Howling Mad: A paranormal wolf shifter romance (Badlands Book 2) (8 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Byron started across the room towards Professor Stanhope, but when Naomi was grabbed from behind she gave a startled yelp, and he twisted suddenly at the sound.

Stanhope scurried away, pushing a cameraperson to the floor. She fell, tangled in her heavy equipment. A colleague tried to pull her to her feet, and he went over too. Stanhope kicked him in the head as he passed, furious that they were impeding his progress.

Naomi wriggled in Magnus the bear’s protective hold and shouted, “Byron! He’s getting away!”

Stanhope wasn’t fast and he wasn’t strong, but he was vicious. He fought and elbowed his way through the crush, and nobody tried to stop him – they’d seen what he’d done to Anton, who was slumped against the wall, dark blood oozing between his fingers as he clutched his stomach. His eyes were glassy and faraway.

Gus tried to force his way through the mob of panicking people to unlock the doors, but they were too frightened to listen to him. A woman screamed and lashed out at him, and with a flush of shame Naomi remembered her own reaction to Gus’s wolf man appearance when she’d first seen him in the funhouse.

He looked around wildly before fixing on the big picture window. He pushed through the crowd, and hit the reinforced glass with a massive blow. It cracked, but didn’t break.

Naomi tugged on Magnus’s fur, and they headed towards the window, where the enormous bear added his strength to the carnival wolf man’s, and they broke the glass out of its frame in jagged, misshapen chunks.

The two men – one in bear form and one trapped in a shape that was neither human nor animal – began guiding panicked people out through the window. When the reporter with the bad toupee gibbered and tried to scramble away, Gus picked him up and pitched him out bodily. He’d suffer nothing worse than a few bruises and wounded dignity.

Byron had shifted into wolf form and he was fighting alongside a sleek golden cat patterned with inky fingerprints. It must be Felix in his leopard form. The two guards who’d pulled their Tasers were putting up a brave fight, and for a moment Naomi felt bad for them. Perhaps they hadn’t known what kind of people they were working for. After all, she hadn’t known what her own father was involved in.

But they’d heard the truth, like everyone else, and they’d chosen which side to fight on. One of them thrust his stun gun at Byron, whose fur stood on end, crackling with dancing blue sparks of electricity. But he didn’t go down. He snarled and leapt, and the guard was thrown against the wall, hands palm out, wrists crossed to protect his throat from Byron’s jaws.

Felix swiped at the other man with a huge, velvety paw, shredding his uniform shirt into ribbons.

Finally the door into the rest of the facility was broken open and wardens Jim and Pete ran in, silver handcuffs and firearms at the ready.

“Thank god,” blubbered the guard Byron had backed against the wall.

Jim nodded at the snarling wolf. “Come on, Byron,” he said calmly. “Let me do my job.”

“What are you waiting for? Shoot the fucker in the head,” the other guard yelled, his voice blurred with snot and fear. Then he goggled as Jim wrenched his wrists down and slapped on the cuffs.

“Our job is to take care of the patients,” said Pete. “Maybe you didn’t get that far in the training manual. Jim had the same problem, so he got help with the hard parts.”

“Right,” said Jim. “Pete’s missus is always helping me with my hard parts. Did you know you’ve wet yourself?”

Other guards and wardens flooded in behind them, but before they could do anything to contain the chaos, pulsating red lights splashed the walls with color and a robotic voice shrieked a warning.

Security breach… Lockdown underway… Security breach… Lockdown underway…

The guards turned as the sounds of a brewing riot echoed through the facility. The sound of happy laughter, incongruous against the emergency alarms, rose hysterically and contorted into a shrill scream. Naomi looked around wildly for Professor Stanhope and couldn’t see him.

“It’s a distraction!” she yelled over the noise, but then she heard a series of clangs – the cells unlocking again – and the recorded voice changed.

Red alert… Lockdown protocols failed… Red alert… Lockdown protocols failed…

“Holy fuck, no…” One of the guards panicked and discharged his weapon, and there was a savage growl and he was yanked through the doorway like a rag doll.

“Get the doors closed,” Felix yelled. “Call for backup.”

“What backup?” Jim and Pete had fought their way across the space and were putting their considerable weight into forcing the door to the rest of the facility shut again.

“How should I know? The cops. The army. The Neighborhood Watch – anyone crazy enough to come.”

There was a growl and a yelp, and all eyes turned to the center of the room, where Byron was standing, hackles raised. His snout was wrinkled, exposing long, sharp fangs, and he was directing the full, intimidating intensity of his silvery gaze on a trembling jackal.

Magnus, back in human form and wearing a torn-down curtain as a makeshift sarong, said, “Wait…” He took a step towards the pair, but Naomi put her hand on his forearm to stop him. She knew what the big bear was thinking. It wasn’t a fair match. There would be no honor in Byron killing her father. Magnus wanted to stop the wolf shifter before his anger made him a murderer.

But Naomi trusted him to do what was right.

For the first time, she saw her father for what he was. A coward. A liar. A scavenger. In his jackal form, he shivered and cowered, hunched miserably in on himself.

Byron gave a contemptuous snort and turned away.

Smoke was curling beneath the door now, and the sounds of fighting drowned out even the insistent alarm…but with the door closed, the noises seemed muted, as if the people in this room were in their own little isolated bubble.

Dr. Atkins slunk away, low to the ground, as though afraid the big wolf would stop him. Then he scrambled into a run and leapt at the smashed-open window, but he misjudged. He made it only halfway.

In his panic he shifted back into human form and wriggled and twisted, trying to crawl outside.

A tiny, ominous noise made him roll and look upwards, and there was just enough time for his eyes to widen in horror before a huge shard of glass sliced down like a guillotine blade, cutting deep into his belly.

Naomi screamed.

She ran to his side, weeping frantically, cutting her fingers on the glass as her hands fluttered hopelessly over her father’s pinned body.

He caught hold of her hands and held them. His skin was already cold with shock, and she wept harder.

“Please…Naomi…” he whispered. He took a shuddering breath, pain etched on his face.

“Daddy, don’t talk,” she pleaded. “We can fix this. We can.”

“No,” he said. His hands trembled in hers. “Listen. I’m not a good man. I’ve done a lot of bad things. And I don’t regret them. Except for one. Stanhope never had a daughter. He didn’t understand.”

Naomi cried harder. “Daddy, I forgive you. Please don’t die.”

He breathed out, and he didn’t breathe in again.

Byron pulled her away and into his arms. She struck out at him blindly, sobbing wretchedly. “No! No, he can’t die. Someone must know how to help him. Fetch Professor Stanhope! He can turn people into wolves and make them super strong and give them magic powers – he’ll be able to fix it. Make him fix it!”

But Dr. Atkins was beyond fixing.

And Professor Stanhope was gone.

Chapter Nineteen

The Zoo soon had more visitors – paparazzi, law enforcement, vigilantes, family members, the Council for Shifter Affairs and assorted gawkers. But their arrival meant more chaos, not less.

People were being taken away in ambulances and squad cars, and in at least one case a sheriff’s deputy and a paramedic had come to blows over which it should be. Statements were being taken by reporters posing as police, and given by people who hadn’t been present for the fight, or patients who weren’t even present in this reality. A bemused-looking young fireman was following the Swanson twins around with a fire extinguisher. They were flirting outrageously with him.

Stanhope was gone, and so were several of Dynamic Earth’s scientists. Nobody knew whether they’d gone willingly or the professor had kidnapped or coerced them. There was little doubt now that he’d been the puppet-master behind Dynamic Earth’s experiments. The labs had been trashed and the paperwork scattered, but it seemed certain that some of the experimental subjects were missing too. Experimental subjects…Byron shook his head. People – people like him, who’d been snatched away from their lives and treated like specimens on a microscope slide.

And when Stanhope had sabotaged the security system and the cell doors had once again swung open, dozens of prisoner had escaped. For some of them, he was glad. Jimmy the Chameleon was nowhere to be seen…though with Jimmy, that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t there. But others were genuinely dangerous.

Not everyone who was locked up in the Zoo was like Byron. Some were completely feral, taken over by their animal natures. Others were completely sane…and that wasn’t a good thing. They were cold-blooded killers and remorseless psychopaths. Others were sweet and well-meaning, like the Swanson twins…and like the frail old firebugs, should never be allowed to leave high-security confinement.

Search teams were going out. A howl went up from a pack of werewolf trackers, and a chopper went overhead, the
thwap-thwap-thwap
of its rotor blades whipping ripples through the grass.

Nobody noticed when the Road Wolves pulled up outside the grounds. Byron spoke quietly to one of them, indicating Anton’s body where it lay on the grass beside Dr. Atkins’. The big, muscular man dressed in black leather and attitude headed over towards a harried-looking man in scrubs. He intended to explain that he didn’t care what the paperwork said, Anton would be returning to his family.

Byron wrapped his arms around Naomi. He briefly rested his forehead against hers. Her eyes were red from crying, and she clung to him.

As he drew her against his side and led her towards the waiting motorcycles, she cast a last miserable glance back at her father. He’d been ripped away from her twice in the last few days. First she’d lost the man she’d thought he was, and then he’d been taken from her altogether, and she was hurting. Even though she knew what he’d done, love couldn’t just be switched off.

She clung to Byron as they wound along the roads, putting miles and hours between them and the Zoo. When they reached the carnival grounds, he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the trailer.

She didn’t protest as he stripped off her clothes, and acquiesced sleepily as he tucked her beneath the covers and lay down next to her, curling his body around her. He didn’t think he’d sleep, but he drifted off listening to the soft, rhythmic sound of her breathing.

He woke in the night to the subtle gleam of light in her dark eyes. She’d turned in his arms, and when he smiled at her, she pressed her mouth against his.

Wordlessly, he pulled her against him. Her lips parted, and he kissed her with soft, exploratory tenderness. Their tongues darted and flickered against each other, and she gave a needy moan, wrapping her arms around his neck and tugging at him until he rolled on top of her.

She stroked his back sleepily, the tips of her fingers ticklish, and he settled between her parted thighs as her palms traced lower. She was warm from sleep and her skin smelled of that same scent that had driven him so wild back in the Zoo. Now he was free of that place, and he’d brought the only good thing about it away with him.

He licked the curve of her ear and gently bit her throat, smiling against her skin as she groaned when he stroked the curve of her stomach and the angle of her hip. The darkness was intoxicating and intimate, and he explored the shape of her lips with his own and shivered when he felt the sweep of her dark eyelashes against his cheek. He guided himself between the petals of her sex and found her slippery and ready for him, as if she’d been dreaming of him. He barely managed to bite back a feral groan. She wriggled, telling him wordlessly how much she wanted him.

It was a smooth, achingly slow slide, and by the time he was all the way inside her they were both breathless and whispering nonsense words of encouragement to each other. Byron stroked her hair back from her face and stared down into her dark, pansy-like eyes. The pupils had blossomed wide with desire.

He shuddered and groaned, closing his eyes as he started to move, concentrating on the slick feel of her, and the heat of her skin, and the rapid drumming of her heart. Her breath came in little gasps and moans, and every thread and ribbon of sound wrapped around his spine and pulled him deeper into her.

Naomi wrapped her arms around his back. She stroked the damp curls at the nape of his neck and dug her fingers into his shoulders. Her breathing was ragged and she arched up to meet his thrusts, rolling her hips and whimpering each time he withdrew.

His climax clenched low in his body and he gasped as he struggled to hold back. His brow furrowed and he gritted his teeth, making muffled, agonized sounds of self-restraint as he trembled at the point of no return.

Then Naomi cried out, convulsing in his arms, her pussy clenching around his cock in a rolling wave of spasms, and he came. It was blinding. Shattering. He slid his arm beneath her arched spine and held her even closer as he groaned and spilled himself in her body.

* * * * *

Naomi listened to Byron’s heartbeat. Its strong, reassuring
thud-thud
was a promise that whatever happened – however crazy the world went around them – he would be her steady rhythm. She raised her head as the peace of the night was broken by the off-key musical tinkle of the merry-go-round.

“It’s the middle of the night,” she said warily. Why…?”

But Byron just grinned and sat up. “Come on,” he said. “It’s nothing to worry about. It’s something happy…I hope.”

They dressed quickly in the dark and opened the door of the trailer. Naomi peeped out cautiously. The night air was pleasantly cool and the smells of popcorn and candy apples seemed stronger than ever. The music from the carousel drifted through the night.

Byron took her hand in his and pulled her away from the trailer and towards the center of the fairground, ignoring her questions. The look on his face was happy and excited, his silver eyes glowing. He seemed a different person to the wolf she’d seen at bay in the back of his cage, those pale irises haunted.

They rounded the edge of the funhouse and Naomi gasped.

The whole carnival had turned out. They were gathered around the carousel, an expectant audience. Auntie Mae was there with her blue-dyed skin. Uncle James had donned his spotty suspenders, and his lugubrious face split into a big, rubbery grin at the sight of them. A spurt of water jetted from a big fake flower in his lapel. The Road Wolves revved their engines, like a muted chorus of cheers.

Many of the carnies wore black armbands in mourning for Anton, but they were smiling as they looked at Byron and Naomi, hand in hand.

Naomi turned to Byron. “What’s this?” she asked. She couldn’t help smiling too as she looked up into his face.

He shrugged. “We’ve got things to do before we can get married properly,” he said. “People to find. People to help… People to stop.”

She must have looked stunned, because he added, “I mean…that’s if you want to. If you think… I just thought, if you’ll have me…” He was tripping over his words, at a loss for what to say. It was sweeter than any silver-tongued speech he could have made.

Auntie Mae stepped forward. “What my idiot boy is trying to say is that there’s an old carnival tradition. When a couple fall in love, they ride the carousel at midnight. It makes you man and wife more surely than any silly old piece of paper.” She waved her hand, dismissing the idea of traditional marriage.

“I don’t know what to say,” Naomi whispered. Even after all the sad and scary and horrible things that had happened, she was so happy she wanted to cry.

“Say yes,” said Mae. “And just so you know, tradition has it that if you ever want to dissolve the marriage, you ride the carousel backwards.”

“Don’t tell her that!” Byron smacked his forehead with his palm. “Oh man, this proposal has turned into a literal freak show.”

“Hey, less of that,” said The Incredible Tattooed Lady. “You aren’t too big to be put over my knee, you know.”

“Sorry, Auntie Mae.” Byron looked at the carousel. “Does this thing even run backwards?” he asked.

Uncle James took Auntie Mae’s hand gently in his. They looked at each other with the love light in their eyes. “We’ve never cared to find out,” he said.

Naomi looked at Byron. His face was so beautiful in the strange, artificial carnival light. His eyes were as pale as the moon rising behind him, and there was no madness there at all – not unless you counted the crazy spark of love.

“We don’t need to know either,” she said.

And as the carnival folks laughed and cheered, and the Road Wolves whooped and high-fived, Byron climbed onto a painted carousel horse and lifted Naomi onto his lap and kissed her. The merry-go-round began to turn, the music began to play, and the carved horses bobbed up and down as the carousel spun them into their future.

THE END