Eternal Pleasure (11 page)

She nodded but didn’t look convinced. “What Fin said, it’s true?”

“Yeah.” He hadn’t lived through the ending of his time because Fin took his soul before it happened. Seeing the images on the screen, even if they were computer generated, hurt. Not that he’d left anyone behind. Ty frowned. Shouldn’t there have been something, someone he missed? Had his life been that empty?

Ty looked at Kelly. There was real concern for him in her eyes. Maybe he thought of his past life as empty because this one wasn’t. Not as long as Kelly was his driver. He decided that if he lost her, he’d remember, even across millions of years.

Fin started talking, and reluctantly Ty glanced away from her.

“Keep your drivers with you at night. Don’t let them go off by themselves. If any of them have a problem with that, tell me and I’ll get you a new driver.”

“A little late for Neva.” Kelly’s mutter carried to Fin.

Ty waited for Fin to react. He didn’t.

“If you have a confrontation with nonhumans, open your link and tell me.” Fin threw Ty and Q sharp glances.
“I’ll send help. And you will not turn that help down just because of pride.”

Whatever else he might have said was lost as thunderous crashes and wild howls seemed to shake the whole condo.

Q winced. “Sounds like Neva’s awake.”

Kelly hit the stairs running. She was a step behind Ty, Q, Fin, and the big guy from the back of the room. By the time she reached the third floor, she was puffing.

“Fin has an elevator.” Ty watched as everyone stopped before a large metal door with bars over a small window.

“Don’t. Need. An. Elevator.” She punctuated each word with a gulp for air. What she did need was an exercise program.

“Want me to go in?” The big man peered in the window.

Fin glanced at the woman who’d been assigned to keep watch on Neva. “What happened?”

Tall with short dark hair, the woman looked tough enough to take on a few of Fin’s men. “She started to come to, so I got out of the room. I was about to call you when she changed. She went crazy in there, trying to climb the walls and then throwing herself at the door.”

Fin nodded at the big man. “Go in and see what you can do.”

“Who’s he?” Kelly worried her bottom lip as the heavy metal door shook under the assault of something heavy and determined.

Ty edged closer to the door, pulling Kelly with him. “Car.”

“As in?”

“Carcharodontosaurus.”

“What?”

“Big meat eater.” He hesitated. “Bigger than me.”

“That bothers you, doesn’t it?” Ordinarily, Kelly would chalk up to male ego Ty’s unwillingness to admit that someone was bigger than he. But she was starting to understand what drove him.

“Size, strength, and savagery meant everything in my world. It was all about survival.” He glanced at Car. “Sometimes savagery could trump size, though. The Brothers Grim, better known as Utah, Rap, and Tor, were some of the scariest predators going.” Ty smiled at Car’s back, his eyes gleaming with the hunger for battle. “I’d bet on me in a straight-up fight.” His gaze slid to her. “And that bothers
you
.”

“Yeah, it does.” She wouldn’t insult him by lying. “I’ve never been in the might-makes-right camp. But I also know that I wouldn’t have survived for five minutes in your world.” Left unsaid was that he was in
her
world now. Then it occurred to her that if everything Fin said about these cosmic creeps was true, Ty’s take on life might save humanity.

Ty didn’t comment as he turned to watch Car slide open the steel door just enough to slip through. The door clanged shut behind him.

“Can I see?” She didn’t
want
to see Neva. Kick-butt and badass weren’t adjectives anyone would stick in front of her name. But she owed it to a fellow human to help if she could.

Fin moved aside to make room for her. When she looked through the window, her first impression was of an immense space. The room stretched more than two stories high and took up the whole third floor. The rest of Fin’s condo had walls of glass everywhere. The windows in this
room were narrow and small, set close to the ceiling. Was this a ballroom or a prison? She guessed it could serve both purposes.

“It’s a containment room for any of us who feels he’s on the edge and needs a cool-down space.” Fin answered her unspoken question.

“What’s with the human-sized door?” If there was a fire, anything that wasn’t fully human couldn’t escape.

“No one gets out of that room without his soul form under control.” Fin’s tone said that any of his men who couldn’t get their act together long enough to fit through the door would be on their own. “I can’t take a chance of turning one of us loose on the streets while his mind is impaired.”

Now that was a scary scenario. Still…“You’d just let your own man die?”

“I’d do what I could to save him.”

Kelly figured that would be quite a lot.

She forgot any other questions she might have asked as she got her first look at Neva. If Kelly hadn’t watched Ty and Q fight the werewolves in Memorial Park, she would have been a lot more horrified. Neva looked like them: She was the size of a small pony, with glowing eyes, gaping jaws and lethal-looking teeth.

But there was something different. It was in Neva’s eyes. Kelly tried to get a better look at them, but it was tough because she was in constant motion. Neva must have been out-of-her-mind panicked because she was so busy trying to climb the far wall that she still hadn’t seen Car.

Finally, the wolf spotted him. She froze, then crouched. Kelly recognized that position, but she figured Car did too. Neva came out of her crouch in a giant leap that covered half the room. But Car was quicker. His massive
form took shape around him in an instant, cocooning him from the werewolf’s charge. And yes, he was bigger than Ty. His skull alone had to be at least five feet long.

Kelly shook her head as she glanced up at Ty. “That’s so weird. I still don’t get it. I can see Car through the animal, but nothing can get to him….” Neva tested that theory as she bounced off the dinosaur’s chest, cutting short her killing leap. “I understand the shape-shifter concept. Like Neva. The wolf body completely replaces her human one. But with you guys, it’s sort of a layering of forms, one inside the other, both existing at the same time. What I really can’t wrap my mind around is how your dinosaur form can be so lethal when I can still see your human form.” Neva yelped as Car head-butted her, sending her skidding across the floor.

Ty’s smile was slow, sensual, and deadly. All at the same time. “We give true meaning to the term two-natured. When you see us as humans, our soul form still lives in us, only hidden. It comes when we need it, though.”

“I’ve noticed. Strange.”

“Yeah, it
is
strange.” Ty glanced at Fin.

Kelly understood. Only Fin knew the Eleven’s secrets. But she wondered why he didn’t share any of them with his men.
Trust
wasn’t the first word that came to mind when she thought of Fin.

But Kelly forgot about Fin as she watched Neva fling herself again and again at Car, despite the fact that she wasn’t getting anywhere with him.

Finally, Car roared at Neva, sending her into another frenzy of leaping and snapping.

“He’s losing his patience.” Fin sounded worried as he watched from behind Kelly. “I’ll have to get him out of there before he hurts her.”

“What exactly was he supposed to be doing?” She finally got a good look at Neva’s eyes. Kelly recognized the emotion in them.

“I thought Car would scare her so much she’d cower in a corner somewhere.” Fin seemed puzzled that his plan hadn’t worked.

“She’s out of her mind with fear. Neva’s not reacting rationally. You don’t help by adding to her fear.” Kelly wondered whether Neva would become like her savage pack mates once she accepted her change and lost her terror. Or did werewolves have individual personalities as humans did? So much she didn’t know.

Ty put in his two cents. “She must realize she can’t get past him.”

Angry, Kelly turned on him. “Have you ever been afraid, really afraid?”

“No.” He sounded definite about that.

“Well, I have. When I was about five, my dad thought he’d give me an up-close look at a big snake. He didn’t think anything of it. The snake wasn’t poisonous, and he knew I loved animals, especially the large carnivores. Well, I went crazy. Screamed, fought, and worked myself into a frenzy. Threw up all over the place. Nothing Dad said could calm me down, even after he got rid of the snake. I’m still terrified of them.”

“Your point is?” Fin sounded impatient.

“Fear is a human thing. I understand it. And Neva is terrified. Let me go in and try to calm her down.” A
human
thing. Kelly realized her mistake three words too late. She’d neatly drawn a line between them. Human on one side, the Eleven on the other.

Ty narrowed his eyes. He’d gotten her point. “You’re right. We think like animals. But fear isn’t just a human
emotion. I never felt it because I was at the top of the food chain. Ask some of the plant-eaters about fear. So what’s your plan?” Anger simmered in his voice.

Kelly sighed. “Sorry, guys. I just meant that if you’ve never been afraid, you don’t know how it feels. I can relate, so maybe I can find a way to defuse the situation. Besides, I’m used to the wolves at the zoo.” Did that make sense? Probably not to them.

Ty snorted his contempt. “In other words, you don’t have a plan.”

She dug into her jeans pocket and pulled out her pepper spray. “Fin, do you have anything nonlethal I can borrow to protect myself?”

Fin nodded at the dark-haired woman, who opened a metal cabinet standing beside the door. She pulled out a gun and handed it to Kelly. “Taser. Hit her at about fifteen feet if you think she’s coming for you.”

“Thanks.” Kelly drew in a deep, calming breath. “I’m ready.”

Fin didn’t comment, just rapped on the door and waved Car out.

When Car’s human form was back in the driver’s seat, he slipped out of the room, his expression harsh with controlled rage. “I can’t stand this world. Don’t know how much more holding-everything-in I can take.”

Kelly knew better than to say anything. But when Car turned his gaze briefly on her, she got a surprise. She’d thought he’d have black eyes to match his personality and what passed for his heart. Surprise. They were the purest green she’d ever seen. Eyes so beautiful were wasted on Car.

As she reached for the door, Ty put his hand over hers. “I’ll go in with you.”

The word “no” formed in her head. If she were a heroine in some book, she’d go in by herself and do her calming-the-savage-beast routine. But she wasn’t a heroine, and she had enough common sense to know that Neva could rip her apart before she had a chance to get “I’m your friend” out of her mouth.

Ty pushed harder. “I won’t frighten her. I’ll crouch down and make myself small.”

That dragged a smile from Kelly. “Right.”

Taking her smile as acceptance, he pulled the door open and slipped into the room with Kelly. As promised, he moved a few feet away from her and crouched down.

Without the solid door between herself and Neva, some of Kelly’s courage wilted. She could only hope the woman retained her human understanding inside that big scary wolf’s body.

When Car left, Neva raced to the other side of the room. Once again she was leaping into the air, trying to reach windows way too small for her to squeeze through even if she could jump high enough to reach them.

Kelly must have made a noise, or maybe it was just the
ker-
thump ker-
thump
of her wildly pounding heart that alerted Neva. Kelly swallowed hard as the werewolf swung to face her. Omigod. Was Neva really that big, that ferocious, and was Kelly really that scared? Yep to all three.

With a furious roar, Neva crouched and then launched herself at Kelly. In the time it took to register death racing toward her, Kelly reviewed all the soothing and logical things she’d meant to say to Neva. One problem. No. Freaking. Time.

“Lift your arm and aim the damn taser.” Ty’s command was a harsh shout.

Lift? Taser? Kelly shook her head, trying to clear it, trying
to make sense of what was happening through the fog of sheer, life-sucking panic.

Neva peeled her lips back from enormous teeth as she prepared to make the final leap that would land her on top of her quivering prey.

Kelly raised the hand holding the taser. It was trembling wildly.

Neva crouched low, ready to spring off her powerful haunches. Kelly heard Ty jumping to his feet. She knew that in a few seconds the two would explode into violence while she stood watching them try to kill each other.

Do something. Now
. Kelly opened her mouth to speak and only made a gurgling sound.
Way to go, Maloy
. She tried again. “Stop!”

Neva froze and recognition flared in her eyes. Kelly exhaled shakily. Relief made her light-headed.

Ty grunted his opinion of the whole chain of events. “This is why Fin doesn’t want humans involved in the battle. You’re not prepared for attacks by shape-shifters, vampires, and things like that.”

No kidding. If Neva had been a charging lion, Kelly still would have been scared shitless, but she wouldn’t have let the fear paralyze her. “Give me a break. I’m not trained for combat.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll do better next time.”

“Forget next time.”

Neva’s low growl jerked her attention back to the wolf. “Try to calm down, Neva,” Kelly said in her most soothing tone. “The werewolves made you one of them, but you’ll be able to return to human form. You just have to give it time.” She didn’t know if that was true, but if it eased Neva’s terror, she’d lie all day and all night long. “We only want to help you.” That at least was true.

For the first time, Neva’s ears pricked forward. A good sign.

Giving Ty a warning glance, Neva crept closer. Kelly tried to convince herself the wolf’s walk was just a walk, not a stalk. As she drew near Kelly, Neva bared her teeth again.

Oh, crap. “I’m talking to the human in you, Neva. The part that can reason. Let me help you.”

Ty made a disgusted sound. “I’m talking to the animal in you, Neva. Hurt Kelly and I’ll rip you apart.”

Neva looked as if she was considering both options.

“I know a werewolf—not anyone belonging to the pack that hurt you—who’ll know what to do.”
Please let her gray
wolf friend call
. Kelly fixed her gaze somewhere left of Neva’s head. No direct eye contact to signal aggression.

When Neva finally reached Kelly, she sat down with a wolfy whine, misery dimming her amber eyes.

Thank you, God
. “I don’t know how you turn back to human form. Maybe if you relax a little, it’ll come naturally.” Or not.

Kelly sensed what she had to do next. It was a symbol of her trust in Neva, even though she wasn’t feeling particularly trusting right now.
Just do it
. Trying to look relaxed while wondering if she should kiss her hand good-bye, Kelly reached out to touch Neva.

Ty didn’t try to stop her. Chalk one up for his control. But he could also see she had a firm grip on the taser.

Her legs felt like rubber by the time she finally rested her hand on Neva’s head. “Ty, Q, and all the other guys here are different.” After seeing Car, Kelly figured Neva already understood that. “But they want to help you.”