Wolfen (17 page)

“Don’t you dare,” Sinna snapped, and Aiden wasn’t sure which
one of them she was talking to, but it brought Bryce’s head up.

Aiden took a deep breath for calm. “Fine. Let her go.”

“No!”

Klaus chuckled. “I think not. A man in my position needs collateral.”

“It’s not gonna be her.”

Sinna struggled. “Stop it!”

“Ya, this is a good plan. Bring my daughter back to me, und
we will trade.”

Bryce snarled.

Aiden wasn’t too far from spazzing out either, but one of them
needed a level head. Right now, that meant him. So he pushed it all down, kept
his gaze on Klaus, and calmly said, “See this guy here?” He nodded at Bryce.
“He’s the reason humanity took a sharp dive in the digits not that long ago.
You don’t want him here when he’s like this, and he won’t go anywhere without
her.”

“We will see.” Klaus gestured for his men to lift Sinna up.
They were about to separate them; the quickest possible way to snap Bryce’s
chain.

“Yeah, you will,” Aiden said quickly. “And it will be your
last sight on this Earth. Trust me. I’ve seen it happen.”

Bryce was so far gone his every breath rumbled on a growl.
He was staring hard at the men who held Sinna, straining against his binds with
a slow, steady pressure of determination.

“Come on, Klaus, you know how this works. You brought us
into this world, remember? You know exactly what we’re capable of.”

One of the men holding Sinna pushed the tip of his knife
into the side of her neck, a millimeter from puncturing her jugular. Sinna gasped
and froze, eyes squeezed shut as she tried hard to keep very still.

Aiden shoulder-checked Bryce, the only thing he could do to
break his brother’s mindless focus, and even that was like slapping a lion’s
ass with a fly swatter. “Keep cutting on her, and you can kiss your pulse
goodbye.”

The guard looked to Klaus, who nodded for him to stand down.
Crisis averted. For about five more seconds.

“I’m offering you a deal,” Aiden said.

“I’m listening.”

“I’ll stay—”

“No!” Sinna cried. “We do not separate!”

“I will stay,” Aiden repeated, glaring her down. “You’ll
give my companions our supplies and weapons back, and they’ll go get your
daughter. When they return, we’ll trade. The girl for me and the rest of the
Wolfen here.” There were more than just the chained females living in the
compound. Aiden could scent them. Just like old times, they were caged animals
kept for the humans’ protection and entertainment. He couldn’t blame Bryce for
wanting to go apeshit in this place. But if he did, none of them would make it.
Aiden couldn’t let that happen.

“What are you doing?” Sinna demanded.

That same question burned in Bryce’s eyes when he turned to
Aiden. Bryce
wanted
this,
wanted
to tear into something so badly,
his whole body shook with the effort to hold still. He wouldn’t hesitate to
unleash that pent up wrath a second time without a single care for
consequences, because somehow his little brother had taken it into his head
that’s all he was good for. It was Aiden’s fault; he’d never been able to
convince him otherwise. But if Bryce did this, even if Aiden and Sinna
survived, it would break him. For good this time.

Not on my watch.
He forced a smile, hoping it looked
less pathetic than it felt. “My turn now, brother. I’ve got this.”

I think of life as a wheel. Sometimes you get all the way
to the top, and things are good. Then you take one step too many, and fall
headlong into the dirt. You get buried in the muck so deep, you feel like
there’s no way out, and the longer you’re there, the more of yourself you lose.
Purpose is the first to go. Dignity follows close behind.

I’ve been down here for a while now. Nothing but dirt and
shit everywhere I look. I wear it. I breathe it. I choke it down, until the
foul taste doesn’t bother me anymore. And I can’t say a word. At the moment,
I’m not even a person in my own right. I’m not Desiree, I’m the letter D.

But the wheel’s still turning, and it’s not over yet. I
keep my mouth shut and watch, bracing for the inevitable. It won’t be long,
either. I can already see the juggernaut taking shape. What’s come up is about
to go back down, and this time it’ll take all of Haven with it.

I can hardly wait.

~

A piercing shout outside made Desiree shove to her feet in alarm.
Sharp pain cut through her right thigh, and she bit her lip, hobbling quickly
toward the door to see what had happened.
I’ll regret that later, she
thought, rubbing the sting away.
Oh yes, she’d regret it—big time.

Dare and Arik crossed big guns in front of her, and Desiree
couldn’t stop in time, falling against the barrier. The guards knew to expect
her lack of balance; they gave a little so she wouldn’t hurt herself, but then
pushed out, making her stumble back a step and a half.

“Where do you think you’re going, Tripod?”

Tripod?
The freckled redhead, Dare, had never been
the sharpest tool in the shed, but you’d think he’d at least be able to count
to two.

A couple of weeks back, the guards had been assigned to
shadow her. For her own protection, Klaus had said. Sometimes Desiree thought
he really did consider her to be the village idiot. She was watched ‘round the
clock, inside a well-guarded fortress populated by over three hundred people at
last count. You didn’t do that to
protect
someone; you did it to
control
them.

“I just want to see outside.”

“None doing.” Arik shook his head. “You just shuffle on back
to your cushy little chair and wait for the boss.”

Desiree gritted her teeth. “I’m not going out there. I just
want to look.” She pushed against the crossed guns. “That’s still allowed,
isn’t it?”

Dare shoved her back again. With her weight on her bad leg,
the force moved everything out of alignment, and Desiree gasped, flailing her
arms for balance. A tight pinch in her lower back made her wince.
So going
to regret this later.

Dare giggled. “This is fun.”

Taking a deep breath for patience, Desiree went toe to toe
with him. “Remember the last time you picked on me? Huh? They couldn’t peel you
away from the latrines for three days. You wanna be back there again? Because I
have no problem with that.”

Dare gulped, but covered his unease with a careless smirk.
“You won’t do shit.”

“Try me.”

Arik rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, let her look.”

“The boss said—”

“The boss has bigger things to worry about right now.”

Dare flipped Arik off, but let Desiree through. She opened
the door a couple of inches to see outside.

The commons had been cleared out, but Desiree knew most of
Haven’s residents were doing the exact same thing she was right now: peeking
out through doors and windows, noses pressed to glass, hands clutching a weapon
just in case. Klaus had opted for a show of force. He’d basically pulled all of
their defenders off of the walls, no doubt hoping to fool the Wolfen into
thinking there were hundreds more around, but the truth was all of their
remaining fire power was currently aimed at three creatures who had no business
being there in the first place.

Klaus was using the female to force the males to his
bidding. It was an old, cruel trick, but it worked every time. Words were
exchanged, and he smiled. The big boss got what he wanted—again.

“Looks like the game is on,” Arik said above her. “Might
wanna step back, Gimpy. They don’t look housebroken.”

Desiree glared at him, but didn’t rise to his bait. Unlike
Dare, Arik actually had a few spare brain cells to rub together. “I’ll take
that under advisement,” she replied, and ducked back to the door jamb to check
on progress.

Shit!

Klaus was coming this way.

Desiree slammed the door and hurried back to her seat,
enduring Dare’s taunting chants of “Go, go, go!” as her right thigh and lower
back weathered the worst of the pain. She breathed through it, like she always
did. No sense in crying over something that couldn’t be fixed. You adapted, or
you died. There was no room for weakness anymore.

She’d just made it to her seat when Klaus strolled in, chin
high, hands clasped at his back.

“So what’s the story?” Arik asked, knowing as well as
Desiree that Klaus required a rapt audience, which she rarely was.

Klaus waggled his eyebrows. “We will have a retrieval team.”

So the old bastard might finally get his precious baby back.
Had Klaus told his new best friends the whole story of why he needed a retrieval
team in the first place? Odds were, not. Full disclosure wasn’t exactly Klaus’
style. Megalomaniacal sociopathy and brute force? That was more his speed.

“The blond volunteered to stay behind as collateral. The
others will fetch Helena.”

Alarm spiked through Desiree, and she looked into the
microscope to hide her expression. A male Wolfen?
Here?

“Still no names, huh?”

“No,” Klaus answered, clearly put out by it. “But I can take
an educated guess. What do you think, Dee?”

I think you’re crazy, and it’s going to get us all
killed.
“They look to be in their late twenties, which makes them first
generation fabricants,” she answered, but didn’t look up. “All three share the
classic Wolfen markings: height, breadth, symmetry, and musculature. Beyond that,
the dark male’s bone structure is similar to the blond, which could mean a
closer genetic link than most others.”

“Brothers,” Klaus confirmed.

That brought her head up. Desiree frowned. Wolfen did not
have familial structures. Not the first-gens, at least. They’d all been
bioengineered individually, and though they shared certain genetic markers,
great care had been taken to avoid the possibility of future inbreeding.
Unless… “You don’t mean…?”

“Wait outside,” Klaus ordered the guards. His tone made her
very uneasy. When they’d left, Klaus stalked closer to Desiree, staring at her
in that way she hated, like he could see into her mind and didn’t find anything
worth getting out of bed over. He had trained her mind, so he thought he owned
it. “You have read all my notes from Chernobyl, decades worth of research und
results. There fos only one time in all of our records when one human base cell
fos used twice concurrently. Confirm.”

Desiree’s frown deepened as she mentally leafed through the
surfeit of scientific facts. “But that would make them—”

“Alfa Seven und Beta Twelf.”

She gaped. “And you’re still going to keep one of them
here?” Was he serious? Those two were the MacGyvers of their litter! A whole
staff of orderlies had had trouble keeping an eye on them in a fully functional
den when they’d been preteens!

“Waste not, want not. An opportunity like this might not
come again, ya? It should not be squandered. We still have two first-gen
females in storage,” he said, as if cataloging their supplies of toilet paper.
“We should make use of them while they are still viable. I want you to take a
more proactive role in—”

Desiree closed her eyes and sucked in a sharp breath through
her nose. “I will
not
—”

Klaus slammed his hands onto her table so hard glassware rattled
and a candle fell over, sputtering out. “You will do what you are told!” he
yelled, spraying her with spittle. Tiny veins lined the whites of his deep blue
eyes as his volatile temper snapped. The pupils, though fogging over with
cataracts, still had enough fire to make Desiree shrink back.

Hazardous material. Proceed with caution.
“You may be
able to sedate the females to make them compliant,” she said, trying to sound
reasonable, “but how do you propose to make a fully grown Wolfen male perform against
his will?”

“You assume he won’t be willing?”

If ever there was a sure bet. “I think he is Wolfen.” She
shrugged. “That alone will make forcing the issue futile.”

Klaus nodded thoughtfully, which gave her hope.

“Moreover,” she continued, “Alpha and Beta were the genetic
peak of the study, and marked as high-level protectors at age ten. You won’t
subjugate instinct that powerful. He won’t be controlled.”

Klaus smiled, and Desiree’s hopes plummeted. She’d gone too
far; she’d lost him.

No…that smile said she’d never had him to begin with. He was
toying with her again, letting her ramble until she’d proved his point, without
even knowing what it was.

She’d played right into his hand.

Klaus straightened, hands sliding off the edge of her desk.
He went around the far side and opened the glass cabinet where only the most
dangerous substances were stored. “Den I suppose we only have one option
available to us.”

Desiree’s eyes widened. She started shaking her head in
denial.

Far in the back on the third shelf sat two stoppered test
tubes labeled ZX-127, each with twenty milliliters of murky red liquid inside.
Klaus drew one out, watching her face to better savor her horror and disgust.
He placed the test tube on the rack right in front of her and waited.

“No.” She forced the word out through teeth gritted so hard,
her jaw began to cramp. If this was what he meant by “proactive role” he could
forget it! No way!

“It fos not a question, my dear,” he replied softly. “When
the time comes, you will do what is expected of you. You will do it
efficiently, und wisout argument, und you will
sank
me for de
opportunity to be a useful member of Haven’s community!”

“And if I die in the attempt, it will be an honorable end,
right? You’ll give me a grand funeral with all deference paid, because it will
have been a heroic death. A worthy sacrifice for the betterment of Haven, just
as you always wanted for me.”

“If such a thing should happen, it will only prove that you were
never strong enough to survive,” he said, as if it was all her fault. “I gave
you every opportunity to be somesing.”

Your slave!

“I gave you the tools to change everysing it means to be
you. But I can only open de door, my girl. You have to choose to walk sru it.”
And
you’d better make the right choice. Because if you don’t, you will be of no
more use to me.

But Klaus didn’t need to remind her of that. The lesson,
like all of the others he’d imparted over the years, had been seared into her
memory—and her flesh—for all time. Desiree had one purpose in Haven, and one
alone: to continue Klaus’ work and legacy.

“You
will not
disobey me in this.”

She flinched, and ducked her head. “I will not disobey,” she
repeated, the words burning out of her.

“You will do what you are told. Say it, Desiree. You will do
this, or you will wish I fed you to the converts.”

In an instant, Desiree was seven years old again, clutching
Klaus’ neck as he stood atop the barricade with a horde of converts bearing
down on them. He’d stood there, and
deliberated
. Not whether to toss her
down there, but whether she’d be enough to distract the converts until the
gunmen could reload. Desiree curled her nails into her sore leg and embraced
the pain for what it was: a reminder she was still alive—despite him. “I will
do it.”

Klaus tapped his fingers on her desk expectantly.

“I will do as I am told…Father.”

Satisfied he’d made his point, Klaus walked out of her lab
without another word.