by C. T. Adams
Bobby laughed but it had a nearly fearful edge. “At least your wife is human, so she isn’t physically capable of ripping off your face. Mine is not only capable, but occasionally eager. I think I’ll be hiring you to make Asri forget all about it. She’s not the forgiving type.” He looked directly at Adam and shuddered. “Don’t ever knock up a Komodo dragon, kid. The fun isn’t worth the pain.” He stood up before Adam could ask more about this woman Bobby had tied himself to. He nearly opened his mouth to ask when he realized it would only avoid what was to come. It was so much easier to banter and tell war stories than to walk into the war.
“Speaking of pain, let’s do this.” Adam’s voice sounded flat to his own ears, and it sobered the mood in the room.
“I’ll go get her.”
Adam could hear murmuring in the corridor outside as Bobby opened the office door, which disappeared when the latch closed again. He realized just how well insulated the room really was and it seemed strange he never noticed it before. After a deep sigh, he raised his hands before asking the obvious question. “So, what now?”
Once again Tony shrugged. “Bobby comes back with the woman, you do the touchy-feely stuff to make her feel comfortable, and she sits down on the love seat with me. I’ll ask her one or two questions to jumpstart the memory you want. Soon as I touch her, the game starts. Her eyes will shut—that’s my own twist on these sessions, by the way. It’s probably not necessary, but it helps the person focus, and other people keep their distance. Now, once that happens, I’ll hold out my hand.” Tony paused and lowered his voice until it was a warning rumble and pointed one finger at him. His scent became filled with determination’s hot metal with a hint of burnt coffee anger. “Do not, under any circumstances, touch me until I hold out my hand. The last two people who did that got a bullet in the head. They were damned lucky I came to before I pulled the trigger a second time.”
Adam fought down his initial response at Tony’s scent and words, which was to leap forward and reach for the man’s throat, make him show more respect. Wow! Lucas wasn’t kidding about feeling overly aggressive. He managed to tense his muscles and remain in place and keep his voice calm, but there was tension at the edges that he struggled to control. “I don’t like that. I’d prefer you put your sidearm out of reach.”
The smile in reply was a baring of teeth and the words sarcastic with a distinct Italian accent. His scent was calm, but hovered on the edge of hostility. “No. I’m a fucking three-day, who’ll be in a trance and will be surrounded by people who have already tried to rip my face off. Capisce? I don’t think so. Next question.”
Behind Adam, Lucas let out a sigh. “Tony keeps his gun during sessions. End of discussion.”
What in the world sort of hold did Tony have over the Wolven chief to make him continue to side with him over caution? Adam shook his head and held up placating hands. He was glad they were on the same side, but really didn’t want to deal with him ever again.
He opened his mouth, but was saved from responding when the door opened. Jill was nearly shaking as she entered the room and began to rub her arms. No doubt she was feeling the sting of magic from so many Alphas gathered in the same place. Lesser wolves would often avoid pack headquarters altogether when Josef was in one of his moods.
She flicked her eyes up briefly to meet his before lowering them again and ammonia panic flowed in a rising wave. “Have I done something wrong, Alpha?”
The trembling in her voice made him soften his reply and project an aura of warmth and concern. “No, of course not, Jill.” He held out his hand and stepped toward her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m just trying to find out a little more about what happened, and these gentlemen said you were there when they arrived. We’d just like to ask you a couple of questions, if that’s okay.”
She nodded, almost shyly and offered her hand. It was sweating and cool and her scent such a chaotic mess of emotions that he began to sneeze.
“I’m sorry.” She winced just a bit. “I’m trying to control them, but I just can’t seem to manage it.”
“Maybe I can help you.” Tony’s voice had gone soft and warm, giving Adam even more insight into the man. “How about you sit down here and I’ll see what I can do about that. I’m a healer of sorts.”
Jill’s eyes rose hopefully and then noticed the gashes on Tony’s face. A hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my lord! Your face! You’re a healer? But you’re not healed yet.” Shock and sadness drifted to the top of the pile of scents.
Tony only smiled and it reached all the way to his eyes. “Nope. I’m not that sort of healer. I’m a three-day, just like you. But we’re both going to be okay, right?” He patted the cushion next to him, leaned back into the posh leather, then crossed one ankle over his other knee and put an arm on the back of the love seat. It was a seemingly casual series of motions that Adam realized was carefully planned.
She nodded, shaky at first, but then with a little more confidence. “Yeah. We’re going to be okay.” She walked past Adam to sit next to Tony.
Once she was seated and looked reasonably comfortable, Tony began. “So, I know we went over this before, but now that Adam’s here, I’m sure he’d like to hear it directly from you. About what time of day was it?”
“It was early afternoon. I’d come on shift just after lunch, and had been there about an hour, so I guess around two o’clock.”
“There was a—”
“What were—” Adam interrupted, starting to ask the next logical question of “What were you doing when the agents arrived?” when he felt Bobby suddenly appear near his shoulder and a firm hand squeezed the back of his neck. He stopped short when he realized Jill’s focus was on him, rather than Tony and the other wolf was shooting him a warning look. He was interfering in a process he didn’t understand. “Sorry. Never mind. Please answer Mr. Giambrocco’s questions, Jill. I’ll just listen.”
Her eyes turned back to Tony reluctantly and Bobby removed his hand. “I’m sorry, what did you ask?”
“There was a bell ringing when we first arrived. What was that?”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh! That’s right, we were just finishing a fire drill. I’d forgotten about that. It was pretty loud, huh?”
Tony chuckled. “Yeah, sort of hurt my ears when we first walked in and we couldn’t hear each other very well.”
This time, Jill snorted and crossed her arms with a mild expression of annoyance. “It hurts my ears every time. I mean, I know it’s important, but I wish the security company would give us a little more warning before they do it remotely. I mean, we have people in the shower half the time.”
“Oh yeah,” Tony said with a laugh as Jill’s arms uncrossed and she rested one hand on the cushion near his knee. “I’d be more than a little annoyed if I had to race outside in a towel just to discover it was a drill.” He paused and dropped his arm off the love seat back until his fingers were very close to hers. “So, we sort of had to shout to understand each other at first.”
She nodded. “Yeah. You know, I didn’t think it was any big deal that you were visiting. Josef is the Alpha, after all. He gets lots of high-profile visitors. People are checking in all the time. I took your card—”
“Just as the alarm turned off. It was completely silent for a moment.”
“Like your ears just popped,” she agreed with a nod. “Then I asked you to sit down and picked up the intercom to tell Josef you were—”
At that moment, Tony reached forward and took her hand in his. Jill froze, mid-word, and began to shake with intensity for a moment. Then her eyes closed and she relaxed back into the plush leather bonelessly. Adam watched, fascinated, as Tony’s eyes began to twitch under the closed lids. He started to move closer, but Bobby pulled him back. “Don’t do it, man. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”
Tony’s voice drifted from the love seat. “Yeah, I’m still here. Just sifting. I got her pretty close to the start… just need to fine-tune a bit.” More eye twitch
ing and then he reached up his other hand, eyes still closed. “Grab a chair and then take my hand when you’re ready. I’ve paused it right where we walked in.”
Adam did as instructed. He rolled the desk chair around to the edge of the love seat and sat down. He closed his eyes and reached out his hand, but paused at the last moment, feeling supremely nervous for the first time since waiting to learn if he’d been accepted into the police academy.
“Haven’t got all day, Alpha. Let’s do this.”
It startled Adam and he jumped, causing their hands to connect. Abruptly, the world dropped out from under him and light filled the darkness behind his closed lids. He heard Tony’s voice as though from a distance. Okay, the ride’s about to start Make sure your hands and feet are inside the car and the safety bar is locked in position.
Before he could figure out how to respond, a loud ringing assaulted his ears and he winced. He was seated at the reception desk in the next room and the air smelled of tulips and chlorine. Sunlight danced off the crystal vase on the table, filled with pink and yellow blooms. The door swung open and two men walked in the building. As though sharing two brains, Adam both knew the men as Tony and Bobby, but also didn’t know them at all. They were strangers, but one smelled of fur, and he felt himself smile. The voice that came from his throat, unbidden, was feminine, but was drowned out in the cacophony of noise. “Can I help you? Sorry for the noise. Alarm testing will be done in a second.”
The tall African-American man cupped a hand to his ear and leaned closer. “What?”
He felt his throat constrict and force words out louder. “IT’S… NEARLY… DONE! CAN I HELP YOU?”
Adam heard Tony’s voice again, but it was outside the context of the scene. “Let me move forward a bit. Lots of useless conversation here until the bell stops.” Again his head swam as sound and motion rushed by him in a blur. It was enough to make his stomach heave.
The next sensation Adam felt was intense pain—so strong that all he could do was scream, over and over until his throat was hoarse. Another bit of narration didn’t help ease it. “Sorry, overshot the mark. But now you know firsthand how Josef turned them against us. We’ll go live from here.”
When Jill/Adam’s eyes opened, the world was overlaid with red and fear and anger were being pressed on her/his mind with a force so intense that it was all Adam could do to keep his sanity. Kill them… kill the strangers! The voice was low and urgent, pushing at the back of his mind until there was nothing but the need for blood—the need to kill these invaders into her home. For the first time in her life, she shifted without the moon. A tiny logical part of her mind knew it to be a strange and dreadful thing, but there was no stopping the fur from flowing.
“Shit! They’re going wolf on us!” Jill/Adam heard Bobby’s warning and leaped over the desk before the snake could run. Blood flowed as teeth grabbed a dark hand and began to gnaw. Sweet copper filled Jill/Adam’s mouth and the tangy scent of pain and fear made her chew harder on the hand. The blood also called pack mates, who surged from the hallways to join the hunt.
A gunshot rang out just as the snake used stinging magic to throw her away to hit the wall. A second shot came too quickly to truly distinguish it from the first and Adam heard Tony’s voice over the snarls and howls. “Lucas said not to kill anyone, Bobby!”
A sharp snapping sound ended with a yelp. Jill/Adam sniffed at the wolf on the floor. Tabitha, their Omega, was no more. But she wouldn’t be the only one to fall. “Lucas isn’t here, and there are more of them than us! Do whatever you have to so we can get to the Alpha. He’s gotta be pulling the strings! Want me to shift your form so you can move faster and fight better?”
Another gunshot, snarls, and the sound of breaking glass as the dark-haired man that Adam knew was Tony spoke. “Oh hell no! These guys might be three-day dogs on the moon, but right now they’re fighting like they’re on angel dust. There wouldn’t be enough left of me by the time I got down the hall to make a decent fur collar on a jacket. There’s nobody home in these eyes. I’ll stick with ranged weapons, thanks. Toss me your Ruger if you’re going to shift and see if you can clear me a path with some of that magic you’re always bragging about.”
Another wolf joined the fray… her mate! But no, he was trying to stop her and she couldn’t allow herself to be stopped. She bit at his throat and he yelped when her teeth sunk past fur and skin. Part of Jill/Adam’s brain rebelled. She hurt her mate! That can’t be. Must… stop. Must… must… kill. The pain was too much, the magic too strong for her to resist. The strangers must die!
The man with the gun turned his head, which was all the time Jill/Adam needed. With a leap, claws raked down his face, and the man crumpled into a heap, screaming and swearing. But he rolled out of the way and kicked at her hard enough to cause her to smash into the table. It collapsed into shards of wood and stone and stunned her for a moment. The dark-skinned snake shifted and coiled around another pack mate until it dropped away, dead. Five more furred forms emerged from the rear of the building to attack his multicolored length and he lashed out at them with power, teeth, and tail. Blood splattered across her face, and marred her vision until she could blink enough to clear it. The man with the gun jumped over two snapping wolves and started to sprint down the hallway. He began to kick open doors, while shooting at wolves that got in his way.
Jill/Adam followed carefully, stalking until she could get a clear attack. Kill him. You must kill him, Jill! Josef’s voice was powerful and his magic more so. Her pack leader must be obeyed above all else, and she threw caution to the wind. When the intruder’s foot raised to kick in the door to the room where her Alpha was hidden, she struck. She rode him down through the doorway, teeth and claws tearing at whatever bare skin she could reach. But it wasn’t enough to stop him—nor was the painful surge of magic from her Alpha. She was blown back through the door by the swell of power, unable to breathe against the press of stinging magic. The man swore and stumbled, and then let out a primal yell as he pressed forward, twin revolvers firing shot after shot until the Alpha finally went down in a bloody heap, unconscious.
The power and pain finally stopped, so abruptly she crashed to the floor. Jill came to her senses, and her human form, in a cringing heap in the hallway, hearing the screams of her fellow wolves fade into whimpers and crying. She was covered in red and she hurt. There was too much pain… too much blood—
Just before the world went black, Adam felt one more thought cross the woman’s tattered mind.
Lord help me… what have I done?
“And that’s about it until she woke up on the couch in the back room with the others.” Tony’s calm voice didn’t hold the horror that it should. There was no anger from him toward Jill, nor the other wolves—but also none of the revulsion or the fury that clawed at Adam’s own guts. It made him literally sick to his stomach to have watched people he knew—people he once led—be driven to the edge of madness.
He could sense a small amount of regret in Tony, or was it from his mate? The sensation felt more feminine, and sad, at the carnage he’d been forced to cause, just before the Wolven agent slipped inside himself again. “I’m going to let go now, so I can finish up with her in private. You might find it a little disorienting.”
Disorienting wasn’t quite the word for it. Adam woke on the floor, heaving up the last of the donut holes and coffee from breakfast, until there was nothing left but bile to be spit onto the bloodstained Oriental rug, which he doubted would ever come clean again.
Nobody spoke at all while he sopped up the mess he made and Jill came back to consciousness. She didn’t remember the hindsight session, and found it a little disturbing that time had elapsed in the room she couldn’t recall. Still, she did seem calmer walking out of the room than when she’d walked in, for which Adam was grateful.
Lucas’s voice was soft. “You doing okay after that, Adam? Need to talk about it?”
Adam shook his head and felt his stomach churn again. “T
alking about it is the last thing I want to do, if you don’t mind. It’s a bit much to wrap my head around.”
Tony nodded and started to slide his leather gloves into place once more. Adam was forced to wonder what it would be like for someone like Tony to be pulled into Wolven crimes so strongly that he lived them. “Understand fully. I’d like to say I’m used to it, but it’d be a lie. Still, at least you know what you’re dealing with when it comes time to decide what to do about Josef. We’ll take off now, if that’s okay, Lucas. I need to crash for an hour or so.” The older man nodded and it was just a few minutes later that Tony and Bobby left the room with appropriate closures and then Lucas walked to Josef ’s bar.
He pulled down a pair of glasses from the shelves. “Name your poison.” He turned his head and the filtered light from the Tiffany style shade turned his silvered temple a pale green. “Thankfully, that’s not literally. I’ve already had Bobby remove the poisoned bottles. Josef really had lost it.”
What the fuck! Shaken, he sat down in the chair vacated by Bobby. “Um, Stoli, I guess. That’s what I normally have.”
Lucas scanned up and around and then looked down toward the floor on the opposite side of the bar. “Ah. Apparently, we know the target of the poison now. How about Absolut?”
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.” All of this was just too much. “How could I not have noticed he’d lost his mind? Enough to destroy the pack—everything he’s built up his whole life? Could Tyr dying really be the cause of all this?”
He wasn’t really asking Lucas, just mulling under his breath, but the older man sighed and sat down, pushing the glass of clear liquid across the table, past the ones still bearing a trace of whiskey. Leaning back into the cushions with a confusing mix of scents, he shook his head.
“I wish I had an answer for you. For what it’s worth, it looks like a lot of the pack will wind up supporting you in this—if it was Tyr. Yes, there are some who think you brought all this down because of your decision that night. But most realize that Tyr challenged you for his own reasons, and having those skiers spot the hunt the night you led the pack was just a convenient excuse to take you out.” He took a sip of what smelled like brandy and tapped one finger on the side of the glass. “Something to think about, by the way. Maybe you want to send those who don’t support you down to Texas. The number is about right to achieve the goal.”
