by Cheree Alsop
Chapter 22
They helped Dr. Tannin into the car and I slid in after him. It turned out to be a short limo with the seats facing each other. “Colleen will be glad to see you,” Tannin said with a sickly sweet smile.
He was telling the truth; it was obvious by the glee in his eyes. I fought back the urge to bare my teeth. “Why Colleen? Why did you have to choose her?”
His eyebrows rose. “I thought you would be happy to see your sister. You two did part on such,” he paused with a small smile, “unfortunate circumstances. Surely you want to make up for what happened.”
His words twisted my stomach and I wondered how much he really knew about that night. I watched Mouse drive away and traced the faint burn marks on the back of my left hand.
“Also, there’s the exasperating fact that your DNA, and consequently your sister’s, happens to be the only DNA capable of handling coupling with a werewolf's. We haven’t figured out just why that is, so in the meantime, we had to get creative.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose at his tone. I met his gaze levelly. “Give me your promise that you won’t involve any more of my family members in your sick experiments.”
His pale eyebrows lifted again. “What will you do if I don’t agree?”
My voice came out at just above a growl. “I’ll rip off this door and throw you under the next car before you or your buddies can do more than lift a finger.”
His eyes widened slightly and I knew he knew I was capable of doing just that. He let out a nervous laugh and nodded. “Of course. Why would I have any reason to involve other members of your family? I have what I need with you.”
“Give me your word,” I growled.
His lips pressed into a tight smile. “You have my word that I won’t involve anyone else in your family in my experiments as long as I have you.”
I turned and glared out the window in an effort to not tear him apart, but reasoned that I needed to reach the lab before I did anything rash.
“But could you imagine an entire family of genetically created werewolves?” he said softly, his tone wistful. I turned the full force of my glare on him and he held up his hands. “Kidding, only kidding.” He put his hands in his lap and regarded me steadily. “Those eyes. I don’t know what it is that makes the eyes change color, but they are magnificent. I’d bet they’d stop a bull in his tracks. Of course, they say red makes bulls angry, so perhaps we shouldn't try it.” I looked away from him, but he continued, “Colleen’s eyes are purple. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful or haunting.”
I kept my gaze firmly on the dark landscape outside the window, but he knew I was a captive audience.
He sighed. “We have just one tiny problem with her.” I clenched my teeth to keep from giving any reaction. “She can’t maintain her human form.” He paused a minute to give me a second to speak. When I didn’t, he pretended as if he hadn’t waited. “She keeps phasing from her human to wolf form and even the other werewolves can’t seem to help her learn how to control it.”
I turned back to him. “You have other werewolves?” It made me sick to think of them going through what Grace had.
He nodded. “Of course. Thanks to your endeavors, we were forced to leave the old Development Center to escape prying eyes.” He frowned and pursed his lips. “Your friend Jaze seems to have some very powerful contacts with the Hunters.” He realized he was off subject and ran both hands through his thin, pale hair. “But it gave us the opportunity to make some necessary changes, which included more holding facilities and more space for development and experimentation. Thank you.”
My muscles shook with the effort to keep from phasing and tearing out his throat to end the grating, gleeful tone that scratched my eardrums. I glanced at the man sitting beside me and the gun he kept trained on my head. A growl ripped from my throat. I turned and punched the window next to me with all the pent-up frustration in my chest. The window shattered outward. The sound stilled my soul as a flash of fire, the scent of gasoline, and Colleen calling my name flashed through my mind. The glass had cut across my knuckles and they bled freely. I focused on the blood and made no effort to staunch the flow.
Dr. Tannin fell silent, his gaze disapproving like a father whose child had stepped in mud. I turned my face to the window and took a deep breath of the fresh air that rushed past. I wanted more than anything to jump out after it, to be going anywhere but the Development Center no doubt filled with werewolves in various stages of torture and pain; but I couldn’t help the images of Colleen that stayed in my mind. If there was a way, any possible way, that Dr. Tannin had brought her back, I had to get her out of that place.
I glanced surreptitiously behind us, but didn’t see any headlights. After the third check, Dr. Tannin caught me. “Looking for your friends?” I didn’t answer and he smiled. “My vehicles come fully equipped with jammers. Whatever chip you may be carrying on your person is blocked. My driver lost your pack a ways back and I doubt they’ll ever find us again.” He paused. “You do get props, though, for actually getting a pack in your short time away from the Center. I’ll have to admit that I didn’t see you as the social type.”
I looked away from his triumphant grin before I succumbed to the impulse to shatter his skull the way I had the window. I stuck my bleeding hand out to feel the rush of the air, and fought back a small smile as the droplets of blood fell away. Jet was the best tracker in the group. If they couldn’t follow the chip, they could follow my blood.
***
Two heavily armed guards flanked me as Dr. Tannin limped slowly down the hall, a brace on his ankle and a crutch under one arm. The scent of werewolves and pain hung thick in the air and I couldn’t shut out the moans and cries for help that came from several of the rooms we passed. Dr. Tannin led the way down a long hallway, turned up an identical one, then pushed a series of buttons on a keypad next to a door.
The door slid open to reveal an observation room with a thick pane of glass separating us from the room below. “We had to sedate her,” Dr. Tannin said. “She couldn’t control the phasing and I’ve had to send too many of my staff to the medical center thanks to her survival instincts. She also doesn't sleep, which really doesn't help with her temper.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Maybe you can reassure her that we mean her no harm.”
“Do you?” I asked, but I was distracted by the scent that colored the air. A smell I could only describe as honey and fresh green clover warmed by the noonday sun grabbed my heart in such a tight grip I could barely breathe. I had never associated the scent with Colleen, but now that I smelled it, there was no doubt in my mind who was in the bed in the center of the room below us. Thick leather straps held her down while computer monitors beeped and tubes ran from her arms to bags and pumps hanging on IV poles. As I watched, a doctor inserted something into the shunt in her wrist. I gripped the edge of the bench near the observation window until the wood began to splinter under my fingers.
“Happy now?” Dr. Tannin asked.
I glared at him. “Happy to see my sister drugged and kept a prisoner?”
“She was drugged for her own safety. She couldn’t control the phasing and cried with the pain and humiliation. Also, the lack of sleep was definitely taking its toll. I felt this was better for her. Let her sleep,” the doctor ordered. “We have work to do.”
His tone set my teeth on edge. “What work?”
He smiled grimly. “You don’t think I’m keeping her here for free, do you?” He shook his head. “We’re going to figure out why I can’t turn other humans, and you both have the key. Either I experiment on her, or you. You decide.”
I took a step forward and Dr. Tannin’s voice faded to an annoying buzz in the background. The neon lights that hummed above fell over Colleen’s face in a gentle caress, accentuating the graceful cheekbone curves and soft lips that I hardly ever saw without a smile. I knew the shape of her nose and the line of her forehead better than I did the back of my own hand, I
had watched over her my entire life, and had been there for her, if no one else, up to the day that we died.
Colleen’s hair before the accident had been dark blond like my mother’s. It had grown in wild ringlets when she was little, but had lost most of the curl until it was a soft wave most girls would die for even though she was always trying to straighten it or curl it on any given day. But her hair was now dark black with purple highlights like mine had turned black with red. The effect was beautiful, but looked so unlike her that I worried she was no longer my sister, that the changes outside reflected something wrong inside.
“Colleen,” I whispered.
“She can’t hear you,” Dr. Tannin said in a chiding tone. “We had to use bulletproof glass to keep her in. She can’t break it no matter how hard she’s tried. Also, because of your immunity to silver, we have to use horse tranquilizers to keep her under. They’re very powerful-“
The rage that built in my chest burned to a swift inferno. Anger flowed through my body and fueled the adrenaline that rushed into my limbs. I slid a hand to my wrist and unlocked Mouse’s knife, then turned and my body fell swiftly into the neck, stomach, kidneys routine Jet had taught me. The two armed guards slumped to the floor in a pool of blood.
I grabbed Dr. Tannin and threw him into the glass that separated me from Colleen. The thick panes shattered around Dr. Tannin’s body. Pieces flew everywhere as he fell to the ground and slid face-first under Colleen’s bed. Nurses screamed and a doctor yelled out the door for help. I jumped down into the small room and dropped to my knees heedless of the glass and the screams of the doctors and nurses as they fled. I broke the leather straps that held her down, then took Colleen’s hand in mine, alarmed at how cold her skin was. “I’m here, Colleen. I’m here. It’s your brother.”
Her eyes opened and even though the doctor had warned me, I wasn’t prepared for the dark purple irises that stared back at me instead of Colleen’s light blue eyes. But the recognition and relief that swept through them chased away any fear of her differences. “Kaynan, I’m cold.” The sound of her voice, so frail compared to the happy little sister I knew, drove what she had gone through home.
Something moved out of the corner of my eye and I turned to see a doctor with a tranquilizer needle similar to the one he had used on Colleen. He jabbed it down toward my neck, but I backhanded his wrist with enough force to snap the bones and send the syringe flying to shatter against the wall. I then slammed a left hook against his jaw and he slumped motionless to the ground.
“I’m taking you out of here,” I promised Colleen, the hatred and anger I felt at her situation thick in my voice. I slid the I.V. gently from her wrist. “I’ll keep you safe.” A smile touched her lips and she closed her eyes again.
“They’ll kill you,” Dr. Tannin gasped where he lay partially underneath Colleen’s bed, broken like the glass around him. One arm twisted at an awkward angle behind his back while a bone jutted through the skin of his other elbow. His legs were a mess of tattered cloth and blood, and by the angle of his back, I didn’t doubt that his spine was broken. Still he grinned in weak, painful triumph as his words came out in halted gasps, “My men . . . orders to kill you . . . outside this room without me.”
A growl rose in my throat and the urge to phase thrummed under my skin. I grabbed him and pulled him out from under the bed. “You underestimate me,” I said. I stabbed Dr. Tannin in the throat with my knife, then held my hand over the wound so fast he barely had time to blink in surprise. I pulled him close, the blood oozing from between my fingers. “If I let go, you die. If you do what I say, I’ll leave you in the medical center where you can pray that your staff is competent enough to save your life. Do you understand?”
His eyes, now wide with fear and pain, rolled to mine and he nodded.
“Good,” I said between gritted teeth. I stood and carried him by the throat to the door, then glanced up and down the empty hall. “Do your narcissistic snappy thing and get us some help.”
I kept a foot in the door in case his guards decided to just lock us in and let him bleed to death. Dr. Tannin did his best to lift his arm, but it was fractured in more than one place and he gave up and just glared at the cameras. Four white-faced nurses and six guards quickly showed up panting and wide-eyed.
“D-Dr. Tannin?” one of the nurses stuttered.
“Have them put Colleen on a gurney and follow us,” I said in his ear.
The nurses and guards looked from me to him. He gurgled out something unintelligible, then gestured angrily for them to listen to me. Two of the nurses ran down the hall and came back with a wheeled gurney. They moved Colleen carefully from the bed, then wait for me uncertainly.
The guards toyed nervously with their weapons. I met their eyes with a gaze of steel. “If you shoot me, my hand slips and he dies in seconds. Leave the weapons and escort us to the central control room.”
The guards looked at Dr. Tannin for agreement. He rolled his eyes, then gestured for them to put their weapons down and follow us, all the while making an angry, gurgling noise that I didn’t think was good for his throat; I refrained from commenting on it.
Each hallway we passed smelled of werewolf, pain, fear, and blood. The scents awoke my fight or flight instincts and sent adrenaline surging through my veins. I had to restrain myself from holding Dr. Tannin’s neck too tight. My fingers tensed compulsively around the knife hilt in my other hand and it was all I could do to loosen my grip as Jet had instructed.
The guards led us to a white-walled room a few hallways down. The security at the door had apparently already been notified that we were coming. They backed up without a word and let us into the room, then fell in behind me. My instincts warned for me to keep them all in sight, so I backed up to the nearest wall and gestured with the knife.
“Open all the gates and release the locks on the doors,” I commanded.
“If we do that, the werewolves will escape,” a skinny man in a poorly-fitting suit protested.
“That’s the point,” I growled with barely contained rage. “Any werewolf currently under restraint is to be set free in the yard.”
“And if we refuse?” an older man with a buzz cut and graying sideburns asked.
My lips lifted in a snarl and I spoke the words slowly, emphasizing each one. “Then Dr. Tannin dies, followed by everyone else in this room.” I moved my hand slightly and blood leaked between my fingers to emphasize my point.
The suited man looked at the other four. “Well, what are you waiting for? Free the werewolves!”
Two men took seats at the computers and entered several codes. The monitors around the room showed doors opening and gates lifting. Werewolves moved out into the hallway, glanced at each other, then headed for the exit. “Leave,” I said to the men in a growl that left no room for argument. When they filed out the door, I bent with Dr. Tannin at my side and tore the wires from the computers so no one could disable the commands.
The moment we left the room, the technicians rushed back in. Exclamations and swearing quickly followed. “Where’s the medical center?” I asked one of the guards who followed behind the nurses with Colleen.
“Down the next hall and to the left.” He led us quickly down the hall to a wide room that smelled of antiseptic. Nurses waited anxiously with bandages and surgical equipment at the ready.
“You better hope another power surge doesn’t come through while you undergoing surgery,” I growled in Dr. Tannin’s ear. “You owe Grace her sight.”
A slight noise that could have passed for a laugh came from the doctor. I pulled him around to face me, my hand still clamped firmly on his lacerated throat. “What is it?”
His eyes held mine and blood dripped from the corner of his mouth when he opened it to say, “You do.”
I pulled him close so that we stood nose to nose. “I wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for you. I should be dead.”
His eyes narrowed and took on an edge of taunting. “And Colle
en?” he forced out.
The thought of the fear and pain in her voice turned my stomach. I glanced at her still form on the gurney. I don’t know what they did to her, but if it was anything like what I had gone through, he deserved no mercy, none of them did. I gritted my teeth against the feral fury that filled my limbs, but I couldn’t control it any longer. “Get out!” I yelled to the guards, nurses, and doctors who filled the room. Several moved toward the door, but the rest stood frozen as though they didn’t know what to do. I put my knife to Dr. Tannin’s throat. “Get out, now.” The anger in my voice reverberated from the walls. This time, no one dared to stand against me. They fled from the room with the scent of fear trailing behind them.
When we were alone, I pulled Dr. Tannin close, my hand still across the wound in his throat. “You will never hurt anyone again,” I said in a voice that barely contained my anger.
I released my grip and he fell to the floor. Blood flowed from the wound in his neck to match the rest of his mangled body. His eyes met mine wide with horror as his life blood spilled onto the ground around him and he was unable to lift an arm to staunch it. I pushed Colleen’s gurney from the room and shut the door behind me, then broke off the doorknob. The nurses and doctors scrambled to the door as I walked back down the hall, but they couldn’t open it. They yelled his name and pounded on the door, but by that point, there was no one left to answer.
Chapter 23
I slapped the knife back around my wrist, grateful once again for Mouse’s insight, then gathered Colleen’s sleeping form in my arms. I took a steeling breath and stepped out slowly into the yard beyond the Development Center exit. The scent of werewolves filled my nose. At least two dozen in human form milled around the enclosed yard. They kept their distance from each other and watched me distrustfully. Several of them advanced on me as I crossed the yard to the outside wall. I pretended not to notice and walked past them with Colleen tight in my arms.
