Authors: Sylvia Frost
DANIEL
T
his was not
a soldier’s Humvee. The seats were trimmed in a sporty leather, an infotainment system big enough to watch movies took up half the dashboard, and a picture of Rose’s teenage face dangled from the rearview mirror. It swung in and out of my vision as a pistol dug into my temple.
“Ms. Briar —” I started
She waggled the gun like an extension of her finger. “Uh-uh.”
“Alycia,” I tried again, shooting for the calm, even tone I used with patients.
“Nope.” The gun’s muzzle dug into my forehead. At least the metal didn’t burn my skin on contact, which meant it wasn’t the mixture of steel and silver some of the extremist hunters preferred. As if silver bullets weren’t enough.
Still, the barrel was currently flush with my frontal lobe and a bullet would, at the very least, cause not insignificant brain damage. My healing abilities could only stretch so far.
I opened one palm in a universal gesture of surrender, and then spoke the words in English to emphasize the point. “I’m sorry. I seem to have broken into your car.”
Her lips, just the corners of them, relaxed. Her gun did not. “Polite. That’s a start. Next, would you like to explain
why
you broke into my brand new Humvee?”
“I—”
“No, never mind.” She tilted her head in the other direction toward the door creaking open in the breeze. The gun turned with her. “Next explain how, in God’s name, you managed to stop a car with your bare hands.”
“I’m a werelion.”
A laugh exploded from between her lips. “I’m sorry, you’re a what?”
I cleared my throat, although we both knew the permeant gravel in my voice wasn’t the problem. “I’m a werelion, Ms. Briar.”
Her eyebrows pushed down in disbelief. “No, you’re insane. Which makes sense, unhinged people have been known to perform great feats of strength. Now—”
I held up my other hand. Except it wasn’t a hand. It was a paw. Claws, fur. All of it.
She shrieked and dropped the gun.
Maintaining eye contact, I picked up the weapon slowly.
There was plenty of time for her to stop me, if she wanted to, but she was too busy shaking in disbelief. “Holy Jesus. The mark. Rose. Her blog.”
Now
my
forehead tightened in confusion. “She has a blog?”
“Well, we can cross you off the stalker list, then.” Rose’s mother snorted, her eyes never leaving my paw. “Yes, she has a blog. She had this fantasy her boss was a werewolf. Seems like she was just looking in the wrong direction.” She patted down her coiffed charcoal hair, as if trying to set the world back in order.
“And with that plus the car crash, I wasn’t just going to leave her in New York. So I bought a car and stayed a while.”
I set the gun in my lap, my focus easing enough to acknowledge the high-end digital camera resting between Rose’s mother’s stilettos. A red lanyard tangled around the telephoto lens.
“And that?” I asked.
“Now you’re going to think I’m crazy.Which, I'm not by the way. You’re definitely the crazy one here, Dr. Ward."
“The camera,” I prodded. My voice was the same as when I saw a patient I knew wasn’t going to live. Gentle, calm.
“The camera,” she echoed with a bittersweet tug of the lips that tried to promise a smile. She kicked at the back of the lens with her pointed toe. “I should tell you I was just trying to make sure I was here to take pictures of any other hit-and-run driver that got too close to my daughter.” She drew back, like her own laugh had punched her in the chest.
“But,” I prompted, keeping my tone neutral. That was the thing about being polite, blending in, really. It wasn’t always about hiding yourself. Sometimes, it was allowing other people the space to be seen.
“But,” her eyes narrowed and she looked at me, skeptical at herself for how easy my bedside manner made talking to me. A second later she sighed, giving into the weight of the events that had piled up in the last five minutes. “But I missed her. I wanted to see her.”
She shrugged again, swallowing down the pause. “She’s growing up. She’s finding her own way, even if it’s a harder way, even if, oh Lord forgive me,” her eyes rolled upward in only a semi-silent plea, “even if that way involves dating some kind of genetic aberration.”
I didn’t mention to her that science hinted that humans and werebeasts had both evolved from a common ancestor. Instead, words came out of my mouth that made me do a double-take. “My father left me to die, when I was young. I was kidnapped and he didn’t bother to look for me. That’s why I broke into your car. I thought the same people had been tailing Rose and I. I was worried about her.”
Ms. Briar recoiled, horror in her tone. “I’m sorry.”
“My point is that Rose is lucky to have a mother who cares for her so much.” I turned over the gun in my hand. The stark metal reminded me of a surgical tool. There was always something clean about death. Final. “I admire that about you.”
She regarded my returning of the gun with almost as much wariness as she had my paw, but she took the handle anyway. “Thank you.”
She placed the gun in her lap . “And about the admire thing, you don’t have to butter me up. You did save my daughter’s life, all things considered, and cars are reparable —”
Her phone, perched in the claw of a mounting case suctioned onto the dashboard, chimed. I could see the sender of the text, but not the message. It was Rose.
“Speak of the girl.” Alycia smiled to match perfectly with the photo of Rose dangling from the rearview mirror. Although the swirl of her charcoal hair kept me from seeing all of it.
I wasn’t smiling at all. My neck cramped, violently. A wave of vertigo and nausea churned through me.
Something is wrong,
my lion whispered, just like it had a week ago in the waiting room.
Alycia pressed her thumb onto the screen, activating the security function that then took her straight to the text message.
I expected her to cover it with her hand to keep me from seeing her private correspondence with her daughter, but a second later she was too shocked by the contents of it to do anything but gape at me.
I was already unbuckling my seat belt and springing out of the door I had only minutes ago ripped open.
“Dr. Ward,” she called out after me. I was tempted not to stop. Who knew how much longer Rose had before whatever she said went wrong went really wrong.
“Daniel!”
Rose’s scream wasn’t loud enough to echo through the street. I knew her mother couldn’t hear it, and I thanked the Gods for that. But I heard it. It echoed in my bones as if instead of vibrating on the air, the sound waves had been conducted through me. My blood, my beating heart, my toes. All of it hummed with her scream. Her plea. My name.
“Come on!” I shouted gruffly to her mother behind me. “Now!”
But even as I bounded through the street and up her stairs, I couldn’t fight the feeling that now might already be too late.
ROSE
I
woke
up all at once. Light starbursted across my retinas, brighter than any human could handle. It took thirteen blinks before the glare faded to reveal a dropped laminate ceiling. I tensed, waiting or Daniel’s voice, for him to tell me it was all going to be okay and that he would protect me now.
His voice never came.
As I rolled onto my side, I realized I was in a hospital room. This one had wall-paper swirling in vaguely floral patterns of off-white on off-white. Innocuous was an understatement. Plastic guard railings barricaded either side of the bed. Their rounded edges reminded me of a kid’s playpen.
A window took up most of the right wall. The glass was normal and clear enough that I could catch the skyline of a faraway shore. I couldn’t make out individual buildings, and this far away, the skyscrapers looked like bars on a graph, not places where people lived. Where I lived.
They had taken me to New Jersey.
I don’t know why this thought crystalized the dread pooling my stomach into something solid and bitter and furious, but it did. I jerked up, trying to jump literally out of the bed, but only got halfway there. Something caught on my wrists, pulling me down and sending a shot of terror up my arms.
I looked down. The pain faded, but the terror got worse. Plastic handcuffs encircled my wrists, the ones with a zip-tie with little ridges that looked like you should be able to break them with a good tug. I tugged.
They didn’t break, but dug in deeper into my skin, pinching hard enough my mouth opened in a little gasp. Tears pricked at my eyes, and I tried to shake them off. No, I was so done being weak. I would get out of this. I hadn’t become the real life mate of a werebeast just to get my butt kidnapped.
As I shook my head, I noticed there was a door to my left. On that door was a knob. And it was turning.
Fear, pain, it all wooshed out of me until I was empty of everything but my heartbeat. The heart-rate monitor wasn’t beeping any faster, but each palpitation felt heavier and harder in my chest. The door opened, and a man walked through it.
Lonan. Of course.
He wore a button-down shirt rolled up at the elbows like he was going to do something that might get dirty, except his cleanly pressed shirt wasn’t the kind you wore to do anything more arduous then have a business lunch. He looked recently showered, too, and so cleanly shaven I wondered if he could grow facial hair at all. All of him was clean, except for his lips. They still looked chapped.
Lonan didn’t stop smiling and the effect with his beak-ish nose and beady eyes was disconcerting. “Hi, Rose. Good to see you.”
“I’m handcuffed to a bed, Lonan. Good’s not the most apt word choice for me at the moment.” Funny, I’d spent all my life trying to channel Naomi’s witty banter, but when I finally mastered the cool, sarcastic vibe the sassiness in my voice sounded a lot like my mamma’s.
“I know,” he said with clearly false empathy. “I am a little sorry about that, and all of this really. But I didn’t have a choice, you weren’t responding to my texts.”
“Sweet Jesus, I didn’t answer your texts so you kidnapped me. I’m the one in handcuffs now, Lonan.” I was impressed my how calm my voice was. “Listen you obviously didn’t kidnap me as a personal thing, and we’re in a hospital, so I’m guessing this has something to do with the pills and my coma. You want to tell me why you’ve handcuffed me here,
so I can tell you why this is a really really bad idea and why you should let me go? Now.”
I was very careful not to mention werebeasts, even though I was more than a little sure that that was at the root of all of this. If Lonan didn’t know the truth about Daniel and I, the last thing I wanted to do was bring him in on the secret.
“Do you mind if I close the door, Rose?”
Okay, that one earned an eye roll. Now I understood why Naomi was always so sarcastic when faced with an evil alpha werewolf or a portal to another world. Being quippy was a lot easier than really feeling, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could pretend to be her.
After Lonan shut the door, he turned to me with a smile as if to check that I was okay with all of this. A paralyzing shiver zigzagged from my fingertips to my heart. Other than the dead-pearly sheen to Lonan’s teeth there was nothing evil-looking about him. Nothing more sinister than you might find in a sleazy car salesman or crooked New York super.
Lonan hovered by the door, waiting for me to reply. He wasn’t going to explain anything until I asked him. I tried to swallow down the burning anger balling up underneath my tongue.
He couldn’t do this to me.
A few more seconds of silence and I hated myself, but I gave in. “J-Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Of course, Rose,” he said, all false pleasantry. “I’ve got a video.”
Of course
he had a video. Just like at the restaurant, he lived his whole life on a routine, a script. Now I was a part of it. The scary part was unless I got out of these handcuffs, I wouldn’t be able to change the ending. My pendant swung uselessly around my neck.
“Fine,” I snarled quietly. “Show me.”
As he walked over to me, I noticed the slim black remote in his hand. At least it wasn’t a gun. He sat down in the chair next to me, and my blood temperature dropped a few degrees.
Lonan was oblivious to my discomfort as he pointed the remote at the big-screen across from my bed.
The flat-screen flickered to life. A check-mark logo appeared, rendered in 3-D and rotating slowly like one of the reels that ran before a movie showing off the studio names that neither I nor anyone else cared about. The next logo was the one that really freaked me out.
It was the seal for the US Department of Defense. More specifically it was a branch of the US Department of Defense I thought had been closed for generations. The Federal Bureau of Supernatural Investigations. For a moment I really, really wished I wasn’t such a history buff, so I wouldn’t know the translation of their slogan inscribed on a ribbon at the bottom of the seal in old Werelatin.
Mors monstris remedium.
Death is the cure for demons.
Oh God. I was totally in really, really big trouble. Oh God. Oh God! This was ten thousand times worse than a corrupt, power-hungry local sheriff. This was the federal government. I thrashed upward, not caring anymore at how badly the handcuffs stung my wrists. Let them draw blood. I was not staying here. I gave it one last go, throwing all the muscle I could into it. My lungs were empty, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care!
Lonan didn’t care, either, he watched me struggle emotionlessly, the remote raised as he paused the video.
When I finally flopped back onto the bed, spent, he tilted his head. “Got it all out?”
When I was ten I’d had to testify at the trial against the man that had killed my father. Afterward the sheriff’s daughter had caught me at school, called me a fatty and slapped me clean across the face. I’d let my lip go bloody and hadn’t struck back. I’d been too sad and afraid.
Now, I would’ve given anything in the world to kick in Lonan’s face. I clenched my fists. “Play the video. Get this over with.”
You asshole.
He set the remote down. “No, I think it would be good if I put a few things in context first. So, there’s no easy way to say this—”
“I’m a werebeast’s mate, and you’ve kidnapped me because you’re a secret government agent,” I said flatly, sounding far more sure than I felt.
Lonan’s bottom lip turned down in mild surprise. “Okay, that was pretty impressive, Rose.”
His condescension should’ve been annoying, but with my wrists still throbbing from the plastic handcuffs and the back of my neck aching. It was actually kind of terrifying. “So, I’m right.”
“Well, sort of. But still really damn close. I guess it’s the looks thing,” he said to himself, “a girl who looks like you has to have some redeeming feature, and for you God chose brains.”
Screw. You. Lonan.
I fumed at him in silence.
“The truth is I work for a company that makes the pills you used to take,” he said.
“Erostoxifam.”
His mouth screwed up. Surprise at my smarts had given way to annoyance. “Yes.”
“And so what? You kidnapped me so I wouldn’t figure out the truth.”
“Not quite.” He smiled again, glad I had guessed wrong. He leaned back in the chair, enjoying my ignorance. “You know about the mark on your neck, correct?”
I flinched at the thought of Lonan knowing about something so intimate, remembering his spindly fingers dancing between the hairs. Revulsion made my shoulders clench.
He took that for confirmation. “Think of that like a parasite,” he said. “Right now it’s controlling crucial parts of your hormonal system and making you feel things you might not otherwise. The company I work for and the government collaborates with doctors throughout the nation to make sure that girls like you get the pills you need. This way you don’t act irrationally, have odd dreams, or bond with the monsters known as werebeasts. As the general public doesn’t know that werebeasts still exist, obviously we do this covertly.”
“And without consent.”
“You’re not thinking clearly. Even if we didn’t have to worry about every girl going around telling the world about werebeasts if we offered her a choice to take the pills, it wouldn’t really be
her
choice. It would be the bond’s.”
“Unless you’re me, you can’t know that,” I spat.
But my comment bounced right off of Lonan. “Unfortunately, sometimes girls like you manage to find their mates anyway. When that happens, the company sends me to do tests to see how far along the bonding process has gone.”
“The date.” My skin felt numb. His words leeched the warmth out of my every pore.
“Right,” he said. “And when—”
“When the bond is too far along you do what? Kidnap us and stuff us full of pills until we go into a coma and die?”
“God, no. The pills are far too weak a solution for you now. And even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t do that. Our doctors aren’t going to kill you.” He shook his head like I was being ridiculous when
he
was the one who had kidnapped me. “They’re going to cure you.”
He smiled at me, benign as a tumor. “We’re going to break your bond, Rose.”