Perfect Mate (16 page)

“Unless you want our friends up there figuring out there’s another way out of here, I suggest you all keep it shut.”
 

She pulled the door closed, slender muscles standing out under her delicate skin. A pang of guilt hit Jack; he hadn’t realized how heavy the thing was. At least three wolves, himself included, started to step forward to help, but she’d already managed it. The door hit the frame with a resonant clang.

“Shit.”
 

Everyone in the small corridor froze. Jack expanded all his senses. Around him, he could hear the thunder of Lillian’s heart, a rapid counter-point to the slower, deeper beats of the wolf pack; the sound of water rushing through the pipes that ran under their feet; and somewhere overhead, the metallic tick-tock of an old-style clock.
 

Nothing happened. No shouts. No thunder of running feet. After a few long moments, he released the breath he’d been holding.
 

“I think we’re good. They must be too far away to have heard it. And human hearing is crap anyway…no offense.”

Lillian shrugged. “None taken. At least I don’t smell like wet dog.”

On cue, the wolves around her all started to sniff their armpits, trying to hide what they were doing with coughs or running their hands through their hair. Apart from Nic, who just glared at the shorter woman. Jack grinned as she caught his gaze, her eyes alight with amusement. He didn’t know how she’d done it, but she’d figured out his pack quicker than he had. From scolding them to teasing insults, she was spot on.

“She’s just messing with you. Quit screwing around and get moving. After you, my lady.”

Primly, she stepped past him. Pausing at the top of the stairs, she looked at the heavy, baton-like flashlight in her hand. A flick of her thumb on the switch later, the stairwell was bathed in strong, white light.

“Arrrrgggghh!” Darce warbled. “Bright light. Bright light!”

Jack sighed. There was always one.

“Ignore him,” he advised when Lillian looked back in concern. Reaching out, he swatted his second in command around the back of the head. “He’s an ass.”

“Ahhh, okay.” She started down the steps, the flashlight highlighting the steps in front of her. “Watch how you go down here, some of the steps are wet.”

Lillian led them down the steps and into a short tunnel-like corridor. Although it only had one door, the tunnel continued into a dead end. At Jack’s curious look, she shrugged again.
 

“There were some notes on the old plans about extending this section, but then the original owner died. His son decided not to continue with the development.”

She paused with her hand on the door in front of her and looked over her shoulder. “He’s the one mainly responsible for all the things we keep down here. Equipment,” she clarified as a couple of the wolves frowned. “From the darkest times of the hospital’s history.”

She pushed open the door and ushered them inside. Jack was last through the door, making sure that no one could creep up on them from behind. Lillian might have locked the door, but they had a Blood up there and Jack didn’t trust those things as far as he could throw them. Bloods and Lycans, born from the same research but enemies as soon as they’d come into existence.

As soon as he stepped through into the storage room, he stopped, eyes wide and all senses open as he looked around. It was full of medical-type junk, leaving only a few walkways through the clutter. Lillian pulled the door to behind them and panned the flashlight around. Shackles hung next to straightjackets on the wall, near a bathtub with a barred lid that left only a gap for someone’s neck.
 

“Ice-bath therapy. Non-consensual.”
 

Lillian’s voice was quiet and composed as she explained each item the light fell upon. “Restraint chairs…restraint box. Patients were locked into these things for hours. You can still see the scratches they left on the arms of the chairs.”

She moved farther into the room, the wolves spanning out around her, unable to resist having a poke around. Jack paused by one of the chairs to look at the gouges in the wood of the arms. A dark stain farther down caught his attention. He knelt and ran his hand over it. The scent of old blood rose like a fetid cloud. He coughed to clear his lungs and stood. Someone had died in that chair, beaten until their blood ran down the legs and stained the wood.
 

He shuddered. And the project called him and his men animals.

“What are these? They look like ice picks.”

He turned to find Darce holding up a small metal pole that did indeed look very much like an icepick. In fact, it looked so much like one that he flicked a glance at the stuff around Darce, expecting to see some snowshoes or crampons.
 

Lillian moved to his side to look. Unlike the wolves, she didn’t have enhanced night vision. With the residual light from the flashlight, the room was lit up like daylight for Jack and his men.
 

“Ah, yes. That’s a nasty little surgical tool. It’s an orbitoclast.”

Darce looked puzzled, turning it over in his hand and testing the point. “Surgical? It’s not even sharp.”

“Doesn’t need to be. It’s for performing lobotomies.”

Nic, over the other side of the room, chuckled. “Well, Darce’ll be safe then. His brain’s in his d—”

“Bite me.” Darce cut her off, shooting a glare across the room hot enough to flay even wolf flesh from bones. Jack sighed. Great, the female wolf was even getting to the normally levelheaded lieutenant.

“Nah, you’d enjoy it too much. You and your fan—”

“
Enough
!” Jack’s snarl cut across the forming argument. “In case you two hadn’t noticed, this isn’t a walk around the local museum with tea and fucking cookies afterwards. Now get your shit together and let’s move out.”

Neither wolf would look at him, turning their faces away as he walked between them. As he expected. Neither were ready, or wanted, to challenge his authority as Alpha. That was a decision that would land them in a world of hurt and they both knew it.

“What
is
up with you?” he turned to hiss at Darce. “Nic I can understand. She’s been on the edge since she was turned, but you? You’ve got more freaking sense.”

Before Darce could answer him, there was a low snarl from behind him. Jack turned, expecting to see her squaring up to Darce, only to find Nic backing up with sheer terror on her face. She tripped and fell on her ass but carried on backpedaling, her feet scrabbling on the slick flagstones. A low-level keen of distress escaped her throat.
 

“Shit!” If there was anything he recognized instantly, it was a wolf about to lose it. “Sanders, grab her.”

Jack moved like lightening, sliding his bigger body between Nic and whatever had set her off. In the same instant, Sanders hauled her to her feet, easily wrapping the woman in his arms.
 

Cool, calm and collected, Sanders had always been able to deal with the volatile female. Jack suspected it was because the guy preferred men. There was no question of him being interested in her on a male-female level.
 

She turned and buried her face against his neck, her shoulders shaking. She was crying. Nic, the queen-bitch of the pack, was crying. Eyes wide, Jack turned to find out what had made her crack.
 

At the sight of the wooden box, he drew a sharp breath. Instinctively his wolf snarled within, yammering to get away. To run from the foul thing before he could be caught and forced back inside it. The size of a coffin, its sides were made of bars, and the base a thin mattress over yet more bars. Cramped, there was enough room for an adult human to lie down but not turn over when the lid was closed and locked.
 

That was the point. It was designed to hold its victim immobile and helpless for however long deemed necessary. The Project used them when they made his kind. A newer version, not like this wooden one, but one made of silver and steel. They locked their “subjects” within the things, and with just one drop of LY16…that was all it took.
 

Jack closed his eyes as memory threatened to overwhelm him. A room with row after row of metal cages…fighting both the drugs and the guards as they fought to trap him in one…flat on his back, looking through the bars as the needle came closer…the power and pain as the virus raced through his body…screams of agony as the injection forced some of the subjects to change right there, the metal bars not giving as their suddenly larger forms were crushed within.

A growl rumbled up from his soul, finding voice through the medium of his chest and throat.
 

“No. We are not slaves to fear.”
 

Opening his eyes, he looked at the hated object again. “It’s a box, just a box. Nothing that can hold us. Nothing can ever hold us anymore.”

“This is the way out. I’m sorry, I should have warned you about that… I didn’t think.”
 

Lillian’s voice was a welcome balm as she unlocked the last door and opened it. The scent of earth and rain filled the small room, the smell of the forest and freedom carried to them on a gentle breeze.
 

“No, it’s not your fault. You had no way of knowing.”
 

Shaking his head, Jack watched as Sanders, flanked by the other members of the pack, half-carried the shaking female through the door and into the darkness beyond.
 

“There’s only one tunnel, with steps at the end,” Lillian explained, her lovely eyes filled with concern for the other woman. “Will she be okay?”

“Yeah, once she scents freedom, she’ll shift and run. Fight or flight syndrome. She’s all front. Really, she’s the most fragile of all of us. Mentally, that is. Apart from this idiot.”
 

Jack nodded as Darce joined them, still twirling the orbitoclast in his fingers. The rest of the wolves had followed Sanders and Nic to secure the other end of the tunnel.
 

“He’s just impressed he can lick his own balls now.”

Darce grinned. “Fucking too right. Every cloud’s got a silver lining!”

The sound of someone banging on the door at the top of the stairs froze the three of them in their tracks. Lillian gasped, her eyes wide in the light cast by the flashlight and her knuckles wide around it.
 

“Hey, there are tracks down here. Someone’s opened this door.” The voice was faint but audible. Suddenly, gunfire sounded.
 

“Shit, he’s shooting the lock out.” Adrenalin hit Darce’s system at Mach 1, pumping him full of energy and waking the rarely slumbering beast inside. Before either could argue, he bundled Lillian into Jack’s arms and pushed them both toward the tunnel door.
 

“Get her out of here, I’ll deal with this.”

“You sure, man?”
 

Jacks eyes mirrored his dilemma. The need to protect the tiny woman in his arms warred with his duty. The fact he didn’t like leaving one of his men behind was obvious, but Darce knew that anyway.
 

Whenever they went on operational, the captain was always the first in and the last out. He took the kind of damage most of them could only dream of, and still came out kicking ass. Darce had no idea how he did it.
 

“Totally. Now get out of here before I kick your ass and take your woman.”

Jack snorted, amusement flooding his features as he stepped back to allow Lillian to enter the tunnel ahead of him. “When you’re big enough. Catch you on the flip side, man. Remember…” He tapped his temple. “Think human.”

Darce grinned as Jack ducked into the tunnel and out of sight. The grin widened as he closed the door and the room plunged into darkness.
 

“
Fuck
thinking human.”

Even with the light gone, Darce could see easily in the pitch black, yet more proof that he wasn’t anything close to human anymore. He reached out to snag something he’d seen earlier, and headed for the door. Once there, he stopped stock-still and listened. Outside, booted feet clunked down the steps. He could tell the guy was trying to be stealthy. It made no difference. He could hear the human as clearly as if he had decided to tap-dance in size twenty clown shoes.

Yet another plus for the furry side.

Marshaling his breathing, he concentrated. The darkness around him filled with the soft sound of joints popping and flesh sliding. He wasn’t quite as adept at part-changing as Jack, but he could manage to shift his hands into grotesque almost-paws.
 

Snick…snick…snick.
 

Ignoring the pain, Darce felt a sense of satisfaction as his claws descended one by one. He’d never get tired of his ability to shift forms. Some of the guys had taken a while to get used to it, fearing the pain that always accompanied it. Not him. Sure, it hurt like a bitch, but it was an addictive hurt, like getting an armful of tattoos. No…better.
 

“This is fucking shit. They can’t have come down here.”
 

The whisper came as the human soldier paused on the other side of the door. Darce flexed his fingers, feeling the claws on the ends and smiled. Just a few inches of metal separated him from his prey. His heart pounded with the thrill of the hunt, and his sense sharpened. He could hear the thunder of the soldier’s heartbeat, the scent of nervous sweat and barely controlled fear.