. Please. If Idna—”

  “Look, I don’t know, okay? I’m focused on someone else right now, someone you hurt, you bastard. If I can help him, I might be able to help her.” Ben had started to moan. “I have to go. You’ll be at this number all day?”

  Ostheim’s breathing was audible over the line. “I will.”

  “Let me work. I’ll call you back later.”

  “Not much later. She’s so ill …”

  “I know. Believe me.”

  Janni had stripped the bandage from her wrist, and Alex caught her by the arm before she did something drastic.

  “Later, Hans.” He hung up. “If you insist on feeding yourself to him again, Janni, at least bleed into a mug or something.”

  “I’m not sure he can drink from a mug,” she fretted. “Look at him, Alex.”

  Ben was back to being bruised around the eyes and way too pale, and he was muttering deliriously and shivering. But … “You can’t—”

  “I can and I will, if we need to buy him more time. It’s my choice, dammit, and not anyone else’s.”

  “What about his choice?” Which wasn’t fair, and Alex knew it. “Don’t think I didn’t hear him freak pretty hard when he woke up with your wrist in his mouth.”

  “If he’s alive to freak then I don’t care.” She set her lips. “Either help me or go away.”

  “I’ve figured out something that should work.” And, if Alex wanted to be honest with himself, Ben probably needed the strength that Janni’s blood would provide, because the procedure was incredibly stressful and might kill him if it didn’t cure him. “You know what? Go ahead and do your thing. I’ll get everything set up and call Doc Allen down so he can help.”

  He had living, breathing bunnies sitting in cages next to his desk. They were still wolfed, but not vamped, and if the illness was vampire-specific … Michelle’s statement about results not tracking across species flitted through his mind, but he had to try.

  O O O

  After a quiet night, Megan came in at her usual time to find the basement a bustle of activity. Her nose was drawn to the rabbits in cages beside Alex’s desk, and she realized with a start that they’d been vampires not too long ago but weren’t anymore. Her genius boss had apparently come through, and she forgave him the empty Laphroaig bottle in the trash can.

  She could also smell that Janni had fed herself to Ben again, but the way everyone else was studiously avoiding the subject let her know that maybe she should, too. McFoucher and Doc Allen had arrived before she had, and they were making preparations for some sort of procedure.

  “Looks like you figured something out,” Megan said to Alex, whose hair was sticking out all over in an uncombed mass. That meant he’d spent the night running his hand through it while he worked nonstop.
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  Alex’s grin was slightly manic, and she’d learned to both fear and love that expression. “It’ll either cure him or kill him. And since he’s dying anyway, the odds are in our favor.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “Janni’s okay with this?”

  “She watched me do it to a rabbit a while ago. None of them died, but none of them were as far gone as Ben is either.”

  “Need me to do anything?”

  “Wish us luck. Pray, if you do that.” He was stroking his unshaven goatee, and she could smell a fair amount of apprehension under the forced cheerfulness and scotch. “If you could clear my schedule until Monday or even later, that’d be great. Yours too.”

  “O-kay.” She glanced at her watch and took in his torn jeans and stained T-shirt, which he hadn’t changed in … how many days? “You realize that you have a teleconference with the Board in five minutes, and you’re not exactly dressed.” She should have come earlier to brace him for it, and would have if it hadn’t been a moon night. Dammit. “And they’ll be highly upset if you miss it. For the fourth time.”

  His expression darkened. “And I’ll be highly upset if Ben dies because I had to deal with all that corporate bullshit instead of fixing this. Reschedule it. Better yet, cancel it altogether.”

  “Mr. Jarrett—”

  “Megan. Look at him.”

  Unwillingly, she did. And, of course, Alex was right. Ben didn’t have time to wait for an interminable teleconference—he was dying right in front of them. She’d just have to smooth it over. Again. She hoped she could. When even Clarke was unhappy, Alex had gone too far. Anguished, she bit her lip.

  “Hey, this’ll work,” Alex said, tilting her chin up. “And then we’re all getting a vacation. I’m buying. In fact, screw Monday. Give us at least a week, if not more.”

  Typical. “Work hard and then play hard” was his lifelong motto. Usually, a vacation for Megan when she went with Alex meant chasing after him and making sure he didn’t die somehow. But it was better than nothing and more than she generally allowed herself, since letting him go off alone didn’t bear thinking about—and if she took a vacation and left him on his own, he’d probably end up either curing cancer or accidentally creating a nanovirus that would wipe out half of humanity.