by Mina Carter
Tall and heavily built, he had just the sort of warrior’s physique she preferred in her men. Amber eyes were shadowed by the long, dark hair, but in her mind even the evidence of his other nature wasn’t enough to put her off. In the privacy of her own head, she was free to ogle as much as she liked. Her mind was her own, much as it galled the Project to admit that.
As though her dream man could read her thoughts, he grinned, winked and blew her a kiss. The image faded from her mind as though it had never been.
“What the fuck?”
She tried to recall the image, but all she could bring to mind were her memories of earlier. The absurd thought that, somehow, Lycans were telepathic had her snatching her hand back from the table. Moving around it, she checked out the writing. It was nothing, just an architect’s note added in pencil.
Crap. She sighed and closed her eyes tiredly. Today was going to hell in a handbasket, no mistake. Would it be too much to ask for a little break?
The sound of gunfire brought her head up sharply. Despite her instinct to race out of the door, she remained motionless for a second, her head tilted to one side as she isolated the direction the sound was coming from.
Down, she decided, and behind her. North.
She hit the door at a dizzying speed, even for a nonhuman, her hand clamped around the frame as she used it to spin her bodily into the corridor. The wood cracked sharply under her fingers. Ignoring it, she headed down the tile-lined hall. Perkins and his buddy emerged out of a room.
“Basement,” she called out, past them before they could react and raise their rifles. If she’d wanted to kill them, they wouldn’t have stood a chance. She was too quick for their dull human reactions. She just had to hope the Lycans hadn’t developed the same kind of speed, because that would leave her facing a full pack on her own.
One Lycan she wouldn’t mind. A particular Lycan with amber-gold eyes and dark hair… Heat and desire flushed through her cold body. The first carnal reaction—the first she’d had to a man, any man—since she’d been turned.
It was a surprising development. She’d assumed she’d died as a woman that day as surely as she’d died as a member of the human race. Locking it away in the bottom of her mind to consider later, she shoved the door to the basement open and charged down the steps, handgun in a firm grip.
The basement was empty. She raced through the adjoined rooms looking for the source of the gunfire. Someone had been down here. Several someones… No, several somethings. She paused in the center of the last room and took a deep breath. Her guy had come this way. His scent wrapped around her like a lover’s caress, making her lightheaded. Shaking her head to clear it she concentrated on the other scents, filtering through them one by one.
Her guy, the other Lycans and two human scents. One was wrapped around the smell of cordite and camouflage cream. One of her team. The other was different, lighter and feminine but with an exotic twist that made her nose wrinkle. It was familiar, but she couldn’t figure out where she’d smelled it before.
She dropped the thought in favor of following the scent trail. As she’d thought in the room upstairs, they did have a human with them. But why? Hostage, entertainment…food?
She edged into the last room, looking at it through her sights as she made sure it was clear. The one door in the opposite wall grabbed her attention. There wasn’t supposed to be anything else down here. She had a photographic memory, another “gift” of her new nature. According to the plans upstairs, this was the last room. No door, no stairs beyond it.
A second later saw her with her back against the wall on one side of the door. Darkness coiled in the stairway beyond it. As soon as she stepped through it, the light of the basement behind her would put her in silhouette, the perfect target for someone waiting in the darkness beyond.
Her back against the rough plaster, clammy and wet from being so far beneath the earth, she opened her senses up and probed into the darkness. Unlike in popular myth and culture, the Project-created vampires had no spectacular supernatural abilities.
Sure, they were stronger and faster than humans, a lot stronger and faster than humans, and all their senses were enhanced. They could see better, hear better, their sense of smell was better. Turning into bats and leaping over fifty-foot buildings? Not so much. Although she had to admit, the ability to turn into a bat would be real useful right about now, if only for the echo-location. No, their abilities, when honed, were more in the mental spectrum.
She grinned at her own thought. Yeah, she was in a different mental arena all right.
There was no one waiting in the darkness of the stairwell. At least, if there was, they weren’t breathing or making any other sound, even a heartbeat. Even the RAs, who had neither a heartbeat nor needed air, made some sort of sound. Usually, in their case, a low level groaning.
Confident in what her senses were telling her, Antonia stepped through the door and into the waiting darkness. Panic assaulted her for a split second as she was framed by the doorway. She’d been shot once, on her first operation as a rookie, because she’d been stupid enough to get caught in a doorway. The memory of bullets tearing into her flesh and the pain had never left her. It wasn’t something she was particularly interested in trying again, even though these days bullets alone were unlikely to kill her.
Her boots were silent as she descended the stairs. There was a short corridor with only one door. The corridor though was longer than it needed to be, as though an extension had been intended but never gotten around to. Interesting.
Her breath plumed in the cold air. It had that sharp, damp quality about it that said they were deep in the bowels of the earth. A smile quirked her lips. Home sweet home for a vamp.
One door down here, one option. The sound of a heartbeat, as fast as a train racing on the tracks, reached her ears. Again the strange feminine scent of the woman with the wolves rose up to meet her, as though she’d paused here for longer than the others. As though she’d unlocked the door?
The knowledge expanded in her mind with such a sense of rightness she knew she couldn’t be wrong. The woman was one of the staff. She had to be, there was no other explanation. Absorbing that fact, Antonia concentrated on the room beyond. The scent was human, and the terrified mutterings told her it was one of her guys.
Hearing nothing else, she pushed the door open and strode into the room. The place was obviously used for junk storage. She stood for a second in the doorway, not needing any light to see. Relics that looked as if they belonged in a museum of horror packed the walls. She shivered. Humans scared themselves silly with stories of paranormal creatures and horror films, but the fact was they were the only monsters around.
“Oh, thank God. Please…please help me. I-I’m stuck.”
The pathetic whimpering guided her through the maze of junk until she found the source. Locked into…oh fuck. Her eyes widened as she recognized the contraption Kelwood was pinned in. Basically a coffin with bars instead of sides, the Project was fond of using them for conversion. This was a wooden version. Even though it could be broken, by her at least, it still triggered all the same unpleasant associations.
She left him where he was. Stood over him with a grim expression on her face.
“Let me guess, you didn’t play fetch?” she drawled, her arms folded. If he was stupid enough to get put in such a situation in the first place, then he deserved all he got.
He stopped struggling against the bars of the cage and just looked at her. His heart rate started to slow down, as though her presence was enough to calm him, and trust filled his eyes. Her lips quirked. Welcome to the wonderful world of the Project, where dogs lock people in cages and vampires rescue them. Hollywood, eat your heart out.
He muttered something as she leaned forward to undo the bolts on the top of the cage. Nothing as sophisticated as a lock for this baby. It had three crude but effective bolts holding the lid down and keeping the victim immobile. Once inside, Kelwood couldn’t even lift a hand
to scratch his nose, so he hadn’t a chance of reaching all three bolts to free himself.
“What did you say?”
She froze as she leaned over the cage and looked directly at him. Even though he knew what she was, he didn’t flinch. She wanted to scream and rail at him not to trust her, not to trust anyone associated with the Project. She was just as inhuman as the Lycans who’d walked through here less than an hour ago, and just because she was on his side now didn’t mean that would always be the case.
Kelwood’s eyes flicked upward as she slid the bolt at the top back. “The guy in here, one of them…the Lycans. He gave me a message.”
She paused on the last bolt and made a show of sniffing the air above the captured man. “A message. Did he scratch you?” Her voice was harsh, a little of her well-hidden temper leeching into her black on black eyes.
The human in the cage shivered. “No. He just said to tell you…”
The hesitance, although no doubt well-meaning, was really beginning to get on Antonia’s nerves. Vampire 101, Bloods had neither a sense of humor nor any patience. At all.
“He said what?”
“He said…” The human swallowed and eyed her nervously, finally appearing to realize what a dangerous predicament he was in. “T-that you’re his.”
Chapter Fifteen
When he’d told her zombies were attacking, she’d asked for a gun. When he refused, she’d found an axe and armed herself. She’d decapitated a zombie with that axe and looked into the eyes of his wolf without fear.
She’d told him that he was beautiful.
Beautiful. In full hearing of his entire squad. He was never going to live the indignity down. Despite all that, Jack’s lips curved affectionately as he followed Lillian along the narrow trail as it led deeper into the forest.
She’d proven her worth again. When they were trapped, she’d given them a way out. Abandoned maintenance tunnels underneath the hospital had allowed them to leave unnoticed by the gunships still circling lazily overhead.
Now they were deep in the woods and heading deeper into the forests that covered the mountains. Once in the wilds, they had half a chance of escape, and with them gone from the hospital, there was no need for the Project to bother with the hospital anymore. He knew them of old. Once they’d ascertained the wolves were gone, they’d level the south wing and anything left in there.
Walking behind her, he tried not to notice the delectable shape of her backside. She was delicate and feminine and so brave it humbled him, rocked him to the core.
She stumbled, but he was there in a heartbeat, his hand on her arm to help her keep her balance. She shot him a smile, but he recognized the strain there. The dark circles under her eyes told the rest of the tale—she was exhausted.
“Come here, sweetheart.”
Ignoring her protests, he swung her up into his arms. With only the smallest struggle, she sighed and nestled against his shoulder. Deep within, his wolf rumbled approval. He had to agree with it. She felt right cradled against his heart. No matter what they’d done to him, how much of an animal they’d made him into, she’d seen right through it and into his soul. And she’d called him beautiful.
Looking down, he saw her eyes were already beginning to flutter closed. “That’s it, sweetheart, sleep. I’ll keep you safe.”
The rest of the pack stopped when he did, the wolves silent as they automatically slid into cover. Only Darce approached, his paws soundless on the undergrowth.
“We need to go to ground. Work out our next move,” Jack said quietly, careful not to wake the sleeping woman in his arms. “Less chance of us being made if we move at night. Send Nic and Sanders out to scout, find us somewhere to hole up.”
She’d been asleep. Lillian jerked awake and looked around blearily, hoping to God she hadn’t slobbered in her sleep. There was nothing more embarrassing than being out of it and drooling over your pillow, especially when there were people around to witness it.
The inside of a small bedroom met her eyes, the door half closed in front of her. Sitting up, she pushed the hair from her face and looked around. The last thing she remembered was being on the trail after they’d emerged from the tunnel. From there it had been a short hop to the outskirts of the woodlands that covered the hills around the hospital. She remembered the wolves around her. Some, like Jack, were in human form, but most of them flitted through the trees in their other form, as silent as shadows.
In all of it, bedrooms had not figured heavily. Rustic in design, it had to be one of the old trapper’s cabins. Vacationers were always asking for directions in town, but she hadn’t realized that there were any this far into the hills. Tossing the light blanket back, she shivered as her bare feet hit the cold floor. Murmured conversation from the door in front of her reached her ears, so she headed toward it.
Pulling the door open farther revealed a cozy little scene. The wolves were all crammed into the tiny cabin’s main sitting area, jostling for space on the single sofa and all trying to get in front of the radiant heater. Without the door between her and them, the conversation became audible.
“Move over, you flea-bitten mutt.”
“Fuck off, I was here first!”
“If you—”
“Yeah? You and whose army?”
The conversation quickly descended into chaos as the sitting area erupted into a sea of fighting bodies. She winced as the bones popped and cracked, signaling several of the combatants were shifting to take advantage of their alternative forms.
Over space on the sofa.
There was a roar, and a large, vaguely humanoid body flew over her head. Lillian ducked as it crashed into the wall behind her. The entire cabin rocked down to its foundations.
“Just what do you think you’re playing at?”
The wolves froze. Eyes rolled toward her, even in mid-bite or punch. Sometimes both at the same time. Lillian put her hands on her hips and glared at them all as she would misbehaving patients in the common room.
“Well? I’m waiting. You…if you dare bite him I will tan your doggy hide. Are we clear?”
A pair of amber eyes beseeched her. She shook her head.
“Oh no, not working. I had a black lab for a pet. You got nothing on puppy-dog eyes.”
There was a harrumph and a pair of vicious teeth clicked shut. Silence descended as she looked around the little tableau. With most of the wolves part shifted between human and wolf forms, it was a horror writer’s dream scene. Lillian didn’t bat an eyelash. She was obviously losing it now.
“Well? I’m waiting.”
Slowly, they stood, shifting back until there were four shame-faced men looking back at her.
“He started it.”
“Did not.”
"Did too. It’s my sofa, I was here first!”
The fight threatened to kick off again, the two men in the middle, Thom and Blake if her memory served her correctly, pushing and shoving at each other again. She sighed. It was like the sandbox all over again.
“Don’t you dare piss on the sofa. You can’t mark it like territory,” Blake snarled, taking another dig at Thom.
“Whoa! No one’s pis…urinating anywhere. I don’t know whose cabin this is, but it’s not ours. So you’ll use the toilet like adults or I’ll put you all in diapers! And don’t make the mistake of thinking I don’t mean it!”
She glared at them until the uproar subsided. “I’ve had a hell of a night. I’ve been attacked by a wacko doctor, zombies, and carted over the countryside. I am not in a good mood, so don’t piss me off, understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She nodded. “Good. Now where’s that boss of yours?”
“You looking for me, doll?”
Jack pushed off from the doorframe and strolled into the cabin. With a signal of his hand, he dismissed the rest of the squad, watching as they filed out of the door behind him. He wanted to be alone with Lillian. Finally.
At the sound of his voice, she turned and
smiled. The expression took her from merely pretty to breathtaking. His gaze wandered over her, taking in every detail.
Fingers of late afternoon sunlight crept through the shuttered windows. They were surrounded by forest, but somehow it had found a way through to her. He smiled. She was a creature of the sun. The thin streams caressed her, making her pale skin glow and turning her dark hair into a warm, rich fall of curls.
She was a creature of light. Light to his darkness.
He moved toward her, trying for casual. There was nothing casual about his intent, though. She was his, and he intended to have her.
He saw the instant she registered the danger she was in. He would never hurt her, ever. It just wasn’t in him. But her body was definitely in danger and, he hoped, her heart. Her breath caught, and her hand stole up to her throat as she took a step backward. He groaned as his wolf sat up and took notice.
“Don’t run,” he warned. “If you don’t want this, tell me now. But don’t run, don’t ever run from me. Predators like to chase, sweetheart, and I’m the biggest predator around here.”
She stopped moving. His wolf pouted. There was nothing the thing liked more than a good chase. He was all for it, especially if it ended with the two of them in bed, but that wasn’t the way he wanted to claim his mate for the first time.
He took a deep breath, rolling her scent over his tongue. The fear there slammed his control back into place. Fast. She wasn’t an animal, not like him. If he was honest with himself, she was way too good for him. He should let her go.
He couldn’t. Not in a million years.
She stood her ground as he approached, just like she’d stood her ground with his men. He hadn’t been able to believe his eyes when he’d walked in to find her scolding them like a bunch of kids. Totally unafraid, even though she’d seen exactly what they were.
“Good girl,” he whispered as he stopped inches from her. So close he could feel a hint of her curves against his half-naked body. She bit her lip, and the darkness in her eyes nearly undid his control.
