There also was an image of a black fur coat. It covered her arms for a while, as inky as Parker Madison’s hair, and caused Chloe to sweat. After each drenching, a fresh blue gown would arrive, and she’d be helped into it. She’d given up count at nine.
More blurring. More sickness. And then she saw a new face at the door. A man. Not Parker. Not Jim.
The man pressed his face against the window glass, closed his eyes, then entered her little white space. No features registered. He could have been anyone, but he held up a hand to show he would not harm her, and spoke to her in a tone reserved for calming feisty children. She went to him, felt another sharp pinch of a needle, which brought instant oblivion.
As if her life were attached to a fast-forward button, Chloe came to in what had to be a car, spread out on her back, on a leather seat. She smelled the hide, car wax and the faintly musty interior of the space. She smelled herself. She smelled emptiness on the seat beside her. No doctor sat there. Chloe was alone in the vehicle except for the man in the front seat, driving. He smelled like trouble.
All was dark outside the car. Through the window, from her position on her back, Chloe watched stars go quickly by. For that to happen, the driver had to have a heavy foot on the gas pedal.
More blurring. Those stars whipped by.
“Just a few more miles to go. We can make it,” the man said over his shoulder, as if aware that she had woken. “Two more miles, max.” He added in afterthought, “Timing is everything.”
Chloe had no way of knowing what was going on, except to note, oddly enough, that the pain that had been jerking her around had lessened slightly. Somebody had removed her from the padded cell and from the hospital. The darkness inside and outside the car was a sudden blessing.
Until the vehicle changed direction and the moonlight reached her face.
Cold burn. Icy fire. Sudden numbness…and then her shaking started all over again, quickly reaching an intensity that rocked the seat.
They skidded to a stop. The driver tapped the horn twice, and was out of the car like a rocket. The door beside her opened. A sea of hands took hold of her, lifted her.
White light appeared, bright, focused, replaced by more dimness. She’d been carried into a house smelling of lemon oil, old wood, aged carpets, cotton, pie crust and people.
No, not people, exactly.
Where had she been taken? What did they want from her? Had she gone insane in that hospital?
Her last thought this round, before the comforting smells faded and her synapses gave up, was to pray that whatever they wanted from her, there wouldn’t be a cage involved.
Chapter 16
As a werewolf hitting his stride at a full run, Parker found that taking the stone wall was a breeze. All three of them were up and over it, and heading for the house. The stately mansion Parker had staked out was, at the moment, so much less of an enigma. A werewolf lived here. A werewolf with werewolf friends.
This was a place where nightmares, secret longings and plenty of wishful thinking came to a head, all rolled together in Parker’s sigh of relief.
They ran right onto that wraparound porch. The door to the house opened and a tall, stately, gray-haired woman came out, one hand gripping the glossy string of pearls at her neck, the other waving them inside.
Parker nearly laughed again out of sheer disbelief. The image of a woman facing three big wolves with what amounted to open arms seemed so strange.
He followed the other wolves toward the door. About to cross the threshold, he jerked to a stop. This was like going to Grandma’s house, where little Red Riding Hood might be waiting. These people expected him to follow. It had been years since he’d lost his family, and a long time since he’d allowed himself to get close to anyone.
Except her.
And now that his Jane Doe had reentered his mind, she filled it. He could almost feel her presence. He smelled citrus and flower petals in the air. These…people could help her, he reminded himself. He was in no shape to go and get her, not like this, but he’d get her as soon as he could manage.
The others were inside, already out of sight. Parker continued to hang back without knowing why, breathing heavily, as if he had run too fast and stopped too quickly. He rested his hand against the door frame, aware of the warm, welcoming glow just steps away. But who would the beasts in there turn out to be? Did he want to see their real faces?
He caressed the doorjamb, lost in thought, afraid to become Parker the man again. He tasted blood in his mouth—another werewolf’s blood from his own savage bite. He wasn’t sure if it was possible to tear at a throat one minute, then simply return to being a human the next, with no gray area in between to act as a buffer. He was cold, though the wooden door frame felt warm against his fingers. He was anxious, uneasy, and wiped his mouth on his arm.
Hell, he did smell flowers.
The gray-haired woman came back to stand in front of him, unafraid. Having no further urge to fight, Parker merely waited where he was while she looked him in the eyes, smiled and nodded her head. “Only vampires have to be asked in,” she said in a light, lilting voice with no evidence of age in it.
Thrown off balance by her personal invitation and her tone, Parker advanced a step, reluctant to check his worries at the door. She moved aside so that he could enter, and he did, but a wafting scent stopped him again in the foyer. He stood for a minute more with his eyes locked to a wide wooden staircase.
His gaze rose up those steps to settle on the man standing halfway up. He cradled a woman in his arms—a slight wildcat of a woman who twitched, kicked out and babbled nonsensical syllables.
She was blonde.
Parker felt shock; he felt rage. With the roof over his head blocking the moonlight, his body began its transition back to human.
He stood his ground. Stood tall. No doubling over, no panting as his body sucked itself inward. He didn’t take his eyes from the woman in that other man’s arms.
Reverse ordeal over, his bare, overheated flesh continued to ripple from the quickness of this change as he took the stairs two at a time, defied the man there with a steady gaze and reached for the girl curled up in his arms. “Mine,” he said fiercely.
He met with no resistance when he took his she-wolf for himself. He groaned with relief when her softness settled against him.
He had found her. Here, of all places. Among the wolves.
Little Red Riding Hood was Jane Doe.
Her body went slack as he closed his arms around her. She’d been shivering with a major convulsion, but stilled completely when he whispered, “I’m here.”
She opened her eyes—those green, heavy-lidded eyes that had bewitched him before. As they focused, and briefly cleared, she smiled. She reached for him, wrapped her arms around his neck, hid her damaged face against his chest.
God…
A light hand on his arm made Parker spin. He might have unconsciously struck out at anyone else who dared disturb such a moment, but the gray-haired woman who had invited him inside stood there, wearing an expression of earnest concern.
“You know this woman?” she asked.
“Yes. No.” The truth was so very complicated. “How did she get here?”
“A friend brought her a short time ago. He found her at a nearby hospital.”
“Fairview,” Parker said. “I…I left her there.”
The woman scanned the foyer below, probably searching for the others who had arrived with him. Parker didn’t care to look. He didn’t want to move, savored the feel of the woman in his arms, shook off the urge to pound on his chest the way the other wolves had, to prove his ownership of what he held. Although he didn’t know where he was or where to go from here, finding the little wolf was all that mattered.
“She needs help,” the woman said to him in a gentle, unassuming tone.
“I’m not in any shape to do that,” he confessed, heartened by the sympathy on the woman’s face. “I hoped Fairview might protect her unti
l I—”
The woman’s pressure on his arm assured him that he needn’t explain. “We can help her. That’s why she was brought to us. Will you let us do that?”
“What will you do? Who are you?”
“I’m Sylvia Landau,” she said quietly. “This is my home, and you are welcome in it. We call this estate The Sanctuary, because we protect our own here, including those falsely initiated.”
“Falsely initiated? What does that mean?”
“Please,” she said. “We need to take her now. The others are waiting for you. They can tell you what you need to know.”
Parker’s arms tightened around his she-wolf protectively. Her shaking was fainter now. But her breath rattled in her chest.
“If you want her to live,” Sylvia Landau said, “you must let her go.”
“Will she live?”
“There are no guarantees for the recipient of a bite. Nevertheless, we will do all we can, I assure you. We’ve seen this before.”
“Your husband is the judge?” Parker’s voice wasn’t steady.
“Yes.”
“Are you a—?”
“No.”
Silver Wolf had a human wife, then.
“The gene runs in my husband’s family,” she explained, “and transfers from father to son.”
Parker nodded his head gravely over that. It was a gene. A damned gene that caused the body such havoc. A gene or a bite. And since he hadn’t been bitten, it seemed he was a genetic mutant, after all.
“I’ll take her where she needs to go,” he said. “If you’ll lead the way.”
Sylvia moved past him on the stairs, signaling with one hand for the man who had been carrying the girl to follow—a large man, wide-shouldered, immensely strong, shirtless, with rusty hair curtaining a face too mature for its age. The face of a soldier who had seen battle and been too close to the fray. This was the rust wolf, Parker instinctively knew. The fighter.
He nodded when Parker knowingly glanced his way.
“How many—” Parker began, cutting himself off in order to absorb his she-wolf’s shudder. Loosening his taut chest muscles, he recalled what had passed between them the last time he’d held her.
“How many wolfmen are there?” he finally said.
“In the world?” Sylvia Landau asked. “Or just Miami?”
“Jesus,” Parker whispered. “As many as that?”
If he had expected a medieval-dungeon type of environment in the room he entered, Parker couldn’t have been more wrong. No shackles or iron bands furnished this place. It was merely a bedroom, high up in the house, painted a light green and containing a bed, a chair and not much else.
The room had two windows. Heavy blinds on them erased all hints of moonlight from the other side of the glass. There were, Parker noted with dread, finely wrought metal bars behind the shades.
Following Sylvia Landau’s direction, he laid his she-wolf on sheets that were feminine floral pinks and yellows, and smelled of fresh air.
Werewolves on the floor below, and springtime upstairs—as if to negate that monsters could exist on an upper floor, so close to the moon.
Sylvia Landau waved him back from the bed once he had released the young woman. He didn’t want to do what she asked, and he sent her a look of stern reproval.
“It would be best for her if you left her,” Sylvia said. “Being near a wolf in her state will prolong the pain and slow the process.”
“Being near me?” Parker queried, already knowing that what she said was the truth. His Jane Doe had mimicked him, trying to follow his lead.
“She will react to any wolf, but especially a male. Mating instincts are strong among you. Your presence would draw her out before she’s ready.”
Yes. Hadn’t she clung to him, opened for him, with her own brand of desperation?
“It’s obvious the two of you have imprinted,” Sylvia Landau said. “Which makes your presence doubly difficult for her.”
“Imprinted? What the hell is that?”
“A physical phenomenon that links you together. An unbreakable bond.”
Parker closed his eyes briefly. How had that happened, when he barely knew her?
“When a bite occurs is extremely important to someone without the Lycan gene,” she said. “If bitten after the moon’s full phase, the recipient has a month to begin to adapt. If the bite occurs close to a night when the moon is full, or on the night of a full moon, those changes begin too soon, too quickly, too strongly.”
“Then she was bitten,” Parker said.
“Oh, yes.”
“I wasn’t.”
“No. You are different. I can see it in your face, and in your eyes. Yet your Blackout wasn’t much fun, was it?”
“Blackout?” For Parker, the very word had a bad taste.
“Blackout is what we call the start of a body’s rewiring process. The time when the wolf blood kicks in and all hell breaks loose at a cellular level. You do remember that?”
“Yes. God, yes.” He had thought he would die. Parker looked at the girl on the bed, the memory of the experience like a jolt to his mind. “Will she make it?” he asked, sorry for what she’d be put through. Needing her to live.
Was that all part of the imprinting business?
“Maybe,” Sylvia Landau answered truthfully, and although Parker wanted to protest, he knew this outcome lay beyond his medical skills. “She might.”
“Blood transfusion?” he suggested, groping.
“Too late. Seconds after a savage bite, it’s already too late.”
Parker ran a hand through his hair helplessly. The phrase “savage bite” echoed hollowly in his ears. If he had gotten to her earlier, she might have been spared.
“She’s stronger than she looks,” he said. “She’s a fighter.”
“That’s good news.”
“What will you do?”
“Keep watch. Keep her comfortable. Give her herbs for the pain.”
“Medicine?”
“Secret remedies handed down from family to family.”
“You have done this before,” Parker said.
Her unflinching smile was her reply.
“What about that thing out there?” He waved toward the window.
“We open the blinds a little at a time once she’s well into the Blackout. It’s the best way to get new wolves acclimated.”
Acclimated.
His she-wolf was still a woman. And alluring. She no longer wore the hospital’s bathrobe. The folks at Fairview had dressed her in a fresh hospital gown, blue, and put soft slippers on her feet. She rolled from side to side on the floral spread now that he’d been separated from her, slamming her splinted wrist against the mattress. Her hair was damp with perspiration and stuck to the bandaged side of her face. Fresh bandages. Fairview had done a few things right. And yet—he wished he could take some of the pain from her and give her a rest. He wished he could spare her this terrible trial by fire.
An unbreakable bond. Unless she didn’t make it.
“She must go through this, and on her own,” Sylvia Landau explained. “No one can take this from her. Even you. What we can do is watch over her, see that she comes to no further harm.”
It all made a certain crazy kind of sense to Parker now. Remaining here by her side, refusing to leave her, would be a selfish act.
The big man, still in the room, eased up beside him with body language that spoke volumes. Whether or not Parker knew her, and whatever their relationship was, he had to leave her now.
The rust wolf also tossed him a pair of pants and a white shirt he had taken from the closet near the chair, only then reminding Parker of his nakedness.
He slipped his arms into the sleeves, certain that if Sylvia Landau housed a pack of Weres, she had probably seen it all many times before, but glad of the distraction. The shirt was snug, soft, and it covered his private parts well enough. Without taking time to fool with the buttons, Parker leaned over the bed, over his sick
little wolf. He kissed her wounded forehead, then kissed her mouth without lingering, a feather-light touch, waiting for her to open her eyes, hoping she would, hoping she wouldn’t, and realizing again that any kind of prolonged closeness could hurt her.
Speaking to her gently, he repeated words from their first meeting that he prayed she would somehow recognize as the truth.
“Hang on. I’ll be back,” he said. “I promise.”
Attentive to Sylvia Landau’s tap on his shoulder, Parker reluctantly went to the door. Pausing with his hand on the knob, he said to the silver wolf’s wife, “Keep her alive. For me. Please.”
Chapter 17
Four men waited in the room off the foyer. Fortunately, they didn’t speak until Parker had climbed into his pants—another pair of well-worn jeans that didn’t fit too badly.
Settled a bit on the outside, though he felt numb beneath, Parker faced these werewolves in their everyday shapes, reconciling where he was and wondering what would happen next.
“What did you do with the two dead men?” he asked. It wasn’t quite the requisite icebreaker, but it was the best he could manage.
“Who are you?” The question came from the man nearest the shuttered windows, whose lined, sober face placed his age in the forties. His hair was a mild chestnut-brown and shorn to a buzz cut. Exceptionally broad shoulders stretched at the seams of his striped cotton shirt.
Not the brown wolf, Parker’s intuition told him. But all of these wolfmen were in incredible shape, and they looked fairly normal with their clothes on.
“Name’s Parker,” he said. “Are we going to have to get all the pleasantries out of the way before you answer my question?”
“They’ve been taken away,” a voice close to him said. “Their families have already been notified.”
Families. Parker hadn’t thought that far ahead. He didn’t want to think about it now.
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