Curve Effect (A BBW Box Set of Contemporary, Science Fiction and Paranormal Romances) (27 page)

He shrugged and increased the drip on Cruz’s IV. "It ripped through me the first time. Cruz, too. Nothing short, nothing partial."

She and Dominic lifted their heads simultaneously as the elevator chimed. Dominic pulled the catheter from his arm. "Doors?"

Just the one.

He shifted to his hybrid form -- the process complete before Beemer could finish entering the security code on the door’s keypad. Tamsyn unhooked herself from the IV and wrapped her hands around its pole.

Quiet, little sister.
Dominic slid across the room to the bed opposite his and pulled the curtain half closed before he climbed up onto the bed and waited to pounce. Tamsyn circled his empty bed and waited with the IV pole raised.

She could smell the woman, hear Beemer bitching at her.

"I’ll draw the blood myself. You obviously can’t be trusted with something so simple as labeling a vial."

Just the two of them.
Dom whispered in her head. He nodded at the pole she had a death grip on.
Don’t hesitate.

She wouldn’t. Not with Cruz on the bed behind her, unconscious.

The nurse came into sight first, swiveling her pretty head in the direction of where Dominic should still be prone and comatose. Seeing Tam, she gasped.

The gasp was followed by the ring of metal meeting first cartilage and then bone as Tamsyn swung the pole, hitting the woman in the face. Dominic jumped, caught Beemer by the throat with his jaws before the old man could raise an alarm. She heard Beemer’s neck snap, his body instantly going limp.

On the floor, the woman moaned. Her face was bloody, swelling.

Tam.

She looked at Dominic, shook her head vigorously. The woman started crawling for the door, leaving soft pleas of
help me
in her bloody wake.

Tam!

An order this time. She shook her head again. It didn’t feel the same as killing Hamilton. She looked at him, felt the flow of tears down her cheeks.
Why can’t you do it?

You have to know you can -- we both do.

"Help me." It was a gurgle of a plea, too soft for anyone outside the room to hear.

Tamsyn had woken needing help, needing rescue from Beemer and his beasts. This woman wouldn't have given it to her. She was part of Beemer's machine. Tamsyn lifted the pole and brought it down on the back of the nurse’s head. The skull cracked. Her face slammed into the floor from the blow’s momentum and then all movement in her body stopped.

Tamsyn let the pole clatter to the ground.

Dominic moved to the door, pulling it so that it was open by only a few centimeters. He rummaged through the supply cabinet, looking for anything of use. He came back, carrying supplies, and stuffed them in the pillow case.

Wake him up, Tam.

She was still shaking, her gaze fixed on the dead woman. She wasn’t sure if he’d told her to wake up or to wake Cruz up. She broke away from staring at the dead woman to look at Dominic.

He nodded at Cruz.
Wake him up.

She turned, numbly, and stared at Cruz. She shrugged, helpless. She’d already stopped the suppressant’s delivery and given him the depo-testosterone drip.

Talk to him. Tell him you need him to wake up.

I did.

Tell him again!

Tamsyn sat on the bed, her deformed hand tucked behind her back. She stroked Cruz’s face with her other hand, bent forward until her forehead touched his.

Baby, I need you to wake up.
She ran her cheek against his. She had been crying, hadn’t realized it until she felt the wet rub of her flesh against his.
We have to get out of here. I need you, Cruz.

He wasn’t going to wake up. She buried her face against his neck. A sob broke from her throat, nothing human left in the quality of its sound.

Baby, come back to me. I know you’re hurt bad, but I need you. I love you, Medina.

She pressed closer to him, her breasts pushing lightly at his chest. Her breathing had aligned with his -- only, he’d stopped breathing. She lifted her head, looked at his face.
Baby, please don’t leave me.

Cruz’s eyes fluttered open. He drew a hard breath in. He brought his hand up, stroked her face. "You’re stuck, Tam."

She drew back.
Scary, huh?

He shook his head. "Help me sit up."

She did, feeling him flinch as his gaze landed on the dead bodies. She could sense Dominic talking but didn’t know what he was saying.

"Give us a few seconds," he spoke in Dominic’s direction and then wrapped his arms around Tamsyn’s shoulders. "I want you to feel me, Tamsyn."

I feel you.

No,
he corrected.
Feel me.

He flooded her head. She had no other word to describe it. He was there, in her, guiding her limbs, coaching the rebellious muscles and tendons. She felt hair break out across her body, heard her hospital gown ripping. His body changed with hers. She felt his fur, silky smooth with its outer layer, curly and thick where it laid close to his body. His nose brushed her and she felt her ear twitch in response.

Dominic stood by the door, waiting for them.
Fucking Hallelujah...now move your asses!

Wait!
Tamsyn returned to her bedside. Beemer’s laptop was still there, still running. She slammed the lid down and wrapped her claws around it. At the door, she shoved it in the pillow case Dominic held.

Files, she explained. Other subjects. Other women...

She felt something leap from Dominic, the sensation pushing her back a step.

Hope. She’d felt hope pouring from him and it felt damn good.

Dominic nodded. We have to get the hell out of here first.

Easier said than done. They were in the hall less than twenty seconds before the alarms began. They raced for the stairwell sign, heard the floor locking down. At the end of the hall, a steel plate started closing on the corridor’s sole window. Dominic shoved the pillow case at Tamsyn and barreled down the hall. He hit the window tucked into a tight ball. Glass shattered and he uncurled, slamming his claws through the steel shield, the rest of his body flying through the broken window.

He kicked at the air, his body recoiling as his grip on the metal stopped his forward momentum. Feet scrabbled on the glass covered ledge. Straddling the window’s threshold, he jammed his shoulder up under the metal plate.

Hustle, guys!

Cruz reached the window first, looked the three tall stories down. He took the case from Tamsyn, stepped onto the ledge and coaxed her out.

Gotta jump, baby.

A floodlight flared and swung along the building’s wall to illuminate them. Beyond the light, along a fenced perimeter, men stood ready with guns. This time, Beemer wasn’t there to tell them to stand down.

They opened fire.

Not waiting for her to get her courage up, Cruz grabbed Tamsyn’s forearm and jumped. He hit the ground first, twisting as he fell to cushion her landing. Dominic landed beside them, already in a run toward the shooters.

Bullets hit the ground around them. Cruz scooped up a fist-sized rock and threw it, taking out the floodlight.

Stay down!
He started across the open ground at a full run, springing in random directions as the shooters tried to bring him down.

Dominic already had one man down. Two riflemen swung their weapons in his direction. Stupid mistake. The first man fired, hitting the other in the center of his chest. A second later, Cruz was on the shooter, ripping his throat out.

Twenty feet from Tamsyn, a door was thrown open. She heard snarling, jaws snapping at the night air. One of the men at the fence line screamed, "One of ours!" The warning came too late. A bullet caught the shifter in the shoulder. Three more shots spun it around.

In the fifteen seconds it took them to shoot the beast down, Dominic and Cruz had taken out three more men at the perimeter.

Run, now!

Tam jumped up and headed for the fence in an awkward, stumbling jog, unused to the new shape of her legs and with the pillow case impeding her from adopting the loping grace and speed Cruz had displayed.

Get down, baby.

She obeyed instantly, hitting the ground and staying put as Cruz snatched a grenade off the belt of the man he’d just killed. One of his talons caught the grenade’s pin, popped it off and then he threw it at the fence. The fence crackled with electricity when the metal touched it and then the grenade blew a hole through it.

She felt a clawed hand grab her by the scruff of her neck and lift her back onto her feet. It was Dominic. He took the pillow case from her and pushed her towards the opening in the fence. She didn’t need him to tell her to run. She’d just seen two more shifters come through the open door.

Too bad for their would-be pursuers, the dead man had a second grenade on his belt. Cruz pitched it at them. They slowed, tried to scramble backwards, slammed into one another. The grenade went off a foot from them.

She heard Dominic’s grim humor inside her head.

Bye-bye doggies.

*****

When they reached the cover of foothills, Cruz stopped and cracked the laptop’s case. He pulled a card out, smashed it against the ground.

Tracker.

A long night passed, filled with climbing and evading. They slept through the day, walked through the next night until they came to a paved road.

Reading the road sign, Tamsyn chuckled. Extraterrestrial Highway? Are they fucking kidding?

Cruz stood next to her. Well, now we know where we’re at. Where they're at, too.

They waited alongside the road, hidden in the shadows. The brothers had pushed a sizeable rock -- almost a boulder -- near the center of the roadway. Dominic had the case slung over his shoulder. Cruz stayed close to Tamsyn. They were looking for the right rig to pass by -- a gravel truck, an empty cattle car, anything they could jump on and ride the hell out of there without the driver any wiser.

The first hint of morning was breaking at the horizon when it happened. The rock forced the driver to slow down, just enough for the three of them to make the jump.

When they rolled into a truck stop an hour later, Dominic slid from the rig and returned twenty minutes later with clothes he’d taken from an RV.

Dressed already, he tossed the clothes at them and stuffed some money in his pockets.

"Dominic?"

"Tam, they had a forty-two inch plasma TV in that RV. A couple hundred bucks isn’t going to hurt them."

She shut up immediately and slid on a pair of pants. Dressed, they stayed on the truck, huddled for warmth. They couldn’t risk going into the truck stop and having the owners of the clothes recognize them. At the next stop, they ate and found another truck to stow away on. When the next day rolled around, they had made it into California.

"We’ll hike into Yosemite." Dominic told them. "Lots of vacation homes around the park’s border are empty this time of year. We'll find one."

It was another three days before Tamsyn got to sink into a garden tub filled to the rim with hot water and bubbles. Dominic and Cruz were at the kitchen table of the home they’d broken into. They had Beemer’s laptop out, badly damaged but still running. They’d disconnected the wireless to it, Cruz warning that it could be programmed to report back to Sanctuary. Now Cruz was trying to break the password lock on Beemer’s files.

Finished with her bath, she raided the home’s pantry and cooked them dinner -- pork beans and corned beef from a can.

"At least the beer’s cold," Dominic laughed.

Tamsyn leaned into Cruz and whispered, "But the bed's warm."

"Uh-uh." Dominic waved his bottle at Cruz. "No warm bed for you, Manito, until you’ve cracked the password."

It was two in the morning when Cruz crawled into bed next to her. He came up from the bottom of the mattress, pushing the sheet up as he went, kissing the sides of her legs, caressing her hips.

Moonlight poured through a window, illuminating her with a silver glow. "You did it?"

"Mostly," he answered. "All but the oldest files."

"Lyrra?"

"In there -- like you said, date of capture and birth year."

She grabbed his shoulders, temporarily halting his kisses. "And?"

"Escaped four months after capture. Dominic’s hoping you can help him decode some of the medical notations."

She started to sit up but he pushed her back onto the mattress. "He specifically said in the morning."

"Oh." Relaxing, she smiled at him. "After a good night’s sleep, eh?"

He growled, pushed her night shirt up high enough to capture one of her nipples. Sliding a hand between Tamsyn’s thighs, Cruz eased a finger past her labia and into her pussy.