Laura's Wolf (Werewolf Marines) (35 page)

It became a chant, the slow rhythm of breath, the fast beat of a heart. In. Out. Heart-beat. In. Out. Heart-beat.

“We’re here.”

The voice jarred Laura out of her concentration. She opened her eyes. The car was stopped off-road in a moonlit wood.

Miguel was twisted around in the driver’s seat, peering at them. “Are you guys all right?”

Roy lay across Laura’s lap, one arm caught in the seatbelt and pulled back at a painful-looking angle. Sweat had soaked his hair and shirt, and shone on his pale face. But he was breathing steadily.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Just give me a second. That was rough.”

“On the bright side, my lap is fine,” Laura pointed out.

Roy gave her a weak smile. “Dishes are still fifty-fifty.”

Miguel looked at them both like they were out of their minds. “Will you still be able to fight?”

You said the magic words,
Laura thought resignedly.

“I’ve fought when I was in worse shape than this.” Roy sat up, got out of the car, started to put his hand on the roof, then straightened his spine and folded his arms across his chest.

“Seriously?” Miguel whispered to Laura. “Who is he, Wolverine?”

“Sort of,” Laura whispered back.

Roy beckoned. “Everybody out. Miguel, pop the trunk.”

Roy rummaged in it until he found some oil-stained rags, which he used to wipe off his hands and face. They had been concealing a crowbar, which he held up. “Anyone want an extra weapon?”

“My fangs are all I need,” said Laura, winking at Roy.

“Been waiting a long time to say that?” Roy asked with a grin.

“I’ll take it.” Miguel stuck the crowbar in his belt.

As they walked away from the car, Roy spoke softly to Laura. “I didn’t get a chance to say… Thanks for saving my life. Again. What is this, number five?”

“If you go for six, I swear I will kill you myself,” Laura whispered.

“Just so long as you don’t try to catch up with me. If I have to save you again, I don’t think I could stand it. I’d probably cry.”

“That would be the part you couldn’t stand,” Laura teased him.

Roy raised his voice enough to include Miguel. “From here on, we go as wolves. Follow me.”

As always, it was a thrill to change. Odors blossomed in the air, and the night became almost as clear as day. The scents of her companions were as distinct as their faces: Roy’s charcoal-leather-bittersweet chocolate, and a sweet buttery smell from Miguel.

Guinness,
Laura thought.
Some day I’ll have to try the beer and see if I agree with DJ.

She wondered if Gregor’s hostage wolves had been given scent names. She doubted it. Taking another sniff at Miguel, she thought,
Caramel.

Laura loped between the huge white dire wolf and the leggy gray wolf that was Miguel. As a wolf, her fear for the hostages was distant rather than gnawing, pushed aside by her pleasure in the easy strength of her body and the fascinating scents and movements and sights and sounds and textures of the woods.

She couldn’t resist pausing to snap up a field mouse, enjoying the crunch of bone and the brief spurt of blood. Laura saw Miguel’s surprise and Roy’s amusement in the tilt of their ears and the wrinkling of their muzzles.

It felt almost too soon that they came within sight of the walls around Gregor’s mansion—his lair. Roy became a man again, followed by Laura and Miguel. They crouched down, huddled close together.

The peace she’d felt as a wolf vanished. She could hear faint voices from the house, shouts and then a shrill scream. Her belly clenched.

“Can you hear what they’re saying?” she whispered to Roy.

He nodded, holding up a hand for silence, listening intently.

“Son of a bitch,” Roy muttered, low and furious. “Well, I heard two women. So Nicolette’s alive.”

Miguel sagged with relief beside her. “And Russell? Is he OK?”

“He’s alive,” Roy said, and Laura noted the lack of a simple ‘yes.’ “One of the women was begging Gregor not to kill Russell. The other woman was screaming at someone to fuck off and die. Gregor said, ‘Go ahead, Donnie.’ Then I heard a man…” Roy swallowed. “In a lot of pain.”

Miguel’s hand went up to his scarred cheek.

“Miguel, on my signal, go hit the breakers,” Roy said. “Then start setting off any booby traps that make noise. I’m hoping that’ll make Gregor and Donnie split up. Don’t stick by the booby traps—the instant you finish one, go to the next. When you’ve done the last one, go guard the fuse box and don’t let anyone turn the lights back on, if you can help it. Understood?”

“Yes,” said Miguel. “There’s two traps that explode.”

“Perfect,” Roy said. “Once the lights are out, I’ll go in and take care of Gregor and Donnie. Laura, come with me. I’ll guide you if it’s too dark for you to see. When I let go of your hand, hit the ground. If you see any bad guys, yell their name, so I know which one you’re targeting, then freeze them. If the lights go on, grab on to me and keep me going. Otherwise, stay low or behind cover. Got it?”

“Got it,” Laura said.

“Miguel, go,” ordered Roy.

Laura watched Miguel hurry away. “How are we getting over the wall?”

“We’ll climb a tree, then jump as wolves.” Roy indicated the nearest tree, whose lowest branch was well above Laura’s head. He knelt down. “Stand on my shoulders.”

Laura vividly recalled every time she’d ever been humiliated in gym class, which was every time she’d shown up, as she nervously climbed on to Roy’s shoulders and crouched, bracing herself on the tree trunk.

He slowly stood, then put his hands under her thighs and boosted her up. Laura awkwardly hauled herself on to the branch. Trying not to think about how high she was or the fact that she had never climbed a tree in her life, she clambered up two more branches, her heart pounding, until she was level with the top of the wall.

The ground looked incredibly far away. Laura clung to the tree, unsure she’d have the nerve to leap from this height. What if she didn’t change in time and broke her neck?

She glanced down in time to see Roy jump upward, grab the branch, and pull himself straight up, his shoulder muscles bulging, until he could get a leg over. Seconds later, he was standing on the branch below her.

“Very impressive,” she whispered.

“They make you do pull-ups in boot camp,” Roy whispered back. “This is the first time I’ve ever needed to do one in a combat situation. Are you ready?”

Laura wished he hadn’t said the word
combat.
It reminded her that even in the best-case scenario, within the next few minutes, people were going to die.

“Yes,” she said, hoping it was true.

“We jump on ‘go.’” He pressed a quick kiss on her cheek. “It’ll be fine. Just follow the plan. I’ll protect you with my life.”

“Don’t you dare die for me,” Laura whispered fiercely. “I’m serious, Roy. Take care of
yourself
.”

The lights in the mansion went out.

“Go!” commanded Roy.

Laura jumped.

Chapter Nineteen: Roy

The Wall

Roy ran down the corridor, holding the pistol in his right hand and Laura’s hand in his left. He’d meant to make a stealthy entrance, but there was no point to that now. All hell had broken loose inside before he’d even reached the house.

From the room down the hall, something thudded like a body slamming into a wall.

“Drop her, Donnie!” Gregor shouted.

A woman screamed in agony, and went on screaming.

There was a crash like someone throwing a chair, and another woman cried out in wordless fury.

“Stop it, stop it!” a man called, then, “No! Get away from her!”

“The lights, Gregor!” another man yelled. “Forget Nicolette! We’re under attack!”

It seemed like the hostages had finally decided to fight back.

A small explosion rocked the house, and the windows flared white. Roy winced.

“Hang back, stay low,” Roy whispered, releasing Laura’s hand, and kicked the door in.

The curtains had been drawn, and the room was bright with moonlight. Roy transformed as he dove into the room, pistol in hand, and landed on four paws. A blonde woman was down on the floor, with a dark-haired woman and a man crouching beside her.

Roy didn’t see Gregor, but he recognized the thug who had tried to kidnap Laura.

“Donnie!” Laura shouted, peering around the doorway.

Donnie’s gun hand swung around. To Roy’s immense relief, Laura ducked out of sight a second before Donnie fired.

The gunshot sent a bolt of pain through Roy’s head, but he forced himself to stay on his feet, gathering himself to leap at Donnie.

White-hot agony engulfed Roy, as if he’d been set on fire. He dropped to the floor, unable to move. For the first time in his adult life, he heard himself scream. He hadn’t even known that wolves
could
scream.

“
Stop!
” Laura commanded.

The burning agony vanished as if it had never existed. Roy transformed where he lay, stretching out his right front paw, and his pistol appeared in his hand. He sighted and fired. Despite the shattering pain in his head, he managed to keep his eyes open, and had the satisfaction of seeing Donnie pitch forward.

Perfect head shot,
Roy thought.
One enemy down.

Another blast went off, shaking the walls, lighting the windows, and making Roy feel as if someone had swung a pickaxe into his skull.

The hostages had sensibly flattened themselves to the floor. Laura was again peeking around the doorway.

“Are you all right?” she asked urgently.

Roy tried to sit up, and the moonlit room vanished in a gray haze. He lay back down and took a deep breath. The room came back into focus, and the pain in his head eased from excruciating to merely distracting. “I’m fine. Just the gunshot. And the blasts. Where’s Gregor?”

The blonde woman sat up. Her left arm was bloody from the shoulder down, but she looked alert. “He took off through the wall when the bomb went off. Is Miguel doing that?”

“Yeah.” Roy made a second attempt to get up, with the same result as the first. “Miguel should be headed to the fuse box now. We’ll go reinforce him. Just give me a—”

“Behind you!” Laura shouted.

Roy twisted around.

Gregor’s face was pushing through the wall behind Roy. As Roy started to roll forward, Gregor’s right hand shot out and grabbed him by the belt.

Roy tried to jerk away, but his body wouldn’t obey him. Every atom of his being felt wrong
.
He had been ripped out of reality and into some horrific halfway state.

He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t even sure his heart was beating. Gregor was going to kill him in the most horrifying way Roy could imagine, and he was completely helpless.

Gregor sank back into the wall, pulling Roy with him. Roy saw the right side of his body touch the wall, but it felt no more solid than air
.

“
Breathe,”
Laura commanded.

Gregor’s eyes widened in fury and terror. Just as the wall closed over his face, he breathed in.

With a sound like a gunshot, the wall cracked from floor to ceiling. Blood ran out, smelling of copper and brick dust. It looked black in the moonlight.

All that was left of Gregor was the blood pouring from the crack in the wall, and the protruding fingers of his clutching right hand.

Roy was flung back into reality. The transition was violent, as if he had been dropped from a height. He felt turned inside out. But he was alive, and Gregor was very impressively dead.

Good for Laura
, Roy thought.
Serves that sadistic bastard right.

Laura’s expression was still fixed in battle rage, her brown eyes narrowed, her mouth twisted in a snarl. Roy had trusted her absolutely, even though she had no real combat experience, and he’d been right to do so: she’d saved his life. Again.

“That makes six,” Roy tried to say, but he wasn’t sure the words came out right, or that anyone could hear him. He felt disconnected and strange, as if he was floating a few inches away from his body.

Gregor’s dead fingers were still touching Roy’s belt. Roy tried to scramble away, but he fell back, his right arm and side and hip stinging.

He was joined to the wall.

His heart racing, near panic, Roy tried to pull himself away. His coordination was off, his hands and feet clumsy and numb. He couldn’t tell how much of his body had been merged with the wall, nor could he manage the movement to brace his free hand and foot against it to lever himself away.

It felt to Roy as if he had been struggling for several minutes, but when he glanced up at the others in the room, he realized that it had only been a second or two. Everyone was frozen where he’d last seen them: the hostages still down on the floor, Laura’s expression of protective fury shifting into horror.

“Don’t move!” Laura shouted.

Roy knew she was right. He’d only injure himself more thrashing around. He should wait for Keisha, and her scalpel. He knew it, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had to get away from the blood, the dead reaching fingers, the wall. Roy gathered what strength he had, and flung himself away as hard as he could.

Pain tore through his right side, and he felt something rip. Then he fell sprawling across the floor, uncertain how badly he was hurt and afraid to find out.

Laura ran up to crouch down beside him. Her hands stretched out and then stopped, as if she was scared to touch him. Roy had done the same thing when DJ had been burned, paralyzed by the thought that DJ’s body would come apart in his hands.

“Oh, God, Roy,” she breathed. “You’re covered in blood.”

Her gaze slid upward, from him to the cracked wall and the blood that still trickled from it.

“I killed him,” Laura muttered. “I said one word and I made him die. I killed him, and I
still
didn’t save you.”

“I’m fine, Laura,” Roy said, hoping it was true. His voice sounded strange in his own ears. “I think most of the blood is Gregor’s.”