Curve Effect (A BBW Box Set of Contemporary, Science Fiction and Paranormal Romances) (26 page)

She only half heard the old man. She was too busy thinking about what had just gone on inside her brain. She’d heard Hamilton -- whole fucking words. She’d heard him at the ambush, too. And she’d heard Cruz assuring her it was okay.

Whole fucking words. Just like Dominic and Cruz shared between them.

The old man flicked her cheek. "You aren’t listening. I asked you about your parents."

She tried to lift herself up on her elbows to see the other beds along the opposite wall.

"Your parents?" The old man pushed against her chest.

There was no way in hell he had the strength to push her back down, but she let him think he did. Tamsyn looked up at him, her gaze clouding with angry tears. "My friends?"

The old man pulled the curtain behind him to the side, showing her Cruz. He was unconscious. A blanket covered him up to his armpits. An IV drip was attached to his arm. Unlike Hamilton, there was no cage around his head, but he had the same nylon restraints as she did.

"Let’s start with your mother."

"Professional whore. Dead." She stared at the IV line. The liquid inside was a pale blue. Not blood, not a dextrose or saline drip. "What are you giving him?"

"A suppressant. Neither of your friends will shift unless I want them to. And that won’t happen until they learn they’re much better off working for me than, well...being dead."

He drew the curtain shut. Turning back to Tamsyn, he asked, "And your father?"

"I just told you my mom was a whore." She lifted her head again to stare at Hamilton. He had an IV line, too, but the liquid was clear. "I’ve no idea who the fuck fathered me."

As she watched Hamilton, he started to squirm, thick hair breaking out across his exposed arms. Muscles rippled beneath the skin, popping, shrinking. "Doesn’t look like your suppressant’s working, doc."

"Ham isn’t on a suppressant."

The old man left her bedside for a few minutes, returning with a laptop on a rolling tray. She watched him scroll through his folders. He double clicked on the one marked "Subject Files." Inside it were two subfolders -- "M" and "F." He double clicked "F." The screen filled with more folders, each bearing a twelve-number filename. She guessed there were about two dozen such folders.

The old man selected "New Folder" from the menu commands. For the filename, he typed the day’s date and then hesitated. "What year were you born?"

She didn’t want to make things simple for him, but he’d find out easy enough. "1991."

He finished naming the folder with her birth year and then opened up what looked like a medical history sheet and filled in the information she’d given him -- including her mother’s profession. Next to father, he put "unk."

"So, is that how it works, biologically? One of my parents was a shifter, probably one of my mom’s johns?"

He glanced at her and then repositioned his computer so she couldn’t see the screen.

"You don’t like sharing much, do you, Beemer?" The old man certainly wasn't the person shifting in the video they had watched, but she had no doubt he'd been the one behind the keyboard feeding lies to them.

He cocked an eyebrow at her.

She explained the name, just as she had with Dominic. "Bad Moon Rising -- that’s you, right? You’re the lying piece of shit that betrayed us."

He pulled a syringe from his lab coat and placed it alongside the laptop. "I can sedate you, if you insist on cursing and being uncooperative."

She glared at him, but kept her mouth shut. She needed to figure a way out of this and she couldn’t if she was drugged out. Adopting a conciliatory tone, she offered a weak smile at the old man. "How are my friends?"

"You mean your lover and his brother?"

She wasn’t sure, but she thought the old man was leering at her now, his veneer of arrogance slipping for a second.

"Yeah, my lover and his brother."

Across the room, Hamilton snarled. The doctor shot him a hard look before turning back to Tamsyn. "Ignore Hamilton. I’m still trying to train him."

Tam nodded, again forgetting the old man’s presence as the faint odor of a woman’s perfume reached her senses. Hamilton smelled it, too, and turned his head to the side, waiting. Tamsyn heard a faint squeak of rubber on the room’s polished tile floors and then a soft, hesitant voice as a petite redhead stepped into view and startled the old man.

"Doctor, the lab said the blood work’s back."

He held his hand out. She shook her head. "They’re still holding it."

"Then it’s not done." He turned, shooing her away.

She held her ground. "It is done, they’re just re-running the results. They want you at the lab."

Beemer drew a deep breath, an ugly mask settling over his face. "Why? Don’t they know how to do their jobs?" The redhead started to answer but he cut her short. He tilted his head in Tamsyn’s direction. "Is she pregnant?"

"No."

He sneered and glanced back at Tamsyn. "Not a very effective lover, is he?"

"Maybe I’m barren," she answered back.

"I hope, for your sake, you aren’t." He turned to stare directly at the redhead before speaking again. "Females are useless to us, otherwise."

"Doctor, the lab..."

The old man stood and motioned for the redhead to move out of his way. She hesitated and nodded in Tamsyn’s direction. "We shouldn’t leave her like that. Lab said her levels were all off."

"Am I completely surrounded by fucking imbeciles?"

"Careful there, Beemer. You’re going to need one of your own sedatives, you keep swearing like that." Tamsyn pretended to struggle through an attempt to raise her torso up off the mattress. The old man turned and pushed her back down.

Leering again, he leaned over her, close enough for her to head butt him if she wanted to, and warned her, "You will learn civility and obedience."

Beemer left with the redhead. Tamsyn heard a door shut, followed by the mechanical slide of bolts and the short, digital beeps of someone keying in a code on a number pad.

With them gone, Tamsyn immediately started testing her restraints. She felt stronger. Her leg felt like it had never been slammed against a rock facing. But the nylon around her wrists and legs wouldn’t budge.

Across from her, Hamilton started jerking at his metal cuffs. She looked over and saw that his face was almost completely healed. Earlier, she hadn't been sure he wouldn't call bullshit on her charade with the doctor, but it was clear now why he hadn't. He was confident he would get some "alone" time with her.

BET I GET OUTTA MINE FIRST.

Adrenaline slammed through her at the thought. She strained every muscle she had. The nylon, almost half an inch thick, made small tearing sounds. Across from her, metal groaned.

GONNA RIP YOU OPEN WITH MY COCK, BITCH. LET YOU HEAL. FUCK YOU DEAD ALL OVER AGAIN. MAYBE THE DOC'LL FILM IT.

His voice in her head didn’t scare her. What scared her was that his was the only voice in her head.

Cruz? Dominic?

THEY CAN’T HEAR YOU, CUNT. YOU'RE GOOD AS DEAD.

She jerked at her wrist restraints -- threw all her strength into the motion. The last of the nylon shredded. She reached down, unbuckled the restraints on her ankles. She heard one of Hamilton’s ankle cuffs pop, the metal skittering broken across the floor.

Tamsyn leapt from the mattress, grabbing the syringe Beemer had left behind as she did. She launched herself at the bed, pulling the plunger back. He brought his free leg up. It was mid-shift, covered with hair, talon-like nails curving towards him. She twisted, landing on his stomach with her knees. She jabbed his neck with the needle and shot him full of Beemer’s sedative.

THAT WAS FOR YOU. FIVE MINUTES AND IT’S OUT OF MY SYSTEM!

Tamsyn slid off the bed, pulled the plunger back again, filling the chamber with air. She jabbed the needle into him a second time, right above the bend in his elbow where a vein bulged. Her thumb hovering over the plunger’s tip, she smiled at him. "Good thing this’ll kill you in two."

She pulled the needle out, filled it with air again, repeated.

Pulled it out.

Repeated.

Hamilton was gasping, his face purpling and bulging, when she filled him with air the fourth time. Blood seeped from his arm from the multiple needle stabs.

"Sorry, Hammy." Her tone was grim as she drew air into the chamber a fifth time. "But I can’t be sure 80 c.c. is going to do the trick."

Hamilton jerked, his hips rising up off the bed as he convulsed in a death throe. Tamsyn let the syringe fall to the floor. Listening to him die, she grabbed the IV bag. Reading the label, her gaze widened. It was a 10% depo-testosterone drip -- they’d been pumping the freak full of steroids to help him heal.

She ripped the tubing from his arm and pinched it off while she carried the pole with its four bags over to Cruz. She swapped the line carrying the suppressant into his arm with the testosterone drip.

Beemer had put the three of them in a row -- her, Cruz, then Dominic. She pulled the curtain back, grabbed a second IV bag and changed Dominic’s line. When she was done, she unbuckled the restraints on them.

Time -- she had no idea how much she had. The lab could be three doors or three floors down. Beemer had already been gone at least fifteen minutes. She stepped into the center of the room’s floor and then turned a slow circle. One door. That was it. She looked up, hoping for ceiling tiles.

If Beemer came back before Cruz and Dominic revived...

If he came back with guards or more shifters after they revived...

"Fuck it!" There was a supply station near the door. She went and rummaged in its drawers, coming up with a fresh IV catheter needle and tubing. Returning to Cruz’s bed, she sat down next to him. She prepped the fluid bag and tubing, her gaze shifting between her hands working and Cruz’s face.

I need you to wake up, baby.

She tied a tourniquet a few inches above the bend of her elbow. She didn’t bother with an alcohol wipe, just checked the vein and tore the packaging off the catheter. Bending her hand at an odd angle, she used her wrist and forearm to pull the skin at the IV site taut as best she could. She slid the needle in, saw the influx of blood through the catheter’s plastic applicator.

Removing the needle, she bit off a piece of tape and secured the catheter in place before unknotting the tourniquet. She tossed the plastic applicator onto the floor and attached the IV tubing to the catheter and then opened the IV line.

Inspecting the job she’d done one handed, she smiled. "Take that, Professor Kenzie!"

Her smile faded as she looked down at Cruz. He was still out. She pulled back the thin blanket covering him. His lower torso was bandaged. Blood had seeped through the wound's dressing to dry a dark brick.

She moved over to Dominic and looked at his wounds. There were bandages covering his stomach, too, but they weren’t wrapped around like Cruz’s. There was an un-bandaged wound along his right side where the bullet that ripped through Cruz must have grazed Dominic.

A wave of dizziness rolled over Tamsyn and she stumbled back to Cruz’s bed. The injection site in her arm itched like ants were crawling over it and she scratched. Ears ringing, she looked down at her arm, saw that she’d just dug three burrows in her skin.

She held her hand up to her face.

"Not my hand."

"Tamsyn?"

She looked to Dominic’s hospital bed. He was sitting up, his eyes shifting from their usual golden brown to a flame yellow. He clutched his stomach. His lips peeled back in pain to show lengthening teeth. The top canines curved down to his bottom lip.

"Where are we?"

"Sanctuary, I guess." The words came out mangled, the muscles of her throat and face thickening to impede her speech.

They’ll be back, Dom. I don’t know when.

Dominic nodded. He looked at the IV tube running into his arm, then to hers.

They were pumping you two full of some kind of suppressant -- keeping you human...weak.

"Still weak." Dominic staggered off the bed, dragging the IV pole behind him.

Whoa, Dom, no cover there!

He caught the direction of her gaze and scowled. "No time for modesty, little sister."

He stripped the case from his pillow and looked at the fluid bag for the suppressant. "This it?"

She nodded and he dumped it in the pillow case.

Dominic lifted his head and sniffed. "Something dead in here."

She pointed her hand...no, not her hand. Her hand didn’t have curving black claws sprouting from the end of the fingers, didn’t have burnished mahogany hairs bristling along the skin. She pointed in the direction of Hamilton’s bed.

Dominic leaned over. "How’d he die?"

Air embolism.
She grinned, felt her tongue loll out of her mouth and snapped it back in. She ran a hand over her leg -- normal. Across her stomach -- normal. She tried to say something, and snarled instead.
Fuck, Dominic. Is this how it works?