“Come on, man!” Rafael exploded with a loud hiss. “Listen to yourself. Those people wouldn't let a fly hurt one of their kind, much less a scion. They're so rare, they're practically deities.”
“And yet she was left in the mercy of the scientists year after year, until she managed to escape on her own,” Logan argued, his hands clenched by his sides.
“Why?” Rafael demanded. “Everyone knows Fosch died for her, hybrid or not. Every single one of them, plus a good number of others.”
“That's what smells hinky. I'm going to keep her until I can talk to Archer. Until he talks to her. Until then, I'm not throwing her to the vultures,” Logan said with finality, before adding more gently, “After that, I promise you, Rafe, I'll wash my hands of the problem.” Logan glanced back at me—the problem—and met my eyes. For a moment, we stared at each other, his words hanging between us like a heavy weight.
I tried to sit and a sharp tug on the back of my left hand made me realize with a twinge of panic that I was connected to a dripping IV. A small sound of horror escaped my lips.
I fumbled and grabbed for it, ready to yank it out when a large hand closed over mine. I pushed at it, tried to pull my hand free.
My heart squeezed once, my vision blurred at the edges, then began to dim. Vaguely, in the very back of my mind, I recognized the panic attack for what it was.
My inner voice told me to relax, that this was Logan and that he was taking care of me, but it was faint and faraway, muffled by the loud screams of panic.
“Take it out.” My voice sounded scratchy and thin.
“No, you need it. You're suffering from acute dehydration,” he tried to reason, but I wanted none of it.
“Take it off!” I screeched, seeing only the white coats of the lab scientists, hearing only the blips of the machines monitoring my every breath while I shivered and trembled from the cold room and the steel table beneath me.
Logan lay beside me and gathered me close to his warm body, still holding my hand in a viselike grip and began rocking me back and forth. “Shh. Shhhh. It's ok. It's ok,” he murmured in my ear over and over again until I fell asleep. Or passed out.
When I came to, there was no IV attached to my arm and I was sweating profusely under the thick duvet. I looked around at the scarcely-furnished room and found myself alone. Besides the bed, a straight-back chair, and a nightstand adorned by a cheap plastic table lamp, there was nothing else in the room. There were no windows either, so I couldn't tell if it was day or night.
God, how I missed the nice, warm sunshine.
I pushed the duvet away and got up slowly. The world tilted to one side then the other, my stomach in sync with it. I had to sit back down and wait for the world to settle and the nausea to abate before continuing the laborious task of standing up.
All I had on was one of my oversized t-shirts and, in a vaguely alarmed sense of curiosity, I raised the hem of the t-shirt to make sure I was wearing underwear.
I was.
Unless there was another woman in the house, I was sure Logan was the one who had cleaned and dressed me. Werewolves were territorial in nature and—aside from the kissing we had shared—he would feel responsible for me if for no other reason than he met me first.
How did I feel about that?
I searched for something, embarrassment, alarm, outrage—anything. They were all there, but somehow muted, faint. As if I had been drained emotionally and couldn't dredge up strong emotions. Or maybe because, in a sense, I'd rather have Logan see me naked than Rafael.
I scanned the room, but there was no sign of my clothes or duffle bag anywhere. Since the t-shirt was long enough to cover the essentials, I left the room to look for food, Logan, and a bathroom—not necessarily in that order.
I found the bathroom first, which was the first door to the right in the narrow hallway. There were three other closed doors along the hall, one on the side of the bathroom, but they didn't interest me at the moment. After washing and taking care of necessities, I went in search of the remaining two on my list.
The hallway ended in a spacious, dimly-lit, also scarcely-furnished living room. There was a comfortable-looking green velvet sofa, a recliner, two straight-back chairs like the one in the room, a scarred coffee table with some empty Coke cans on top of it, what looked like faded beach chairs underneath it, and a flat-screen TV with some sort of expensive entertainment devices. The floor, like in the bedroom and hallway was wooded but, unlike the bedroom and hallway, here the wood planks were scarred and muted.
None of the furniture matched. There were no windows in this room either. The walls were unadorned and bare, painted some shade of muted white. Here and there were faint yellow splotches indicating a leak of some sort. A couple of doors led to different parts of the house, but I went for the one on the left where a florescent light glowed brightly.
Before I reached it, there was the sound of a chair scraping linoleum, muffled footsteps. Logan appeared, his figure looming in the doorway.
He looked weary and relieved at the same time, and as handsome as ever. Butterflies skipped frantically in my stomach as if in agreement with the thought. If I wasn't careful, I'd build a serious crush on him.
“Hey.”
“Hey, back,” I said, my voice still a little scratchy.
“You ok?”
“Hungry.”
He nodded. “There's soup. Come on.” He turned and disappeared inside the room.
I followed him to a small kitchen. The industrial counter covered one side of the room, flanked by a stove and a refrigerator on each end. There was a scarred light-colored wooden table opposite the sink, shoved all the way against the wall and three straight-back chairs around it.
Logan motioned for me to sit and I did, my back uncomfortably to the entrance.
I watched him light the stove under a copper pot filled to the brim with something that smelled delicious, his back to me. He still wore the same clothes he'd been wearing when I had last seen him—dark blue long-sleeve t-shirt and faded, blue jeans—though they looked disheveled and rumpled. His hair looked like it had seen nothing but a few rough fingers for the past few days. His posture was tense and stiff. Tension emanated from his shoulders in waves.
His green-and-yellow aura pulsated with coiled violence, barely leashed.
“These digs yours?” I asked, trying for a lighter mood.
“Not really.”
“This Douglas guy Rafael mentioned?”
He grunted.
“I don't sense anyone in the vicinity but us.”
Another grunt.
Apparently, my effort wasn't working, or wanted, so I shut up and just watched him.
He poured the steamy, fragrant soup into a mug advertising an investment firm and passed it to me.
I was salivating by then, just able to contain my drool.
I practically attacked the mug, burning my tongue with the first sip. I was too hungry to care. I took hasty, noisy slurps and wasn't too concerned if Logan watched either. He'd seen worse.
“Slow down or you'll throw it all up,” he cautioned.
Any other time and I was sure he'd be amused. Instead, he looked—concerned. For me.
I felt this warm feeling in my chest… or maybe it was just the soup tracking down to an empty stomach.
Regardless, I didn't slow, couldn't, even if I wanted to.
Logan sat across from me without another word and sipped on a mug of coffee.
When I finished the soup, I placed the mug on the table and looked up at him. His expression was bland, perhaps a little mild. No traces of the tension or violence I still sensed showed on his face. The concern was also gone, or very well concealed.
“More?” I asked a bit self-consciously.
“In a minute. Tell me what happened,” he demanded. “One minute you were there, the next you were gone.”
“How long? How long was I gone?”
“About six hours.”
I stared at h
im in disbelief. It had been days. I was fairly sure I had been gone for days. “That's it? You sure?”
He frowned, his eyes dark with worry and anger. “Yes, we got to the restaurant somewhere around nine thirty. Give or take a few minutes. Where did he take you? Where is he?”
“It felt like days in that place.” I shivered once.
“Where? Where did he take you?” He repeated, his grip white-knuckled around his coffee mug.
“They called it the Low Lands.”
Logan's only reaction that he recognized the place was the tiny jerk of his hand.
“They?” he prompted with a voice barely recognizable.
“Dr. Dean and Remo Drammen.”
The words had just left my lips when he exploded out of the chair, sending it crashing into the sink, and with a vicious curse punched a hole on the wall with his fist.
“Son of a bitch!” I watched, dumbstruck and frozen, as he punched again and again and again. Over and over, as if he was seeing Dr. Michael Dean in front of him. Plaster and blood flew, making a jagged hole on the stone wall behind. A bloody, jagged hole where the mortar showed.
Belatedly, I shoved up and grabbed his forearm—and almost plowed face-first into the wall with the next punch.
Damn, he wasn't holding back.
His knuckles bled from around a mess of torn flesh, plaster and pulverized mortar. The cuts looked deep enough to need stitches, the blood dripping from his hand to quickly form a puddle on the linoleum floor. The metallic smell of blood was thick in the air, making my stomach churn queasily.
Was that a piece of the wall or bone? Before I could find out, I pulled him away from the wall and picked up his chair.
“I'm alright,” I began, but was cut by his sarcastic snort. His cheeks were red with rage, making me wonder if he ever blushed. “Look at me. I'm alright. Look at me.” I waited for his stormy grey eyes to meet mine. “I'm here. They are not. They're dead.” When comprehension didn't dawn in his eyes, I repeated, “They're both dead. I'm here. I'm alright.”
His eyes flickered, surprise, disbelief, speculation—I couldn't tell. “How?”
“Sit down so I can tell you.”
* * *
When I finished, he let the silence stretch for a moment. I left out no gruesome detail, going as far as my interpretation of the creatures' joyous shrieks.
I had expected disapproval, disgust, horror, or just a tiny indication that what I had done to them had been extreme, but I got nothing. Not even satisfaction, for that matter.
His face remained blank.
“In the Low Lands,” he began in a moderate tone, “time moves differently. Sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's slower, depending on which path the planet is aligned with. In a way, I guess you can say it's unpredictable. You sure looked like you'd been dragged through Hell and back for a couple days.”
Yeah, the coldest Hell ever. We fell silent after that, eyeing each other. I could practically see the questions rampaging inside his head. I knew what he wanted to know.
I looked down at my hands, unable to keep hold of his sharp, burning stare, trying to avoid the question I knew was coming.
When I looked back up, his jaws were clenched and the fury wasn't so well disguised anymore. His hands clutched the cold coffee mug, blood from his knuckles oozing and gathering on the tabletop like a faulty, leaky faucet.
I got up and wet the dish towel, then began to clean up the wound. It was nasty, the skin had torn and mixed with small pieces of paint, cement and blood; on the middle finger the bone was showing indeed.
It must hurt like a bitch. I cleaned it gently, then washed the towel when it got too bloody to continue.
All the while Logan remained silent, his heavy eyes on me, giving no indication that he even felt what I was doing.
When I got to the third round, Logan clasped my hand over his and stopped me. He pried the cloth from my hand and awkwardly tied it around his wounds with his uninjured hand and teeth.
When I looked at his eyes again, I met the flash of fury, the barely-leashed violence lurking in the stormy grey of his eyes.
“Did he—did he try anything? Touch you?” he asked in a voice gone rough.
I felt my face heat up in mortification and hastily shook my head. “No. No.”
I clenched my fists, then unclenched them again. He was dead… and in that particular moment it felt right. Good. No shadow of doubt cloaked the deed.
He had gotten what he had deserved.
As for Remo, the world was a safer place without his influence. No, in that instance, in the kitchen of Logan's friend, I didn't regret that horrific deed.
It didn't mean the images wouldn't still haunt me, just that I didn't carry the doubts I had carried with me back in the Low Lands.
Did that make me a monster?
“You don't seem surprised about Remo Drammen,” I remarked to diffuse some of the tension and keep my mind from providing me with images of the carnage yet again.
“No.”
“You already knew.” I felt a tug of resentment.
“No. But it didn't surprise me that Mr. Drammen had a hand in it. Especially after Vegas. I knew there was something brewing, but I couldn't place my finger on it. In fact, I thought it had to do with Archer and keeping me occupied, keeping me fumbling to protect the person who could help me break Archer out.”
Logan's previous words echoed in my mind like a faraway thought. 'She gets in the wrong hands and it's a fucking disaster. I believe she doesn't even know what she is.'
“But you knew what I was all along.” This time the accusation was clearer, carrying some of the resentment and bitterness with the words. God knew what else he knew and wasn't telling.
“Not all along.” He paused a moment before adding, “I had a suspicion, but nothing concrete, nothing to base my suspicions on. Until things began adding up in my head. The society wanted you so badly they weren't discussing payment. Archer was looking for a scion, Drammen was after you. But I only really connected the dots when you mentioned who your father was, the puzzle pieces fell into place. I knew then that Archer had been tricked and that The Society and Mr. Drammen were in cahoots. “Before then I thought Fosch's daughter had been secluded away from civilization. No one ever mentioned to me what happened to you… where they hid you. If they did, I wasn't in a position to catalogue it. It happened during a time when I was…” He shook his head and shifted directions. “I was going to let Archer explain things to you, things I myself am not sure about or don't know the answer to.” He caught my hand in his warm one, squeezed gently, then let it go. “I wasn't hiding anything from you, Roxanne, I just thought you'd have questions, and Archer should be the one to answer.”
I nodded once, understanding what he meant, then I snorted sarcastically. “I don't think so. If he wanted to help out, he should have tried it a long, long time ago, preferably before the PSS took me.”
“I don't know why that is. But I doubt Archer knew. He never talked about you, in fact, no one in the clan did. I thought it… actually I never thought about it. It was something that happened, was sorted out and put aside.” He inhaled deeply, frowning. “It could be because Fosch and Archer, they were close. Maybe no one wanted to talk about him, bring up the hurt.” He took a sip of his cold coffee contemplatively, before he went on, “Before he left a few weeks ago, he told me the Society had gotten hold of a scion and that he was going to investigate, since asking for an account of every scion would take a while with clan members scattered the way they are.”
“But that's not what I heard.”
Logan raised his eyebrows.
“The way I gathered, everyone knew where I was,” I said, recalling General Parkinson's words. “They just didn't care.” Because I'm a half breed?
“That's not true. Archer isn't like that. Even if he didn't care about you, everyone knows Fosch sacrificed himself for you. For that reason alone, Archer would have made sure you stayed safe, no matter what.”
/>
I didn't say anything.
“Look, Roxanne, all I'm saying is that something is wrong. To begin with, whatever happened, whatever the reason, Archer wouldn't have permitted a scion to be left in the clutches of humans. If for no other reason than to avoid the exposure of the clan. Most clan members don't even use their real names. Almost all acquire a human job on the side to keep people's curiosity at bay.”
When I said nothing, he took a long breath and continued, determined to convince me. “Dean was a liar. He'd have told you that to cause chaos, have you distrust your own kind. To keep you from reaching out —”
“Michael Dean told me nothing,” I snapped. “Even if he had, I don't even know who this clan is, where they are, or how to reach out to them in the first place.” I took a deep breath, trying to keep my rising anger at bay. Whatever had been done to me, it wasn't Logan's fault, so I told him what General Parkinson had told me. “He did say these rejected were a secretive bunch, went as far as display his anger that I had been left to the scientist's mercy. Legally, with guardianship documents.” I remembered what Dr. Michael Dean had told me and added, “Dr. Dean did tell me my mother—Elizabeth,” I corrected, “didn't mention anything to me because it was one of the stipulations in the document. They were afraid to lose me among mankind,” my lips twitched sarcastically, “lest I caused mayhem with my superpowers.”
“General Parkinson was mistaken,” Logan said fiercely after he thought about it.
I cocked my head to the side, remembering something else General Parkinson had said. “He also told me one of my kind had helped me in Vegas. You sure know a lot about this clan,” I added lightly. Back then, I had thought he had clumped us preternatural beings in one category, but now… I focused on him. On his aura. I had never been able to see my own aura before. For all I knew it could be double-stranded like in a DNA helix—green and yellow in color.
“I'm not like you, no,” he said calmly, his eyes meeting and holding mine. “I told you, Archer found me when I was just a baby in a cardboard box in New York.”
When I didn't say anything, he asked, “Can't you sense it? My wolf?”
Heir of Ashes Page 30
