Prisoner (Werewolf Marines) (10 page)

“No, it won’t. It’s waterproof. You forgot:
I’m a
Marine
wolf.”

“No wonder you did so badly in the
desert.”

DJ nodded solemnly. “I’m adapted for an
aquatic environment.”

“Like a Navy SEAL.”

“Exactly. They only let you into the SEALs if
you’re an actual—”

“— seal-shifter,” they said together.

To his surprise, DJ was enjoying himself, his
pain and discomfort and worry fading into background noise. Hardly
anyone would play along with him like this. Roy, sometimes, if you
caught him in the right mood. Some of Five’s actor and writer
friends, when he went to her parties. Just his luck, he’d finally
found a woman who’d take a thread of absurdity and run with it, and
she was a mysterious, cranky assassin forced to work for the bad
guys.

He tried to turn over again, only to be
stopped again. “Goddammit. Can you unbuckle the straps? They’re
driving me crazy.”

“So you can bolt again? Forget it.”

“I won’t,” DJ assured her. “I
can’t
.”

“That’s what I thought before.”

“So if I do try, you’ll stop me like you did
the last time. I won’t even make it to the door.”

Echo seemed to find that more persuasive.
“I’m not taking the manacles off your ankles.”

“Manacles?”

She lifted the sheet. Sure enough, his ankles
were chained to the bed. “Well, you broke a pair of handcuffs.”

“I couldn’t break those,” DJ said glumly.
They were steel links, half an inch thick.

He could, however, turn into a wolf and slip
the cuffs. But he hadn’t been lying when he’d said he wouldn’t make
it to the door. Besides, now that he knew where he was, he wouldn’t
try to escape until he could take some water with him. Or a Humvee.
He had to locate the vehicle bay.

To his immense relief, she unbuckled the
straps around his chest, then the ones at his wrists. They hurt as
she peeled them off, but he couldn’t wait to move again. The
instant she took off the last one, he quickly sat up.

He could barely hold himself up. The room
swung around him, and the pain in his head went from throbbing to
splitting. DJ hastily lay down again, but the damage had been done.
The room wouldn’t stop spinning, and his skin burned worse than
ever. He closed his eyes, willing the pain to subside. It
didn’t.

“DJ?” Echo said, a little uncertainly. “Are
you awake?”

“Yeah. I feel terrible, though. And I’m on
fire again. Would you mind cooling me off?”

A wet cloth came down on his forehead, then
slid over his cheeks and throat, touching lightly but leaving
exquisite relief behind. She must have been getting it ready even
before he’d asked.

“Thanks,” he sighed. “That helps a lot.”

“It’s only what any platypus would do for
another,” replied Echo.

Temporary insanity,
DJ thought. He
hoped it wouldn’t wear off any time soon.

She kept rubbing the cloth over his body,
dousing the flames. For once, DJ didn’t feel the urge to speak or
move. He lay as quietly as if they were both wolves, and she was
grooming him to make him feel better.

One of the hardest things about living with
one-bodies was the lack of touch. In the world outside the pack,
men could shake hands, slap each other on the back, or maybe, under
extreme circumstances, lay a hand on a shoulder. They could touch
out of necessity, and they could fight, of course. But that was it.
Touching women was even more limited, unless he was dating them.
Most touch came across as sexual or aggressive, not as
communication or play or camaraderie or any one of the million
other ways that wolves used it to relate to each other.

It was a price he had to pay for being a
Marine. But it grated on him, especially whenever anyone in his
platoon was wounded or sick. They felt like pack, but he couldn’t
comfort them in the way of wolves.

When he’d spent a month in a military
hospital in Germany, his pack had flown in to visit him. At first
he was too weak to shift, so they didn’t either. Instead, they got
as close to him as they could without disturbing the wires and
tubes, and took turns holding his hand, rubbing his back, and
stroking his hair. When he got stronger, one would guard the door
while he and the others became wolves, so he could be groomed from
head to tail. Grandma Steel always made sure to arrive in a
decrepit, shedding fur coat, to explain any hairs that might be
left on the bed.

DJ didn’t know how he’d have made it through
without his pack and their touch, nor why one-bodies were so
skittish about such a natural thing. But while a wolf might lick a
stranger as a greeting, only pack and close friends would groom a
wounded wolf for hours. What Echo was doing meant something. But DJ
had no idea what, especially since he still didn’t even know what
she was.

The washcloth was getting uncomfortably warm.
Echo lifted it from his chest. DJ heard her dip it in water, then
wring it out. When she laid it back down, it was cool again.

He opened his eyes, and saw that she was
resting her other hand on the pillow. The impulse was impossible to
resist; he turned his head, laying his cheek down on her hand. The
warmth of it burned and stung, but he didn’t move and neither did
she.

“I think you’re not a platypus after all,” DJ
said dreamily. “You’re something with a pack. You said you’re not a
wolf. A lion? A dolphin? An orca? That’s it, right? You’re a killer
whale.”

“A whale,” said Echo. “That’s
flattering.”

“A
killer
whale. Sleek and deadly.
That has to be it.”

“You were closest when you guessed I was a
tree. I’m a saguaro shifter. Tall and prickly.”

DJ laughed. Then, comforted by her touch, he
drifted into sleep.

***

The first thing DJ noticed when he woke again
was how much better he felt. The second thing he noticed was that
the straps were back. And the third thing he noticed was that Echo
was gone and Dr. Semple was standing over him, having apparently
just shaken him awake.

A man stood beside the doctor. Though he was
a stocky black man in a suit, while Dr. Semple was a skinny white
woman in a doctor’s coat, there was some sort of non-physical
resemblance between the two. DJ frowned, trying to figure out what
it was.

“Good morning, Torres,” the new guy said.
“I’m Mr. Dowling. I’m going to be your handler.”

DJ knew, he
knew
, that he should play
it cool, gather information, and act like all the fight had been
beaten out of him. But what came out of his mouth was, “What the
fuck is a handler?”

“You can think of me as your new commanding
officer,” Mr. Dowling said smoothly. “You take your orders from me,
and you give your reports to me.”

“You’re going to have to unchain me before
you can order me to do anything but lie down some more,” DJ pointed
out.

Mr. Dowling didn’t so much as blink. “Before
I do that, I want you to understand why you shouldn’t run away
again.”

“Nearly dying in Death Valley once was enough
for me.” DJ wished Mr. Dowling would finish threatening him and let
him get up already. He was ready to jump out of his skin, plus
there was something vaguely embarrassing about having to talk from
a bed to someone looming over him.

“Yes, but you’ll be leaving this base
eventually. I want to make sure you come back.”

DJ didn’t like the sound of that. Nor did he
like how Dr. Semple was standing there silently, watching him with
unnerving anticipation. DJ’s frustrated restlessness melded with an
even more unpleasant anxiety.

Dr. Semple set up a laptop on the side table
where the basin of water had been. As she turned it so DJ couldn’t
see the screen and began typing, DJ wished Echo was still there,
touching him and making him feel almost like his pack was with him.
Sure, she too was keeping him captive, but at least it wasn’t by
her own free choice.

And that sums up exactly how fucked this
whole situation is
, he thought.

“We made a deal,” said Dr. Semple, making DJ
jump. Or try to, anyway; all he could do was twitch against the
restraints. At least the sunburn had healed enough that it didn’t
hurt. Much.

DJ remembered the deal, but now he wasn’t so
sure he wanted to stick with it. But he couldn’t not know, either.
“Let’s see the video.”

“This is Farrell when he first came out of
surgery.” Dr. Semple turned the laptop so DJ could see the
screen.

It was surveillance video, but high-quality.
Roy lay unconscious, hooked up to a bunch of noisy machines. What
DJ could see of his face beneath the tubes and electrodes was as
white as his pillow. Even so, he looked better than he had in the
helo.

“Got anything more recent?” DJ asked, trying
not to betray his nerves. If they put any electrodes on him, his
heart rate would probably overload the machine.

Dr. Semple turned the laptop away and typed.
As he did, Mr. Dowling addressed DJ. “You ran before Dr. Semple
could explain the consequences of doing so. As you may have figured
out, Farrell isn’t here. But what happens to him depends entirely
on your actions. Due to your escape attempt, his sedation and
painkillers were withdrawn.”

Dr. Semple turned around the laptop. DJ had
just enough time to see a freeze-frame of Roy, still unconscious
and under bright lights but hooked up to fewer machines, before the
doctor hit “play.”

Roy was the most stoic person DJ had ever
met. DJ had seen him go for days without eating or sleeping, take a
bullet to the thigh, nearly die of shrapnel wounds, and endure the
agony of becoming a werewolf, all without uttering a word of
complaint. The most reaction DJ had ever seen from him was when
he’d just woken up from a nightmare and wasn’t fully conscious yet.
But as soon as he was completely awake, he’d say nothing until he’d
recovered enough to claim that he was fine.

On the laptop screen, Roy shifted in apparent
discomfort, groaned, then opened his eyes. Then he made a sound
that DJ had never heard from him before, a cry of startled agony
that made a stab of pain go through DJ’s own heart.

“You sick fucks!” DJ shouted.

Rage blurred his vision and sent heat rushing
to his face. He became a wolf and threw himself against his
restraints, so set on ripping out his captors’ throats that he
could almost taste the blood in his mouth. But he had no leverage,
and the straps held him tight. However he snarled and snapped at
them, he couldn’t break free.

Finally he subsided, panting, and became a
man again.

The fucking video was still playing. Roy had
his forearm flung over his face, the IV needle ripped out and blood
running down from where it had been.

“It hurts,” Roy gasped. “Everything hurts.
DJ—”

“That’s enough!” DJ yelled, loudly enough to
drown him out. If he had to helplessly listen to Roy’s pain— pain
that DJ was responsible for— for one second longer, it would kill
him. “You made your point! I won’t run away again! Now turn off
that fucking video and give him his fucking morphine!”

Mercifully, Mr. Dowling reached over and
closed the laptop. “Please inform Farrell’s doctors that they can
give him his medications now.”

Dr. Semple stepped out of the room.

DJ lay shaking with fury and pent-up
adrenaline, an acrid taste in his mouth and bitter guilt in his
heart.

“Are you ready to listen now?” Mr. Dowling
asked.

His expression was as mildly curious as if he
was waiting for DJ to give him a non-urgent report, not as if he’d
just been participating in torturing a wounded man. Dr. Semple had
looked like that too, when she’d lied to DJ that Roy was dead.

That was when DJ figured out the nature of
the resemblance between Mr. Dowling and Dr. Semple. It was an aura
of asshole.

Dr. Semple came back into the room. “Farrell
is resting comfortably. Whether he stays that way is up to you,
Torres.”

DJ gritted his teeth, refusing to give them
the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him. “Just tell me what
you want from me.”

Mr. Dowling smiled pleasantly at him. “We
want to recruit you.”

“Too late. I’m the property of the US Marine
Corps.”

The smile grew wider. “Excellent. In that
case, we’ll skip the paperwork. Congratulations, you’re our new
black ops operative.”

DJ had seen that coming, but he couldn’t
resist arguing. “You mean assassin, right? I’m a Marine, not a
ninja. I’m an automatic rifleman— a machine gunner. Have you ever
heard a SAW? It’s not exactly stealthy. You want a guy who’ll creep
up and kill people and creep away unseen, you go kidnap yourself a
scout sniper.”

DJ hoped they’d try. With any luck, the
sniper would snipe them.

Mr. Dowling inquired, “Do you know any who
can turn into wolves?”

“
Wolves
aren’t stealthy,” DJ retorted,
frustrated. “What’s going to be more conspicuous practically
anywhere, any person ever, or a fucking wolf? Unless you want to
put a hit on a lumberjack.”

“How to make the best use of you is our
problem, not yours,” replied Mr. Dowling. “Think of it as a
transfer to a different branch of service. We’re part of the
Department of Defense. Like the NSA, but more secret.”

Like the NSA, but more evil.
DJ
wondered if it was true. It wouldn’t entirely surprise him.

“If I take off your restraints, do I have
your word of honor that you won’t attack us or run?” Mr. Dowling
inquired. “Backed up by the fact that even if you managed to kill
us, someone else would pick up the phone and give the orders for
your friend to die in pain.”

Secret evil branches of the US government
ought to count as foreign powers, as far as DJ was concerned. As
he’d told Echo, he considered himself a prisoner of war. Captured
Marines weren’t allowed to promise not to escape. And Roy would
undoubtedly rather be tortured than have DJ violate the code of
conduct for his sake.