by Lauren Esker
Yeah. Right. Maybe if she was ten years younger, fifty pounds lighter, and about a hundred percent more athletic—in short, a completely different person.
"Are you—is she—" As the girl's nervous glances darted back and forth between her mother and the others in the room, Nicole realized that Ashley thought she'd been brought in to be punished. And Evans not only wasn't reassuring her, but she seemed to be enjoying it.
Control, Nicole thought, a shudder running through her. She gets off on having power over people. Oh, there was no doubt that Evans truly loved her daughter and wanted her to be healthy, just as Nicole believed both Evans and Lopez were, or at least had been, motivated by a genuine desire to do good in the world. But just as it was possible to do evil in the service of good, so it was possible to love someone and still abuse them.
"Ashley, your mother is trying to use you to manipulate me," Nicole said. Annoyance flashed across Evans's face and Nicole thought, Good. Evans's chosen brand of psychological terrorism thrived on half-truths and omissions. Nothing could undermine it like the truth. "She thinks that, since you told me about your heart condition, she'll use you as the face of all the people Avery's blood might cure, and that'll make me agree to help her. What do you think of that?"
Ashley looked quickly at her mother. "I don't know," she whispered. Unconsciously she'd backed up until she was almost touching Jeremy, who looked anxious—caught between the girl he loved, or at least liked, and the mother who would certainly fire him (if not worse) if she found out her daughter was sleeping with him.
Nicole couldn't help turning at least some of her annoyance on him. Man up and pick a side, jerk, she thought at him irritably. If you care about the girl, how can you stand there and let her mother bully her?
"Ashley, don't let her confuse you," Evans said briskly. "The facts are simple, Ms. Yates. The W factor, the healing element in werewolf blood, is the magic bullet the medical community has always hoped for, from humanity's distant past straight down to the present day. It's the cure for cancer, AIDS, and the common cold all rolled into one, if we can only learn to isolate and apply it."
"That's what you think," Nicole shot back. "A shif—uh, werewolf friend of mine just had the flu. Even if you can make a drug out of it, you can't cure everything."
"So? It's a hell of a lot better than what we have now. I want you to look my daughter in the face, Ms. Yates, and see if you can spout your sanctimonious garbage when the death sentence you're passing is hers. Think about every child in a cancer ward, every family breadwinner struck down by early heart disease, every—"
"Ashley," Nicole said, addressing the girl and ignoring her mother. "What do you think?"
"Do not interrupt me when I'm talking!" Evans roared, her self-control cracking dangerously.
Nicole ignored her, not because she wanted to or even thought it was a good idea to give her still more ammunition for her fury, but because she wanted to show Ashley that it could be done—that it wasn't necessary to hop every time this overbearing, puffed-up bully said Jump. "That's what your mom wants, Ashley. But it's your illness, not hers. What do you want?"
"I don't know," Ashley mumbled.
"You're an adult," Nicole said quietly, holding the girl's haunted eyes with her own. "Whether you go along with your mother is entirely up to you. From here on out, you get to decide what kind of person you are. No one can do that for you."
She wished she had some kind of code to use with Ashley. Everything she'd prepared with Avery—Morse code, and the handful of words in Hokkien, her family's language, that she'd taught him—was useless now. She couldn't explain; all she could do was try to telegraph her need for help, and hope her faith wasn't misplaced. If Ashley could just find the courage to get word out, to call anyone about what was going on here—
She'd never know what Ashley would have done, because just then the door burst open and someone else barged in. She hadn't seen him before, but he was dressed in dark, nondescript clothes like the rest of Evans's security people. The side of his face glistened with something Nicole thought, for a stupid instant, must be mud, and then realized was blood. His face was blotched with bruises.
"Boss!" he yelled. "We got a situation!"
With the entire room frozen in shock, the person who exploded into motion was Ashley. She spun around and threw herself onto Mike, wrapping her legs around him and her arms around his neck. Mike, shocked, staggered back into the wall.
"Run!" Ashley shouted. "Jeremy, don't shoot!"
It was a nice try, but Nicole couldn't see how she could get past all the guards at the door. Mike was already peeling Ashley off him; Jeremy hovered nervously, gun in hand, caught between his loyalty to his girlfriend and his fear of his employer. The third guy had his gun out already. And Evans was lunging for her desk drawer.
So Nicole went with the only other option available to her. She kicked the floor, sending her wheeled desk chair sliding to clunk into the filing cabinets, and clambered precariously on top. Fortunately the cabinets were metal, heavy-duty and sturdy, easily capable of bearing an adult human weight. She was doubled up between the filing cabinets and the ceiling, with just enough room to kneel awkwardly, head bowed to avoid bumping it.
"What are you doing?" Evans barked, fumbling for her gun. It was unclear whether this was addressed to Nicole or to her guards.
"Do we shoot?" the new guy demanded.
Nicole ripped off the vent cover, bending two fingernails backward, and flung it in Evans's general direction. It was clear at a glance that she couldn't fit into the vents in her current shape. But she was pretty sure her other shape would fit.
Only one way to find out.
"Get down from there!" Mike snapped.
"Yes, you have permission to shoot her if she doesn't comply," Evans said, her voice cold.
Nicole shifted.
Sounds, smells, colors all warped around her, and she rode out the usual split-second flash of disorientation, stabilizing quickly as she anchored herself in her new body. Ignoring the various sounds of astonishment echoing around the room, she hooked her claws in the edges of the ventilation shaft and hauled her fat, furry body into the narrow space. She fit with little room to spare. Hastily she scuttled forward, expecting at any moment to feel a bullet's impact. Koalas were not speedy animals, but she was a highly motivated koala.
"What was that—thing?" she heard Evans demand behind her in horror.
"I ... I think it was a raccoon." Mike sounded baffled.
A raccoon. Honestly. Americans.
"There are were-raccoons?"
Nicole hit a T junction, picked a direction at random, and scuttled that way. The angry, alarmed voices faded behind her.
Free. She was free.
For now, she reminded herself. She was free for exactly as long as it took them to find her in the vents, and they weren't going to be happy when they did. And they had all the advantages. They knew the layout of the building. They were armed. They could simply block all the exits and starve her out.
And what on earth was going on that had spooked the guards? Was Avery out? Had the SCB come at last? Was Alan back to wreak havoc, having lost whatever remained of his human mind?
I need to find Avery and get the hell out of here.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Evans took Nicole, it was all Avery could do not to batter himself on the bars in a desperate, mindless attempt to reach her.
You swore you'd protect your mate, and now you've let them take her. Avery had never quite believed people who claimed they could hear the voice of their shifter side, but he had the eerie sense that not all the feelings pushing him were his own. His need to get to her was a powerful, instinctual urge that seemed to come from somewhere outside his usual mind. He had to claw his way back, forcing down the animalistic tide of wordless emotion that was threatening to swamp him.
Instead he lay on the floor of the cage, breathing deeply, calming himself until he could think without slipping
over an edge he hadn't quite realized was there.
Knowing Nicole, and being with Nicole, had remapped him, so stealthily that he had never even noticed it happening. It wasn't that he had become more wolf, or more man; it was more that the two sides of himself, which he had always felt in subtle discord with each other, had slipped closer together, as if gears which had been just a little out of alignment had begun to mesh with each other. Strangely, it was not a comfortable feeling—he'd been used to the old way, how the jagged edges of his hybrid wolf and human mind scraped against each other, and now it felt a little like it might if some giant hand took his twisted, scarred leg and forcibly straightened it. There was too much scar tissue in the way, a lifetime's practice at segmenting his world into wolf and human, old coping mechanisms dating back to early childhood. Now his wolf instincts were bleeding into his human mind to an alarming degree, making it hard to think about anything except finding Nicole and making sure she was okay.
Is this what drove Alan Lopez mad? This push of unfamiliar emotions and drives he didn't understand and couldn't control?
Still, Avery knew he wasn't ... well, okay, maybe he was a little crazy; after all, he slept in a closet. But he didn't feel like he was being pushed out of his own head. There was just more here, now, than he'd been aware of before. Or maybe it was more like everything was in a new place, the furniture of his mind rearranged, and all throughout, there was Nicole's gentle touch on everything.
Is this what it's like when humans fall in love, this mental rewiring?
And then he thought: Who the hell cares?
He'd spent his entire life trying to hide what a mess he was, from himself and other people. He was constantly questioning how much of what he thought and felt and did was werewolf, and how much was human, and how much was because of the broken edges of his shattered childhood showing through. He compartmentalized his anger until even he didn't notice it anymore. And now he wondered if it really had ever mattered at all. Who cared if this feeling of mental reorganization was a werewolf thing or an Avery thing; who cared if his overwhelming need to find and protect Nicole was because of his wolf side, or because the traumatized child in him wanted to save someone else where he couldn't save himself, or if it was a normal human emotion related to falling in love.
And it mattered least of all now. What he needed to do was get to Nicole. And for that, he needed to be out of this cage.
His eyes snapped open, a plan falling together in an instant—a desperate plan, a stupid plan, but the only thing he could think of, short of staying here and waiting for them to bring her back, if they ever did.
And the wolf in him wasn't about to wait.
So he let it out.
Rage rushed up in him, a tidal wave of incoherent emotion. It was shocking, frightening, to let slip the leash on the beast inside him—and yet, his human mind was still in control, even as he threw himself at the bars with a scream of rage. He could take back the leash anytime he wanted to, and he restrained himself enough not to seriously hurt himself. It wasn't like before, in the lab, when he'd lost control completely. This time, he only wanted to put on a show.
And yet it was real too, that unbridled emotion. The best lies always had a grain of truth. He beat himself on the bars, shifted and frothed and snapped at the cold steel. He wondered what the watchers behind the cameras were making of all this.
All I'm probably doing is showing them I'm an animal, the same as they think I am.
Yeah, lock you guys up in a cage, take away the person you love, and see how rational you are.
His mouth tasted of steel and blood. He'd bitten his tongue, adding verisimilitude to the charade that wasn't quite a charade. Anyway, he'd probably thrashed around enough by now, shifting from wolf to human and back again, that he'd provided the buildup for the grand finale.
He shifted to human and, as he did so, arched his back in a fake seizure. This was one medical problem he'd never had to deal with, and he had no idea if he was selling it, but he tried to do a credible impression of someone who'd worked himself up to the point that he was choking. He thrashed and strained before finally collapsing, sprawled on his stomach with his head twisted away from the cameras.
That was ridiculous. There's no way they could possibly fall for it.
But it would all depend on how much credit they were willing to give him, wouldn't it? For once, he hoped they really did think of him as a beast, incapable of even a stupid, transparent piece of play-acting.
He tried to breathe as shallowly as possible. He'd made sure his face was hidden as much as possible, so he could blink and wet his lips when needed—keeping his facial expression completely still would have been impossible. But already he was starting to notice strain in other parts of his body. He'd fallen with his hips twisted, and the usual dull ache was slowly escalating until it felt like knives had been thrust between the damaged joints. One of his arms was bent under him, the hand going slowly to sleep.
Come on, guys, don't disappoint me here. Come check on your tragically deceased prisoner.
The wolf in him wanted to move, to attack, to ravage the throats of his enemies. Calmly, he thought. This is a hunt, and the hunter must lie still, awaiting the prey. And maybe he was doing it himself now, speaking to that half-imagined, half-real other that he had shared his mind with for his entire life.
In any case, he stilled himself, mind and body. He tuned out his discomfort, closed off his mind's attempts to predict Nicole's fate. He was a predator, just as much as he was the civilized and educated man who worked in an office. Both were equal parts of him. And now it was the predator that waited, suppressing its anticipation until there wasn't even a hint of a quiver in his rock-still muscles. But it was the human mind that remained in control.
The door clicked as the magnetic lock disengaged. A quick frisson ran through his muscles, which he hoped didn't show as an external twitch. Even his respirations were so shallow as to barely stir his ribs.
"—just thrashed around and quit moving," a voice was saying as the heavy tramp of feet entered the room.
Avery wished he'd managed to fall in a position where he could see the door. Probably just as well; he couldn't have opened his eyes anyway without giving the game away. He strained his ears and his slightly-sharper-than-human sense of smell, trying to determine how many people had entered the room. Two, he was fairly sure. The door clunked shut behind them, and the predator inside him pricked its metaphorical ears. They were shut in with him now, not the reverse.
"Ray, you idiot, this is the oldest trick in the book." The second speaker, from the sound of things, was staying over by the door. Damn, Avery thought. There had to be a smart one in the bunch.
"You want to explain to Her Bossiness that we let her prize monster die?" The other man, Ray, must be standing just outside the cage now.
"You want to go in there with that thing, be my guest."
Something hard and cold prodded Avery's ankle. Muzzle of a gun, he thought, and tried not to clench his jaw too visibly. This was make-or-break time. He was stretched out full length in the cage with his legs toward the door, another thing he'd done by design; he hadn't wanted to expose his neck and throat without making them come into the cage. Still, he didn't expect them to risk opening the door until they'd thoroughly tested the limits of his alleged deadness.
And he wasn't wrong. The next thing he felt was the cold, hard sole of a boot, thrust through the bars, grinding down on his ankle. Avery fought to control his breathing as the increasing pressure ground his ankle bone against unforgiving concrete. His mind wanted to slide away sideways, abandoning his body to its fate and escaping the pain. It was the wolf who anchored him, the infinitely patient predator awaiting its opportunity.
The pressure withdrew, followed by a swift kick to the vulnerable place at the back of his ankle. The effort of remaining limp, betraying nothing by either tensing or flinching, taxed him to the utmost. Tears sprang to his eyes with the pain and the effo
rt of staying still.
This is the only chance you'll have to find Nicole. Don't move.
A moment's thoughtful silence outside the cage, then soft rustling: Ray crouching or kneeling. The hand that closed on Avery's ankle was not entirely unexpected—he'd been braced for more, as best he could brace for anything when he was trying not to tense up. Still, he thought his breath might have hitched a little at the sudden warm pressure of the other man's callused fingers.
"Well?" the other guard near the door asked impatiently.
"He's not dead," Ray said, and this time Avery's breath did catch, a slight stutter. "There's a pulse."
Shit. He should've tried to collapse deeper into the cage. He'd forgotten how obvious the heartbeat in the ankle could be.
"So, faking," the second guard said, sounding bored.
"Or something." Ray's voice changed register: turning his head to speak to his partner, while his hand still rested on Avery's ankle. "We oughta get boss-lady down here and—"
With the speed of a striking snake, or a desperate werewolf, Avery whipped around and grabbed him through the bars.
He had one instant's lead time, when his reflexes were faster than their reactions, and he made the most of it, slamming Ray's face into the bars as hard as he could. Ray made a choked sound and Avery bounced his face off the bars again. Ray's weapon, which turned out to be another fat-bodied dart gun, clattered from his nerveless fingers to the floor.
The door guard was equipped with an MP5 assault rifle, which he now brought to bear. Avery ducked behind Ray, using him as a human shield, and fumbled under Ray's jacket for the second weapon that had to be there. Mike had been wearing a shoulder holster. These weren't the kind of guys who'd go up against werewolves with a single-shot dart gun, no matter what their boss told them to do.
His fingers closed over the butt of a pistol.
The door guard made his decision, the MP5 stuttered its staccato bark, and Avery, at the same time, yanked the pistol free and shot under Ray's arm. There was a grunt from the door and Avery went down, feeling like he'd been punched in the neck. He fired again from the floor, and again. The guy at the door, whose name he had never learned, crumpled in a spreading pool of blood. Death convulsions triggered a final burst of gunfire that scattered chips from the concrete floor, and then there was no more movement.
