Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (5 page)

Lucien gave him a sour look. “I’m off
to bed,” he said, finishing his beer in one long draught and
getting to his feet.

In retrospect, he didn’t
suppose he could blame the bastards for trying to kill them. It
had
happened
to
him and it had scared the hell out of him. It had scared him worse,
though, to think he might be stuck like that—a monster half human
and half wolf. Thankfully, they’d changed back before they’d had
time to worry about it too much. Any hope they’d had that it was
just a onetime thing was dashed fairly quickly, however—as soon as
the military tracked them down and engaged them again they’d
changed. It was definitely a permanent part of their new personas,
even though they’d discovered since their arrival that they could
not only change from human to half man half wolf. They could
transition completely from man to wolf and they could
control
the shift
change—mostly.

A side benefit to that seemed to be
almost instantaneous healing from the holes the government/military
seemed determined to put in them any time they managed to get close
enough, but he couldn’t say he was exactly thrilled that they
weren’t just half man and half wolf on the genetic level anymore.
And he didn’t think he’d regret having to give that up if and when
they managed to make it back to their own world.

It was bad enough
to
feel
like a
monster because that was the way the scientists who’d developed
them looked at them—and anybody else that discovered they were
genetically engineered—like the handlers they’d been given when
they were sent in to be trained as soldiers.

Looking
like a monster, even though he’d discovered he
could change back to a human form—in appearance anyway—had
destroyed his attempts to convince himself he really wasn’t, that
he was as human as the ones that considered themselves humans. He
was just
more
than human.

His last thoughts just before he
dropped over the edge of the cliff into oblivion, though, weren’t
speculation over how they might reverse the situation and get home.
His thoughts were about how good it had felt to have Laurie pressed
so tightly against him, how good she’d smelled, and if there was
any way in hell she might be convinced he wasn’t a monster when he
felt like he was one.

He’d never been able to reconcile his
lust for Lindsey with the personality she had. Laurie was nothing
like Lindsey, though, beyond the physical appearance. And he
thought he was going to find it impossible to focus on the job
rather than getting into Laurie’s pants as fast as he could figure
out how to do it.

What sort of ramifications might that
have, though? They hadn’t actually interacted with the people on
this side at that level. They’d been careful not to. And as long as
they were stuck on this side, the lives they’d created for
themselves, and the job, were important to their survival. He was
pretty sure the government/military still wanted to get their hands
on them and it wouldn’t be a good thing for them when and if they
did—or anyone that happened to be with them at the time.

No. It would be best all the way
around to keep ignoring the blue balls and focus on surviving long
enough to get themselves out of the mess they were in. And if it
turned out that it was hopeless and they were never going home,
then the lives they’d made for themselves on this side were all the
more important.

* * * *

Laurie didn’t sleep well. There were a
lot of very good reasons for that--starting with the car that
probably wasn’t going to be there by the time the tow truck went to
pick the damned thing up to tow it to a garage. She’d put in a call
for a pickup as soon as she’d gotten to her room the night before.
Although the phonebook stated that the company offered 24 hours
service, however, the man she’d spoken to hadn’t sounded very
convincing when he said he’d get his next driver on it.

She doubted there
was
a driver other than
the one she talked to.

Of course the car might be a total
loss anyway if what Lucien had said was true and she didn’t
actually doubt his word.

She didn’t know what the hell she was
going to do about a car if it was toast!

Her scheduled meeting with the DA
wasn’t exactly conducive to restful sleep, either.

In point of fact, she hadn’t been
resting well since she’d witnessed the murder.

She could recall some vague pieces of
dreams, though, that told her that her woes certainly weren’t
totally responsible for her restless night.

The scary ride she’d had on the back
of the motorcycle and the scary men she’d met were mostly
responsible, but not in the way they should have been.

She was pretty sure she’d had some
erotic dreams mixed in with the nightmares about stalking killers,
courtroom drama, and being chased down dark streets by drug
addicts.

And she didn’t have to think about it
long to realize who’d starred in the erotic dreams.

It was the twins! Well,
brothers. The other two had been featured, but she couldn’t really
remember much past being sandwiched between the matching bookends.
If anyone had ever asked her if she fantasized about doing a three
way, she would’ve told them they were out of their minds. Setting
aside the fact that she had a hard enough time finding
one
man that appealed to
her enough to consider intimacy, there were all sorts of problems
with the concept—starting with logistics and finishing with the
territoriality of men. Maybe it was fun toying with the idea of
climbing into the sack with both—she would admit that much—but she
didn’t sleep with men unless she considered them in the light of
permanent. And a woman couldn’t consider sleeping with two men and
permanence in the same breath. They might, or might not, enjoy a
three way as much as she did, but that was going to be the first
and last of the ‘relationship’.

And she didn’t sleep with any man she
wasn’t considering as a permanent part of her life.

“
Just keep telling
yourself that, you liar!” she muttered as she showered. “You aren’t
fooling me! You know damned good and well you’d leap at the chance
to experience any one of those beautiful men—just for scrapbook
memories!”

She’d just finished getting ready for
her appointment and was looking around to make sure she had
collected everything she wanted with her when there was a tap on
the door. Startled, she nearly dropped her purse. “Coming!” she
called out, hurrying toward the door.

In the back of her mind she questioned
why they would come personally to summon her for the cab she’d
ordered, but no one knew where she was and she hadn’t ordered
anything else so she assumed it was either the maids come to clean
the room or someone had come to fetch her for her cab. She paused
at the door after she’d taken the security bolt off. “Who is
it?”

She heard a low, rumbling male voice.
She couldn’t quite make out what he said, but she decided her first
guess had been right. It certainly wasn’t a maid!

She pulled the door open and then just
gaped at the man scowling at her from the other side.

“
Lady! You need a keeper!
It’s a damned good thing Peeples hired us to look after you,”
Lucien growled. “Don’t you know better than to open the door when
you don’t know who it is? Especially with some nut case targeting
you because you saw him murder somebody?”

Laurie blinked at him as he pelted her
with the criticism. By the time he’d finished, indignation had
overcome her shock and—she hated to say it!—admiration at the
picture of raw male beauty that had greeted her at the door when
she opened it. Otherwise she might have found herself babbling an
apology for something she had no reason to apologize for. “Like I
would stick my damned eye to the peep hole! I watch TV! That’s
where the assassins put the gun barrel and then when you stick your
eye to it, they pull the trigger.”

It was Lucien’s turn to gape at her.
“What? That doesn’t make any damned sense! You were worried I might
blow your head off but you opened the door?”

“
I didn’t say that. I
called a taxi. I figured it was someone who’d come to let me know
it was here. I’m just saying I wouldn’t make a habit of looking
through the peep hole because I’ve seen bad guys shoot people
through them.”

“
They don’t come to your
room to let you know the cab’s arrived,” Damien, whom she
discovered was standing behind him with the other two men, said
dryly. “They ring the room.”

“
Oh,” Laurie responded,
considering that. “I guess I should use the phone, then, and find
out if the taxi is here yet. I mean, I don’t want to stand around
in the lobby.”

The bookends exchanged a speaking
look. “We’ll give you a ride,” Lucien offered. “That’s why we
came.”

“
Oh hell no!” Laurie
snapped. “I am
not
getting on the back of that motorcycle again! I appreciate
being rescued and all that. I’m sure I forgot to thank y’all for
that last night when I should have. But it was actually reasonable
to get on the back of a motorcycle given the options I was looking
at last night. It damned well isn’t reasonable now.”

“
We brought the tank,”
Kane said cheerfully.

Laurie turned to stare in disbelief at
the blond when he spoke. “Tank?”

Chapter Four

It wasn’t a tank—exactly—but it didn’t
miss it by much. It was a Hummer—not the stripped down version the
carmakers sold the public, but the armored kind the military
used.

Well it actually looked like it might
have been used in WWII except she was pretty sure they didn’t have
them back then. It rode like it might be that old, too. Laurie
couldn’t actually recall any experience in a moving vehicle that
even came close to her ride from the hotel to the DA’s office in
the courthouse complex, but she thought blondie’s description was
probably the closest—tank. It didn’t appear to have any
shocks—either in suspension or the cracked leather seats.
Thankfully, Atlanta’s freeway system was in pretty damned good
shape even if the same couldn’t be said for a lot of the city’s
streets. Laurie still managed to bite the inside of her cheek a
couple of times, but not hard enough to draw blood. And although
her tailbone felt like somebody had been pounding on it with a bat
by the time she fell out of the door, she was pretty sure it was
just bruised and not cracked.

“
Thanks for the ride,
guys,” Laurie said with a tight smile, trying to ignore the fact
that she felt like a quivering pile of pudding from the vibrations
that had rattled through her the entire way.

It was Kane (the blond one she’d
learned along the way—from the conversation since they hadn’t
bothered to introduce themselves) who helped her out. “No problem,”
he said cheerfully. “You look ….”

He didn’t finish the thought. Lucien
elbowed him in the ribs and Damien, who’d come around from the
other side of the vehicle, stepped on his foot, stopping him,
literally, in his tracks as he stepped away from the
vehicle.

“
Damien and I will walk
her in,” Lucien growled, glaring a warning at Kane that Laurie
couldn’t decipher. “You two take a quick look around and then stay
with the Hummer till we get back.”

Laurie glanced around at the four men
surrounding her and shook her head faintly. “Y’all aren’t from
around here, are you? Not saying we don’t grow them big here in
Georgia, but clearly you’ve all had your wheaties and then
some!”

All four of them looked at her
blankly.

Well, not Kane. He gave her the
quizzical look of a baffled puppy.

He really was cute!

Not that all of them weren’t lookers!
The twins, Lucien and Damien, gave her heart palpitations whenever
she looked at them—which was why she didn’t look directly at them
except when she had to … unless they weren’t looking at her. And
the shy one, Basil, wasn’t suffering in the looks department
either.

“
You’re all really tall,”
she clarified. “Well, built like tanks, too. You guys must work out
all the time.”

The four of them exchanged looks she
found hard to decipher. She thought relief was part of it and that
puzzled her, but she could also see that they seemed to be trying
to decide whether she’d complimented them or criticized.

“
Just saying. You guys in
the military?”

“
Not anymore,” Kane
responded, earning another elbow to the ribs.

“
Didn’t I tell you and
Basil to scope out the area?” Lucien growled.

Kane glared at him, rubbing his ribs,
but he followed Basil off.

“
That was mean,” Laurie
said.

Lucien sent her a surprised look and
then reddened. She wasn’t sure if it was from embarrassment or
anger because she’d criticized him, but she decided to pretend she
hadn’t let her motor mouth outrun her brain.

It was a problem that went all the way
back to her childhood—probably from birth. Almost as soon as a
thought entered her brain it came out her mouth—without being
filtered for content and/or consumption first. The impulsiveness of
her nature was something she’d finally managed to master to a
degree, but mastering the impulsiveness of her tongue had been
pretty much an abysmal failure. It had gotten her in trouble more
times than she could count, but she couldn’t seem to learn from the
unpleasant aftershocks of being painfully honest/blunt.