Already, she felt freer, even though her heart was beating wildly from nerves. She parked the Harley at the edge of the property, in the woods, before the security camera line, left the helmet behind. Hopped the fence and walked up the driveway, knowing there were silent alarms going on all around her.
She was still wearing Gwen’s clothing, but it fit her well. All black, a cute T-shirt and jeans, flip-flops, all things the Blackwells did not like. They still dressed for dinner nightly, while she stripped and shifted under a full moon. Different strokes.
She stared at the mansion and tried to decide what was so different about it from the Dire mansion. The proportions were similar from the outside, although her parents’ house was cozy in comparison to the massive rooms and ceilings hidden inside the Dires’ house. But still, she felt a thousand times more comfortable there than she ever had in Blackwell Manor.
She’d been most comfortable at Jinx’s place, but she pushed down that emotion. One thing at a time. If she freed herself from this, took the bounty off her head, she wouldn’t have to go into hiding.
She was tired of hearing about the Greenland pack. Maybe she’d meet them one day, on her own terms, but she’d be damned if she’d be pushed into their arms. Paws. Whatever.
The cameras would pick her up by the time she was halfway up the driveway. She was surprised no one had come out to greet—or grab—her but she had the feeling she was being watched. No doubt, they were closing a circle of people around her, ready to entrap her.
“Do you not see me walking willingly to the door,” she muttered under her breath as she spotted two men in the bushes to her right. They were aiming something at her—probably tranquilizer guns and she did not relish the thought of being drugged again. Ever.
She quickly rang the bell, knocked a few times and her father opened the door. So yes, if he’d done that instead of the staff, he’d definitely been tracking her movements by camera.
“Hi, Dad,” she said with a small wave. His face contorted a little and then he regained his composure.
“Gillian, you’ve come home.”
“I’ve come here to talk to you,” she corrected. “Can I come inside?”
“Of course. Gilly, this is your home.”
No, not anymore, but she bit her lip to keep from saying so as she stepped into the parlor. It all looked the same—pretty, polished. Lifeless. She turned midway through the hallway but her father urged her onward to the main living room.
Her mother waited there, pacing anxiously. It was the most movement she remembered seeing from her mother, a small, frail woman who was always in bed with a headache or some other ailment. When she did entertain, it seemed to suck every bit of life out of her, and she always sat like the queen in the middle of the event, letting people come to her.
Very effective.
“Mother, hello,” Gillian said now, keeping her voice low.
“Oh, Gillian, I’m so glad you came to your senses.”
Well, yes, that too. She sat down on the couch across from her parents. A woman dressed in a starched black uniform brought the ever-present tea set and poured her a cup. Gillian mixed more cream and sugar than she normally would have, caught her mother wincing.
“Sorry,” she muttered, took a sip and put the cup down so they wouldn’t notice her shaking hands. God, she was nervous, and the rustling in her ears wasn’t helping.
Sister Wolf hated it here, and she was making her opinion known.
“Look, I’m sorry I caused you worry when I left the hospital. I didn’t mean to. I just had to . . . find myself. And really, I did. I’m better. I’m twenty-one now. I’m ready to be on my own.”
“Oh, Gillian,” her mother said with a sad shake of her head, like, “Oh, Gillian, you’re so deluded it’s not even funny.” And her father added, “We’re not supporting you.”
“No, I don’t expect you to at all. I’m okay. I’ve got a place to live. A job.” Technically that was true as the Dires were tasked with helping humans. A nonpaying job but none of the Dires had asked her to contribute. She had the feeling they were quite comfortable in the money department. “I’m happy. I came here because I want you to know that. I’m not . . . sick. I can’t explain it, but everything that happened over the past years . . . well, it’s all okay now. I’m fine. And I just wanted you to know that. I’ll be okay—I am okay. So I’d like you to call off the dogs. I’ll stay out of the media and just live a quiet life.”
“Gillian, that can’t happen,” her father said sternly.
“But it is happening. You can’t put me back in a hospital without my consent.”
“We can ask a hospital to hold you for forty-eight hours until a doctor assesses you.”
“Do I seem like there’s something wrong?” Gillian asked calmly. “I wish you’d believe me.”
“I want you to move back in here, not the hospital,” her father said and for a minute, she thought they really believed she was better. But his next words proved that was the farthest thing from the truth. “You’ll have your own doctor, round the clock. You’re sick—you just don’t realize it.”
She hadn’t thought it would be easy. She’d never win this argument—she just hoped to come out unscathed. “I need you to respect the fact that I’ve made this decision.”
“You don’t have a choice, Gillian,” her mother said sadly, and at those words, her anger rose. She swallowed her temper, not wanting to prove them right about anything.
In her calmest voice, she asked, “Where did you find me?”
“What are you talking about, honey?” Her mother wrung her hands together, urgency in her voice. “Dave, tell her she’s sick.”
“I know I’m not your biological child.” She stared between them, looking for any kind of tell, but there wasn’t one. They were good. But why the big secret? Plenty of people were adopted. There was no shame in that.
Although, with the Blackwells, continuing the line was important. Hiding her and her faults, more so. But using her to front their philanthropic efforts . . .
“You need to get back on your medication, Gillian. You’ll feel much more like your old self,” her father explained with a logic she used to believe in.
When had she begun to see through the act? There was the normal parental rebellion for sure, but she’d taken it further. The more they disapproved, the more she’d pushed. Until . . .
“Your temper caused the death of your classmates.”
“Dave, we promised we’d never tell her,” her mother cried out.
“She has to know the consequences for what she did. What could’ve happened to her if we’d told the truth.”
She was shaking her head, standing and backing away from them like that would make what they’d said disappear. Out of sight, out of mind.
“Gillian, please. We promised the judge and the doctors—the families of the victims—that you’d forever remain in custody, watched by a doctor. If you don’t, we have to put you in prison.”
“Prison,” she repeated. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“Because you didn’t remember what you did. Dave, it wasn’t her fault—it was the horrible mental illness,” her mother said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—why you’re lying about everything!” she yelled, right before she felt the prick of a needle in her neck. She whirled around and drop-kicked the man who’d stuck her with the tranquilizer, threw him across the room without thinking. Sister Wolf was enraged, gearing up to be uncontrollable, which Jinx and the others had warned her about and, yes, this had all been a huge mistake.
And there was no turning back from it.
She fought as long as she could, the hallway leading to the front door seeming to stretch out as she ran toward it, a never-ending kind of hall as she ran on jelly legs.
They’d used the same amount of dr
ugs they did at the hospital—the dose was enough to take her and her wolf down, no matter how hard she fought.
• • •
Gillian woke up slowly. Her head throbbed, her face was sticky and when she touched it, she realized she’d been bleeding. She ripped a piece off the bottom of the T-shirt she wore and held it to the cut to staunch the bleeding, because there was nothing else in this literal cell that would help.
A mattress on the floor. A small window she couldn’t escape from—and it was barred anyway—and cold, hard cement floor and walls. A door that looked solid. She stood and tried it anyway. The doorknobs bent under her touch and she frowned at that. Why would someone bother to make a prison like this and use shoddy equipment?
She tried the handle again and only succeeded in ripping it off, which was no help to her. She crushed it in her hand, the metal cutting her. But it seemed to heal quickly. Just like her head. She felt for the cut that had reopened and there was nothing.
Only then did she realize that the knob wasn’t the issue—she was. She’d never translated her strength into being able to do things like this, but she was getting stronger on an hourly basis, it seemed. And none too soon.
She stepped back and readied herself, gave the door a hard kick with the bottom of her bare foot and waited for the pain.
There was none. Instead, the door flew open and she realized she hadn’t needed to kick that hard. She walked out and found herself in a maze of hallways. It was only when she reached a staircase that she knew exactly where she was.
She was home.
There were running footsteps above her head. She waited, crouched in the dark corner, because in order to get out of here, she would have to get upstairs.
The door opened with a creak and she heard lots of talking. They must have hidden cameras upstairs, watching her every move.
She heard, “She’s out . . . door’s off . . . impossible.”
Impossible.
“It’s the sickness. I’ve heard mental illness makes people do things they normally couldn’t do.”
Her mother’s voice. They had no idea Gillian was a wolf. That in and of itself actually made her feel better. If they’d known all this time . . . if they’d been using her . . . well, that was worse than locking her up because they didn’t know how to deal with a perceived illness. Not by much, granted, but still.
“There were marks on the side of the van . . . looked like they’d been made by animals,” her father was saying. “One of the men swore he heard barking.”
She smelled them now. The hellhounds. They were protecting her because she was Jinx’s.
And they would kill anyone who they thought was hurting her.
She had to get out of here, lead them away from this house, her parents, or there would be a bloodbath. And as she moved to walk up, prepared to leap past her parents, when they met her halfway up the stairs, she simply froze at the fear in their faces.
“You can’t leave, Gillian,” her father said in a tone of voice she’d never heard him use before. “You’re violent. You’ve hurt people.”
“I didn’t do what you’re saying. It was a car accident.” She wanted to believe it—she did believe it—but she couldn’t remember anything about the night in question.
“There was no car accident. We told you that.”
“My legs were broken.”
“You were tied down after it all happened, for your safety and everyone else’s. Look at the pictures.” Her father shoved them at her angrily. He looked at her as though he’d never seen her before, like she wasn’t even his.
Because she wasn’t. But they wouldn’t—couldn’t admit that. They could only pretend to take care of her because they loved her.
She slid the pictures out of the folder, glanced down at the first one on the pile and nearly vomited. It showed dismembered people. She forced herself to stare at them. She recognized the faces of the dead . . . three of her classmates. She saw deep claw marks and bites on their flesh.
“You did this. You scratched and clawed at them. You strangled them first. And then you did horrible, inhuman things to them. You were like an animal,” her father told her as her mother sobbed behind him.
“I didn’t do this. I couldn’t have.”
“You’re violent. You attacked people at the hospital.”
She had. She couldn’t deny that, but never anything close to this. It looked like the work of a wolf, but she hadn’t been one until days earlier. She hadn’t done this. But who had? “Where did they find me?” she demanded.
“In the corner, crying. You were covered in blood but there were no marks on you. The doctor said you had some kind of psychotic break.”
That’s what had happened. It wasn’t the car accident. . . .
What she’d witnessed must’ve been so terrible that she blocked it from her memory to this day. Although she felt horror at the pictures, she honestly couldn’t remember those people, that night, at all. “Everyone really thinks I did this? You both think I was capable of this?” she whispered.
“We didn’t want to. But you did it, Gillian. We have to take responsibility because we adopted you without knowing your background. You have to take responsibility by living under the conditions we all agreed to, for the safety of others. You’re a danger. You need to be locked up,” her father said, and Gillian’s shoulders sagged.
Someone had set her up. How and why were the biggest questions and would remain unanswered for as long as she remained on lockdown here.
If she broke out, the bounty on her head would intensify. They would hunt her down. This story of what really happened that night might leak out, no matter how carefully her parents had buried it. “It wasn’t me.”
“Gillian, you don’t know how badly I want to believe that,” her father said sadly.
“I’m going to prove it to you, Father, if it’s the last thing I do,” she whispered as she felt the air move behind her. There were men approaching her. She smelled the drugs they carried, couldn’t let that happen again.
It was either go through her parents or fight and get drugged.
“Please move. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Her mother gave a soft gasp. Her father said, “You couldn’t possibly hurt us any more than you already have.”
She jumped onto the railing, balancing herself and her parents jumped away in surprise, leaving her just enough clearance to move by them. Sister Wolf was struggling to get out, but she couldn’t let her. Not here.
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” she kept repeating as soon as she ran through the hall. There was security at the door. With guns.
She veered left and leaped out the plate glass window closest to the woods that backed up the estate. She did it how she’d seen Jinx jump, limbs and head tucked to hopefully prevent glass from cutting anything major. She hit the ground still tucked in a ball with a hard thud and then, ignoring the pain, she went on, speeding through the night.
She was leaving a blood trail. She shifted, knowing Sister Wolf would heal faster. The blood would also get caught on the fur and leave behind less of a trail. Her wolf led her deep into the woods, circling as she went in an attempt to lose the men.
They’re going to send the dogs after me. And then the dogs from hell that protected her would go into damage control. She needed help, and fast.
She threw her head back and howled.
• • •
Jinx recognized the howl instantly. It was as distinctive as Gillian herself.
“She’s trapped,” he told Jez, who he’d met in the woods behind the Blackwells’ house. Jez had called him, frantic that Gillian had escaped. He’d trailed her here and Jinx couldn’t be angry at the vampire because he’d never seen Jez this distraught.
“I was distracted,” he muttered. “I know better.”
“She’s out,
Jez. We’ll get to her,” Jinx said and then a howl came up and they both froze.
“We’d best do it before the hellhounds decide to help her,” Jez said in a slightly strangled tone of voice just as Gillian broke through the small clearing, shifting from Sister Wolf as she did so. She was obviously much faster than the men shooting at her through the trees, but they were still coming. He moved to grab for her as Jez said, “They’re surrounding us from all sides.”
“Gilly.”
“I’m okay,” she told him. But she was bleeding and covered in glass and obviously distraught. And she smelled as though they’d drugged her, which explained a lot. “I can’t see anything, but I feel it. The same thing I felt the other night.” She moved closer to Jinx and he stared at the circle of hellhounds that sat around them, at the ready.
“I think trappers are coming to the aid of the Blackwell security team,” Jez said. “Rogue’s getting the truck as close as he can.”
For the first time in his life, Jinx hoped to hell the trappers backed off.
“Jinx, what are you going to do?” Jez asked.
“Whatever we need to,” Jinx said. Fighting would give them away. So would shifting. They were trapped and the hellhounds knew it. He whispered, “You leave them alone,” but this time, they weren’t listening.
One minute they were there and the next, gone. He couldn’t see them anymore, only the men coming at them with UZIs and the trappers coming along the other side. But then came the bloodcurdling screams and the men all stopped in their tracks.
Rather, they were stopped.
To the average eye, it looked incredibly violent but oddly so. Humans were getting slashed, ripped apart by something invisible. Gillian moved away from the bloodbath, hid against a large tree, pressing her face into her palms as though that could make all of this go away.
Jinx wished it could be that easy. Calling off the hounds now wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference. He’d been in danger and so had Gillian. They were pledging their loyalty.
Dire Desires_A Novel of the Eternal Wolf Clan Page 23
