Pack Dynamics (23 page)

“But you look so much better.”

He felt better. “That’s not the point—”

“That’s precisely the point. The blood from the center has an anticoagulant in it, and it’s not working for you. You looked like you were
dying
, Ben.”

He might have been. Might still be, because although he felt better, better was relative. “Doesn’t mean I want to take you with me.”

He sensed Megan behind him and laboriously rolled over to find her standing next to the bed, with everyone else in the room staring at them.

“What did you do, Janni?” Megan demanded.

Janni’s chin came up. “I fed myself to Ben,” she said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Is there an issue?”

“You might have let us know—” Megan said.

Janni didn’t let her finish. “And been shot down the second I suggested it? In a case like this, I figured it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

Megan sighed. “There are safer ways you could have done it. Bleeding into a cup, for instance, instead of risking werewolf saliva in the wound.”

“Werewolf—” Janni stopped. “Oh.”

Megan sank into the chair beside the bed and put her face in her hand. “You forgot about that, didn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.

“Kind of.” Janni looked abashed. Her arm tightened around Ben’s shoulder. “You know what? I don’t care. If it keeps him alive longer so those guys have more time to fix this, I’ll deal. We can be wolves together, if I’m infected and that part can’t be cured.” She raised her voice. “Not only that, but as a werewolf, I can afford to lose more blood than I could as a human. But if you science types would get a move on so I don’t have to do it again, that’d be peachy.”

“Ah, Hermia,” Ben murmured affectionately. He was tired again. Tired still. And the moon was pulling on him, so he needed to go upstairs and get out of his clothes, and shouldn’t Megan have left by now? “Moon …”

Megan looked startled. “Oh,
damn
.” She’d forgotten, too. “Mr. Jarrett, I have to go. I have a thing I just remembered. Flew right out of my head with all this.”

He’d turned back to his computer. “Go ahead, Miss Graham. We’ll be here in the morning.”

She gathered her stuff. “You have a teleconference with the Board at nine AM tomorrow. Don’t forget.”

“Yeah, yeah …” Alex said.

“I’m serious, Alex. They’re already unhappy with you. Don’t make them unhappier.” She beat a hasty retreat.

Ben wondered how often her secret had come this close to being blown and would have felt sorry about it if he’d had the strength. “Should go upstairs …”

Janni figured out what his problem was and yanked his T-shirt off over his head. She dove under the covers and helped him peel out of his jeans and boxers just in time, and rolled off the bed to wait while he Changed.

A few minutes later, he was looking at her through wolf eyes, still aching and worn out. He dropped his head down onto the pillow and fell asleep.

O O O

“Huh,” Alex said a half hour later. He’d switched to Coke from coffee, but hadn’t stopped adding the scotch.

“Good huh or bad huh?” Michelle asked.

“I’ve got stem cells.” He rubbed his goatee. “I’d call that a good huh. Can probably do something with them.”

“Stem cells from a vampire? That’s new.” She sipped at a can of Sprite. “Idna never had them.”

“Maybe she’s been a vampire too long, or maybe the fact that Ben was a werewolf first was a factor. He came into this with a heartbeat.” Alex leaped to his feet, all manic energy. “We’ve got fresh lycan-vamp-bunnies back there, right?”

“We’ve got a little of everything.”

“Excellent. I have an idea.” He practically ran out of the room and came back with a caged bunny, which he sedated and sucked some bone marrow from.

Michelle stood over him, fascinated. “What are you doing?”

“I think maybe we’re going at this from the wrong direction,” Alex said, preparing a slide.

“How do you mean?”

“We’re looking for a ‘cure’ for vampirism. What if we just, I don’t know, bring the vampire back to life? Has that been tried?” He looked through the microscope. “And again I say ‘huh.’ Make a culture of those for me, Dr. McFoucher.”

“Bringing people back from the dead never, ever goes well,” Michelle pointed out while she did as he asked.

“I’ve read my Shelley. But vampires aren’t strictly dead.” His grin had too many teeth in it. “Ben’s even less dead, what with the heartbeat.”

She glanced over at the giant wolf sleeping on the hospital bed in the corner, his fiancée curled beside him with her arm thrown over his white-striped shoulder. “He’s dying, though.”

“I know. Which is why I’ll be up all night working on this. Join me?”

“I’m not sure I should be here if he wakes up as a wolf,” she said uneasily. “I get the feeling he still doesn’t like me much.”

“And you have a dog to take care of.” He sat back in the chair. “It’s fine. I’ve got experiments to run first anyway and probably won’t know anything concrete until morning. Go ahead on home.”

“I’ll be back bright and early.”

He’d already forgotten her. “Uh-huh.”

O O O

Ostheim sat vigil over Idna, his tail wrapped around his paws as he watched her sleep on their bed. She had declined frighteningly fast that day, even after he’d made her drink a fair amount of his own blood.

He rested his chin on the coverlet and decided that his pride needed to take a back seat to her health. As soon as he Changed back to human, he’d call Alex Jarrett, the only person he could think of who might be able to help them now.

Chapter Seventeen

By the time the sun peeked over the horizon and Ben was human again, Alex had a protocol in place and repeatable results he was happy with, at least with the rabbits. He’d finished the rest of the Laphroaig while he worked, and he sorrowfully eyed the empty green bottle. He wanted to drink a toast.

Oh well. Megan wouldn’t be pleased about the fact that he’d lubricated himself that well for two nights in a row, so having more was probably imprudent. Although, he grouched, she should be used to his work habits by now.

His cell phone rang, causing him to twitch. He twitched again when he saw who was calling, and fumbled his earpiece into his ear so he could pace around and wave his hands, like he had the feeling he’d want to. “Ostheim? To what do I owe the dubious pleasure?”

“I wouldn’t have called you unless I was in dire straits, Jarrett. I need your help. Please.” The man was practically growling and almost choked on the last word.

“Funny how that works.” Alex got up and started running some Kopi Luwak through the coffeemaker. “Maybe you should explain why I’d want to help you.”

“If not for me, then for Idna. She’s very ill.”

“Yeah?” He glanced over at Ben’s too-still form, frowning. “Can’t say I’m surprised, seeing as I’m dealing with a crisis you caused.”

“Crisis?” Ostheim seemed to perk up at the word, and Alex clenched his fist.

“Hold on.” He walked over to the bed and touched Janni on the shoulder, muting his bluetooth. “Can you wake Ben up?” he asked as she blinked awake.

She nodded, and he sat back down at his computer, checking the results again and de-muting his headset. “Yeah, Ostheim, crisis. Or did you think that your little procedure wouldn’t have any lasting effects on the person you thought of as the secondary subject? That is, if you even thought of him as a person at all.”

“He looked healthy enough last time I saw him.”

“Last time you and Idna tried to murder him, you mean? Because you were so disappointed that you hadn’t finished the job.”

“I was disappointed, actually. He killed my nephew, in case you’ve forgotten, and that on top of vampire politics meant that we needed to go after him.” Ostheim paused. “The boy is very resourceful.”

“Yeah, he is.” Alex leaped up again and poured himself a cup of coffee, dumping hazelnut creamer into it. “Which is really lucky for you, because that means he’s still alive, in a manner of speaking, and that my first inclination to crush you like a fucking bug is somewhat mitigated.”

“Jarrett.” Ostheim sounded like he was at his wit’s end. “Help me. Please. If Idna—”

“Look, I don’t know, okay? I’m focused on someone else right now, someone you hurt, you bastard. If I can help him, I might be able to help her.” Ben had started to moan. “I have to go. You’ll be at this number all day?”

Ostheim’s breathing was audible over the line. “I will.”

“Let me work. I’ll call you back later.”

“Not much later. She’s so ill …”

“I know. Believe me.”

Janni had stripped the bandage from her wrist, and Alex caught her by the arm before she did something drastic.

“Later, Hans.” He hung up. “If you insist on feeding yourself to him again, Janni, at least bleed into a
mug
or something.”

“I’m not sure he can drink from a mug,” she fretted. “Look at him, Alex.”

Ben was back to being bruised around the eyes and way too pale, and he was muttering deliriously and shivering. But … “You can’t—”

“I can and I will, if we need to buy him more time. It’s my choice, dammit, and not anyone else’s.”

“What about his choice?” Which wasn’t fair, and Alex knew it. “Don’t think I didn’t hear him freak pretty hard when he woke up with your wrist in his mouth.”

“If he’s alive to freak then I don’t care.” She set her lips. “Either help me or go away.”

“I’ve figured out something that should work.” And, if Alex wanted to be honest with himself, Ben probably needed the strength that Janni’s blood would provide, because the procedure was incredibly stressful and might kill him if it didn’t cure him. “You know what? Go ahead and do your thing. I’ll get everything set up and call Doc Allen down so he can help.”

He had living, breathing bunnies sitting in cages next to his desk. They were still wolfed, but not vamped, and if the illness was vampire-specific … Michelle’s statement about results not tracking across species flitted through his mind, but he had to try.

O O O

After a quiet night, Megan came in at her usual time to find the basement a bustle of activity. Her nose was drawn to the rabbits in cages beside Alex’s desk, and she realized with a start that they’d been vampires not too long ago but weren’t anymore. Her genius boss had apparently come through, and she forgave him the empty Laphroaig bottle in the trash can.

She could also smell that Janni had fed herself to Ben again, but the way everyone else was studiously avoiding the subject let her know that maybe she should, too. McFoucher and Doc Allen had arrived before she had, and they were making preparations for some sort of procedure.

“Looks like you figured something out,” Megan said to Alex, whose hair was sticking out all over in an uncombed mass. That meant he’d spent the night running his hand through it while he worked nonstop.

Alex’s grin was slightly manic, and she’d learned to both fear and love that expression. “It’ll either cure him or kill him. And since he’s dying anyway, the odds are in our favor.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Janni’s okay with this?”

“She watched me do it to a rabbit a while ago. None of them died, but none of them were as far gone as Ben is either.”

“Need me to do anything?”

“Wish us luck. Pray, if you do that.” He was stroking his unshaven goatee, and she could smell a fair amount of apprehension under the forced cheerfulness and scotch. “If you could clear my schedule until Monday or even later, that’d be great. Yours too.”

“O-kay.” She glanced at her watch and took in his torn jeans and stained T-shirt, which he hadn’t changed in … how many days? “You realize that you have a teleconference with the Board in five minutes, and you’re not exactly dressed.” She should have come earlier to brace him for it, and would have if it hadn’t been a moon night. Dammit. “And they’ll be highly upset if you miss it. For the fourth time.”

His expression darkened. “And I’ll be highly upset if Ben dies because I had to deal with all that corporate bullshit instead of fixing this. Reschedule it. Better yet, cancel it altogether.”

“Mr. Jarrett—”

“
Megan
. Look at him.”

Unwillingly, she did. And, of course, Alex was right. Ben didn’t have time to wait for an interminable teleconference—he was dying right in front of them. She’d just have to smooth it over. Again. She hoped she could. When even Clarke was unhappy, Alex had gone too far. Anguished, she bit her lip.

“Hey, this’ll work,” Alex said, tilting her chin up. “And then we’re all getting a vacation. I’m buying. In fact, screw Monday. Give us at least a week, if not more.”

Typical. “Work hard and then play hard” was his lifelong motto. Usually, a vacation for Megan when she went with Alex meant chasing after him and making sure he didn’t die somehow. But it was better than nothing and more than she generally allowed herself, since letting him go off alone didn’t bear thinking about—and if she took a vacation and left him on his own, he’d probably end up either curing cancer or accidentally creating a nanovirus that would wipe out half of humanity.

But the Board—

She looked at Ben again, pale and shivering and sweating beside Janni, who was stroking his hair. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Miss Graham. We’ll be in the operating theater.”

“Alex?” He tilted his head and lifted an eyebrow, which had some kind of who-knew-what gunk stuck to it. “Be careful.” She put a world of meaning behind those simple words.

“I’m always careful.” Which was clearly a lie, and they both knew it. He gave her a jaunty grin she could tell he didn’t feel and turned to help roll the bed into the other room.

Megan took a deep breath and headed into the teleconference room to beard the board in its den. She kept her worries to herself. She’d gotten good at that.

Clarke closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead when she walked in range of the camera without Alex. Barnhardt and Peterson looked infuriated. “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” Megan said, “but Mr. Jarrett has been unavoidably detained for the foreseeable future. We’re going to have to reschedule.”

“This is the last straw, Miss Graham,” Barnhardt said, leaning forward and scowling. “Jarrett is the picture of irresponsibility, and someone else needs to take over the reins of this company before he runs it into the ground. Is he drunk again?”

Megan carefully didn’t react, although the man set her fangs on edge and always had. “He’s working very hard on a special project, and he’s at a delicate point in the research. He really can’t leave it right now.” She couldn’t exactly tell them that Alex was busy saving the life of someone who’d gotten vampirized because they’d hired him off the books to look into some industrial espionage—especially since they knew a couple of board members were in on it. She wasn’t sure which the board would find more scandalous: the vampire part, or the fact that the espionage was an inside job. Best to keep that close to the vest for now.

Others were nodding in agreement with Barnhardt. “I move for a vote of no confidence, and once that passes, we should file an injunction against Jarrett,” he said. “He should be in rehab, not running a company as large as this one.”

Clarke crossed his arms. “Slow down, Barnhardt. You’ve got no guarantee a no-confidence vote would pass.”

“Second the motion,” Peterson said, right on cue. Not that Megan was surprised; she wondered if Barnhardt had some blackmail material on the man, since he had his nose so far up Barnhard’s ass that it would break if Barnhardt stopped suddenly.

The motion passed by a single vote. And all she could do was stand there and fume as the members of the board turned their cameras off one by one.

O O O

Alex and Doc Allen prepped the operating theater, getting defib paddles and a massive shot of adrenaline ready for use. Alex had already hit Ben with a megadose of nanotech and his own stem cells, which, with Janni’s blood, had helped—Ben was at least aware of what was going on around him now.

They’d left Janni in the main lab, over her protests. Alex had no guarantee this would actually work, and he didn’t want her to be here if it killed Ben instead of curing him. She’d been traumatized enough watching him do the procedure to a rabbit.

“You ready?” Alex said, placing heart monitor electrodes.

“Not remotely,” Ben gasped.

“It’s now or never.”

“I know.” Ben closed his eyes and breathed for a few seconds. “A little warning … before you poke me … with that big-ass needle …”

“You sure?” Alex squirted gel on the paddles and rubbed them together. “Wolfing and eating us would be counterproductive.”

“Yeah.” Ben fisted his hands in the blankets. “G’head.”

“Clear,” Alex said, and hit him with the defib.

Ben’s body arched up, and then he fell back to the bed, panting. The heart monitor stuttered briefly, but it wasn’t enough, and Alex increased the current.

“Again.”

Ben swore between clenched teeth as the current coursed through his body. The heart monitor was happier this time.

“Needle,” Alex warned.

“God,” Ben choked out, hair sprouting on his arms and fangs erupting. Doc Allen injected the epinephrine directly into his heart. “Ohholy
shit
 …”

“No wolfing, dammit,” Alex said. “Easy, man.” He kept one eye on the heart monitor and another on Ben. The heart rate increased to two-thirty-three and dropped gradually down to a more respectable and sustainable fifty-two before leveling off.

“Huh,” Doc Allen said. “I think …” He put his stethoscope on and listened to Ben’s chest. “Yeah. This’ll do.”

“Put your teeth back, Ben,” Alex said. “We’re done.”

Ben lay there, gasping through wolf jaws, claws piercing the covers. His fur hadn’t stopped growing, either.

“Ben?” Alex let some alarm creep into his tone, hoping that would bring him back to himself.

It didn’t work. Ben Changed from man to wolf so quickly it seemed almost instantaneous. He stood on the bed, over four hundred pounds of fanged carnivore, in the shreds of his clothing. His ears pinned back, and he let out a growl of equal parts menace and fear.

Alex and Allen backpedaled toward the door to the operating theater. Alex wasn’t sure that leaving Ben in here alone was a good option, but neither was staying and getting eaten. Or bitten.

“Ben!” Alex said. This was not good at all, this was bad. Really bad. “Focus …”

Wolf-Ben whined, flattening his ears. His doglike body language said he was confused and afraid, and Alex swept the adrenaline syringe into a drawer and slammed it shut.

“Doc, could you get Janni in here, please?” Alex said, his voice slightly strangled.

“On it.” Allen closed the door behind himself, leaving Alex, who had forgotten how to breathe, trapped in the room with a giant wolf more scared than he was.

After a few seconds that lasted like years, Janni appeared. She took in the situation at a glance and stepped around Alex, spreading her arms.

Ben flopped down on the bed and rolled onto his back with his paws over his eyes, and Alex remembered to breathe again. That message was unmistakable.

Janni sat next to Ben, stroking his stomach and murmuring nonsense words at him. He turned over and hid his head in her stomach, whimpering.

“Go ahead and go, Alex,” she said quietly. “I’ve got him.”

“You sure?”

“You’re pack, but I’m his mate. I’m sure.”

She’d lived with Ben for a year and a half and known him for six months longer than that. Alex decided to trust her judgment. “I’ll leave the door open a little, though.”

She twitched her head, both hands busy massaging Ben. Alex slipped out, and once he left the room, he needed to find a chair on the double, because his legs were way too wobbly to hold him up anymore.