Eric 754

by Donna McDonald

  Whimpering harder than ever, Heidi laid down and moments later screeched as her human form took over. Ariel unlocked both cages as quickly as she could.

  “In a minute, I’m going to set off the fire alarm. While that’s distracting the building guard, go find us some long lab coats,” she ordered. “There are two techs somewhere in the building who are going to stare at you both if they see you naked. They’re harmless. Wiggle your fingers and giggle. They’ll think you’re the party girls Crane orders for entertainment on Fridays.”

  Brandi glared at her for her comments, but Heidi just hung her head. Apparently, one of them was a party girl. Ariel rolled her eyes at the knowledge and headed to unlock Reed’s cage. He barely moved while she searched the key ring for the collar key. “I can’t find it, Reed.”

  Leave me. Find Matt. He’ll take care of you.

  “No. I’m not leaving you. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you. You told me to save all of us and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Ariel left the cage open. She bent over Crane’s body and ripped a wide swatch of fabric from the back of his blood soaked lab coat. She brought the fabric swatch back and wrapped it around the chain where it attached to the wall. She could feel the metal heat her skin as she tugged on it to test.

  “Come on nanos. Get your little fixing asses to work. I’ve got to do this no matter how bad it hurts.” She yanked and tugged and yanked some more. At this rate, it was going to take awhile.

  Brandi appeared at her shoulder and without speaking took hold of the chain too. Ariel nodded at her stare. Breasts swinging with every yank, she and Brandi pulled twice and then the damn thing popped free of the wall.

  Ariel kept her fingers wrapped around the chain. Even through the fabric it was burning her skin. Not being able to handle silver had to be some kind of metal allergy. She was going to look into it sometime and see what the hell that was all about.

  “Okay. You’re free now. Let’s go, Big Guy.”

  Reed stood, wavered, and then braced himself for each painful step. Ariel walked slowly as he limped out the door beside her. At the lab exit, Ariel deftly keyed in the code Crane had used earlier. The doors opened smoothly. She held it wide for the women who followed behind her and Reed.

  Just outside the lab, Ariel rammed her fist into the door of a locked case in the wall, the glass cutting her knuckles. She ignored the pain which was already going away by the time the fire alarm filled the air. Her gut was overruling her brain. It was an odd sensation, but something urged her to trust it for the sake of all their lives.

  “Go. Find us clothes. Do what I said,” she ordered, turning to Brandi and Heidi. “Try to find us transportation too. Our vehicles are all dead. Crane drives a jeep. Let’s take that. He’s never going to need it again.”

  “Heidi, hold the door for me,” Brandi ordered. She ran back into the lab and stooped to search Crane’s pockets, brandishing jeep keys when she found them. Once she was outside the lab, Heidi closed the lab until the lock clicked.

  Beside her, Ariel felt Heidi shiver. She turned and gave her a stern look. She had no time to deal with any emotional meltdowns. “Look—I don’t know you and you don’t know me. But I can tell you for certain that what was done to us can’t be undone. All we can do is move forward. Unless you want to be responsible for Crane’s backer coming after all of us, get your ass moving and follow Brandi out of here. We need to run while we can.”

  Both women nodded and ran off ahead. Heidi trailed behind Brandi only by a fraction.

  The lab wasn’t heavily staffed on Fridays. Knowing Crane, he’d made sure most of them weren’t around for a few days during the experiment. She and Reed stopped at Crane’s office. His laptop was open and still running on his desk. She took the time to turn off the screen lock before closing the lid and tucking it under one arm.

  Next they stopped at her lab where she tugged on a lab coat she’d left there two days ago. She buttoned it up all the way to cover her nudity. Patting Reed on the head, she dropped his chain on the floor for a moment. “Wait here a minute.”

  Knowing she would heal fast because of the nanos, Ariel walked to the nearest chemical cabinet and repeated her bare knuckled fist pump through the glass. Reaching inside, she drew out the two most volatile chemicals it contained. Dumping both in a glass beaker she’d placed in a nearby sink, she watched the chemical reaction start to happen. She wanted to make sure it was working before they left.

  “Come on, Reed. Compliments of my scientific education, that mix is going to have this room in flames in about five minutes. Then the whole building is going to go up when everything else in this lab explodes.”

  On the way out, she grabbed the largest microscope she could carry and tucked it under her arm. With Crane’s laptop and a strong microscope, maybe she could start to unravel what had been done to them. Not that she believed she could ever reverse it. What she had said to Heidi still reverberated as truth. Nanos couldn’t be removed once injected into you. They could be killed by extreme radiation, but never removed.

  And Reed’s blood was part of their molecular structure now. She wasn’t sure how she knew that was a fact, but it felt like the same kind of truth as the nanos. Transpecies mutations weren’t anything she’d learned in any genetics class. Knowledge of her blood connection to the black wolf who patiently waited for her came from sources she hadn’t identified yet.

  She picked up the silver chain still attached to Reed’s collar, forgetting to wrap the cloth around it first. It burned like fire and stuck to her fingers, but there was no time left to think about the pain. Right now, they needed to vacate the premises before they went up in flames with it. By the time she and Reed got to the front door of the building, her hand was stinging like she’d rammed it into a hornet’s nest. She was regretting her haste in leaving the fabric swatch behind.

  When Brandi swerved in with the jeep two seconds later, Ariel and Reed both limped over to it. He made a running jump and nearly missed. Ariel caught his backside to push him up the rest of the way into the seat. He immediately curled up into a ball in the passenger’s seat and shuddered. The effort to leave had obviously cost Reed the last of his energy. It made Ariel angry all over again. She turned a glare on the male who yelled at her.

  “Why did you bust the wolf loose, Dr. Jones? You didn’t seem the type. Are you one of those freaking animal lovers?” Feldspars’ surly guard demanded.

  Ariel glared briefly and then dismissed the speaker. The man and his attitude weren’t important. Getting away was. “Yes, Frank. In this case, I am an animal lover. I’m setting the wolf free.”

  “Well, I hope you got everything you wanted when you got out, because you can’t go back now anyway. You know this whole place is about to be blown all to hell, right?”

  “Yes, I know, and good riddance,” Ariel declared as she climbed into the backseat, plopping down beside Heidi. “Let’s get out of here, Brandi.”

  Brandi shook her head, climbed out of the driver’s side, and walked to the guard.

  Before Ariel could figure out her intentions, Brandi grabbed and twisted the guard’s head until she broke his neck. The man fell soundlessly to the ground. She watched Brandi drag him by one leg and throw him back into the building, closing the front door behind him. The lab techs were nowhere in sight. Ariel decided not knowing where they were was probably the best thing. She imagined they’d suffered the same fate as the irritating guard.

  Fire engines were turning into the quarter mile long drive from the main road to the secluded facility as Brandi jogged back to the driver’s seat. “The techs we talked to on the way are already headed home. I let them go because they were grieving your alleged death, but the guard recognized you, Dr. Jones. He was a loose end and would have given people way too much to talk about later if he had lived.”

  “Did you have to kill him? What if the man had a family?” Ariel demanded, biting her lip as Brandi swerved and drove down a side road she said would take
them out a rarely used entrance.

  “I don’t think Frank had a family. He was too good a customer at the place where I worked,” Heidi declared.

  Ariel rolled her eyes. Seconds later a loud explosion rocked the air behind them. Black smoke filled the sky above a blazing Feldspar Research building.

  Brandi kept driving calmly forward like buildings exploding around her happened every day. Ariel suddenly decided she wanted to know why—and why killing the guard hadn’t caused her any remorse.

  “You both know I worked for Crane, and I think we have a pretty good idea what Heidi did for a living. What’s your story, Brandi?”

  Brandi shrugged. “I was a federal agent who was investigating Feldspar’s unauthorized use of Alaskan wolves for experiments they refused to explain to the National Wildlife Foundation. Before that I was special forces in the military. This NWF investigation was supposed to be a break from this kind of traumatic shit for me.”

  Ariel nodded. “Reed—the black wolf up there—talks to me in my head. He’s the one they used to turn us into werewolves. Head to Wasilla, which is just a short distance from Anchorage. Reed said to look for someone named Matt. We need to get him to some sort of veterinarian too before he gets any sicker.”

  Look for Matthew Gray Wolf. His pack healer will be able to help me—if it’s not already too late.

  Ariel nodded, even though Heidi looked at her strangely. “Reed says we’re looking for a Matthew Gray Wolf. A werewolf named Wolf. Gee, who’s not going to figure that one out? This is some crazy shit ‘B’ movie we woke up in.”

  Brandi chuckled. “Whatever they put in your shots must have been better stuff than what I got. You’re a lot sassier than the stoic scientist who kept asking all those serious questions yesterday. If I hadn’t been strapped down, I’d have stuffed something into your mouth to shut you up. I really didn’t want to hear what was happening to us. I wanted my death and I wanted it done quickly. They took me down with a tranquilizer gun when they caught me. I’m still too pissed to talk about it.”

  Ariel sighed. “My default setting is to gather information. I suppose what they did to me could have affected my personality as well as my molecular structure. Killing those two men didn’t even begin to satisfy the urges I had about doing stuff to them. My entire being is on fire every second now. My wolf is there at the edge of the fire just waiting to be let loose.”

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  Saber, a wounded Trivator, believes he is no longer a fit warrior, much less strong enough to claim a mate. Scarred, he does everything in his power to push away the delicate human female he has fallen in love with. He knows that she deserves a warrior who can protect her, not one that will need her constant help.

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  About the Author

  After 35 years of doing everything for a living except writing books, I finally published my first romance novel in March of 2011. Thirty novels later, I am living my own "happily ever after" life as a full time romance author.

  I give back to the universe by hanging out to write at local coffee shops and keeping them in business.

  Addicted to making readers laugh, I include a good dose of humor in every book.

  **Visit www.donnamcdonaldauthor.com. I love to hear from readers.**