Red (28 page)

I moved to the chair, bending to get a
better whiff of the arms. There were faint traces of blood. Not
enough for me to tell if it had been Rich or his sister but enough
to set my teeth to aching. We needed to hurry. I was starting to
learn the signs, and I’d be having another attack soon. Probably
worse this time given the fever I’d had all afternoon. We didn’t
want to be caught here when I did, with me helpless and Sawyer too
worried about me to act with clear thought.

Across the room he checked the wardrobe in
the corner.

“
Anything?”

He was very still, his back ramrod straight
with tension. Something was very wrong.

“
Sawyer?” I wandered over,
laying a hand on his back and trying to peer around him into the
depths of the wardrobe.

He held some kind of syringe in the palm of
one hand. Except, no, it didn’t have a plunger at the end.

“
What is that?” I
asked.

“
Tranquilizer dart,” said
Sawyer. His voice cracked as he turned his eyes to me. “One of
ours.”

“
What do you mean? Like
from
the lab?
”

He nodded.

“
So, what, you think one of
our
team is the kidnapper?” My brain couldn’t seem to wrap
around that idea, that any of the people I’d been working with all
summer could possibly have been stalking me for months. That any of
my coworkers could have assaulted and kidnapped Rich and his
sister.

Sawyer handed me the dart, and I lifted it
to my nose. I caught the scent that Sawyer had, faint but
unmistakable. Utterly horrifying. Incredulous, I looked at Sawyer.
“No. No, that can’t be right. It has to be some kind of mistake.
Maybe he handled this box of darts in the supply closet or
something before it was taken. It can’t possibly be—”

“
Patrick.” Sawyer’s voice
broke on the name. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking behind
me, at the doorway.

Chapter 12

Elodie

I
whirled and backed into Sawyer.

Patrick was framed in the doorway. He wasn’t
wearing his glasses. Which was a ridiculous thing for me to focus
on, but they were so much a part of how I visualized him that it
was almost like looking at a stranger. His eyes, usually hidden by
those Coke bottle lenses, were flat and gray. The mouth usually
curved in a slightly amused smile now had a cruelty about it that
I’d never noticed. His shoulders, usually slightly hunched, were
straight and confident. He no longer looked the part of
absent-minded professor, what with the military-style fatigues and
the gun in his hand.

Maybe Superman’s disguise wasn’t so
stupid after all,
I thought.

The silence spun out, and none of us moved.
A bead of sweat trickled down my back, like an ice cube dragged the
length of my spine. My body ached with the effort to hold perfectly
still so I wouldn’t betray the fact that I was burning with fever
and my wolf was near the surface. My eyes hadn’t changed. Yet. But
I wasn’t sure how long I could hold out.

And Patrick was standing between us and the
exit. With that very wicked looking gun that was every bit as flat
a gray as his eyes. And it was still pointed at us, almost like a
confession. A blinking neon sign that said
I am the bad
guy.

Still nobody moved.

My fingers curled around the tranquilizer
dart. Could I hit him with it? Would it even engage? I had no idea
how they worked. Something to do with the force of being fired
creating the motion of injection maybe. Would it even start to
affect him before he could fire on us?

Bad idea
, I thought. Sawyer was the
one with the dead eye aim. I’d barely been able to manage whipping
aluminum plates like frisbees with any kind of accuracy. If I
managed to pass him the dart, would he understand my intent?

“
Put the gun down,
Patrick,” said Sawyer, breaking his paralysis to shift in front of
me. I didn’t know what was going through his head. He’d known
Patrick so much longer than I had. I couldn’t begin to imagine the
betrayal he must be feeling.

Patrick’s attention shifted from me to
Sawyer and the smile faded. He looked almost regretful as he shook
his head. “You have the worst taste in women, my boy. I really wish
you weren’t here. It’s unfortunate.”

He doesn’t know,
I realized.
He
doesn’t know what Sawyer is. He thinks it’s just me.
I needed
to keep it that way if we were going to have a chance.

I stepped around Sawyer, placing myself as a
shield in front of him. “It’s me you’re after. Leave Sawyer out of
this.”

Patrick swung his attention back to me. “And
how exactly do you think that’s going to work? You think you’re
going to come away with me and that Sawyer here isn’t going to do
everything he can to get you back? You don’t know your suitor very
well.”

I took a step toward Patrick, toward the
gun. Despite all my trials, all the time I’d spent facing death, it
was a very different thing to face it with someone else in control.
My heart rate shot up, and I could no longer totally hold back the
trembling. Sawyer reached out and yanked me back, as I’d known he
would. And as his hand curled around mine, I shifted the dart into
his. He squeezed my hand, and I thought he’d gotten the
message.

“
Don’t do this, Patrick,”
he said. “Whatever this is about, just let it go.”

“
My dear boy, I can’t let
it go. My entire life has been leading to this. To her.”

My wolf shoved for release, and I doubled
over with a low moan.
Wait
, I begged her.
Not
yet.

Sawyer looked back at me in horror because
now was the worst possible time for me to change.

Patrick saw the look on his face and
misinterpreted it. “She hasn’t told you what she is. Well then,
that may change things. Step aside and wait. In a few minutes,
you’ll see and you’ll understand why the beast has to die.”

Use it
, I thought.
Keep up the act
and use the opportunity to get closer to him
.

“
Sawyer, don’t listen to
him,” I said, deliberately choking on the words as if my mouth were
crowding with extra teeth. “I can explain.”

With an agonized look, he shifted toward
Patrick, backing away from me. I knew how hard it was for him to
leave me unguarded in the face of that gun.

“
I’ll save you the breath,”
said Patrick, “since it looks like you need it. She’s not
human.”

“
Not human,” repeated
Sawyer in an
I’m humoring you because you have a gun in your
hand, but really you’re crazy
tone of voice. “Then what is
she?”

He was only a few feet away from Patrick
now, still not looking directly at him, doing nothing to telegraph
his intent.

“
Your lady fair is, in
fact, a werewolf.”

“
A
werewolf?
Like
shape-shifting, howl at the moon, allergic to silver
werewolf?”
Given that most of those things were, in fact,
not
true about our kind, his incredulity was fully
believable.

“
Yes.”

Sawyer raised his hands as if to cover his
face and stumbled the last few steps to Patrick, who used his free
hand to pat Sawyer on the shoulder.

“
I’m sorry to have to break
it to you, my boy.”

“
I’m sorry, too,” said
Sawyer. Then he raised his hand and struck lightning quick, jabbing
the dart into Patrick’s neck.

Patrick yelled, trying to hit at Sawyer with
the butt of the gun, but Sawyer grabbed his wrist forcing the gun
up. It fired once, into the ceiling, and I screamed as they both
stumbled into the front room. My wolf surged, trying to push free,
and I fell to the floor, fighting her.

Not here. Not now. Just give me a few more
minutes.

I shoved to my feet and lurched into the
other room. They were still grappling for control of the gun.
Something was wrong. If the dart had worked, Patrick should have
been fading by now. Sawyer shouldn’t be having trouble subduing
him. He should’ve been able to take him down even without
tranquilizers.

“
Elodie, run!” The order
was punctuated by a
crack
as Patrick landed a punch to
Sawyer’s jaw.

Was he crazy? Of course I wasn’t going to
just
leave him
here. He was my
mate.

Sawyer slammed Patrick’s gun hand against
the floor and another shot rang out, ricocheting off the remainder
of the chimney. The bullet pinged so close to my head, I actually
heard it whiz past my ear as I leapt back and fell hard. As soon as
I gained my feet again, I was looking for an opening, some means of
launching myself into the fight to help Sawyer. But every time I
managed to get near, the struggle over the gun had it pointing in
my direction, forcing strategic retreat.

“
Go!” Sawyer
shouted.

“
I won’t leave
you.”

He cracked an elbow against Patrick’s nose
and blood gushed, hot and bright. The scent of copper curled around
me, a seduction my wolf was unwilling to resist. My body seized,
muscles tearing, joints popping in a rush of agony that left me
blind.

“
Elodie!”

I wanted to say something to reassure him
that I was okay, that he needed to focus on the fight. But my jaw
was locked tight. Instead, I turned my sightless eyes toward them,
trying to parse out from sound what was happening just a few feet
away. Grunt. Scuffle. Roll. Snarl. Thwack.

The gun fired again, and I found myself
caught in a fine spray of blood. At the sudden silence, my heart
threatened to beat straight out of my chest. Someone drew a very
wet, sucking breath. Panic had me scrambling to my feet, despite
limbs that were not fully human, not fully wolf. When my vision
came back, everything about the scene was sharp and magnified.

Shock and grief were etched on Sawyer’s face
as he stared at Patrick. My gaze shot to Patrick, searching for the
mortal wound. But though blood soaked his shirt, he was backing up,
watching Sawyer. My attention swung back as Sawyer fell, collapsing
on the too clean wood floors. My eyes moved inch by terrifying inch
down Sawyer’s chest to the hole spurting a small fountain of blood
with each beat of his heart.

Mine stopped.

No.

Sawyer struggled to take another breath, and
I could hear the gurgle of blood filling his lungs. He turned his
head to find me, his eyes, those beautiful eyes, dark and full of
pain. Blood spread out from beneath him. The shot had gone clean
through then, hitting God knew how many vital organs in the
process.

I was beyond human speech, at the threshold
of losing my human intellect, paralyzed by the sight of my mate
dying.

“
You have to . . . ” He
coughed, and blood trickled down the corner of his mouth. “You have
to go.”

No!

“
I’m so sorry, my boy.”
Patrick was on his feet, the gun held loosely at his side. “I
didn’t want this for you.”

Your fault. You did this.
My eyes
narrowed, calculating distance and speed, wondering if I could get
to him before he could get the gun up again.

Sawyer tried to speak again. “Elodie,
g..go.” He was choking on blood.

I was breaking into a million pieces.

“
I l..love . . . ” He
didn’t finish. On a bubbling sort of sigh, he closed his
eyes.

I love you
.

Pain, stunning and sharp, drove past my
ribcage and into my chest. I couldn’t breathe. There was no oxygen
left in the world.

Breathe
, I thought. But the order was
for him, not for myself.

I stared at Sawyer’s blood-soaked chest,
willing it to move. But it did not rise. Neither did his hands or
feet twitch or his eyes open. He was still. Unnaturally so.

C’mon,
heal
, damn you!
Desperation bound me surely as any chains, waiting for the
impossible.

He wasn’t getting up from this.

Rage burst through me, an atom bomb of fury
lighting up every cell. It burst out of me in a sound of raw
anguish that bore no resemblance to a human voice.

Patrick stumbled back from the sound, for
the first time apparently sensible of the monster in the room.

He wanted to hunt a monster. I’d give him a
monster. I stopped fighting my wolf. At last we were of one accord.
My bones popped and lengthened, my body hunching, straining toward
four feet.

Patrick was lifting the gun, face grim and
full of purpose.

I charged him. Halfway between forms, my
loping, limping gait sent me crashing into him. But I was off
balance, unable to fully control my body. Patrick was scrambling
after the gun that had gone flying, and I had a split second to
make a decision.

I could try to kill him here, now, while not
fully shifted and not at my peak of speed or strength and risk
failing. Or I could do as Sawyer had asked me and escape so that
his death was not in vain. So that I could live to survive
transition and come after Patrick in full force.

One look at his too still body decided me.
Sawyer always wanted me to live.

Before Patrick could get to the gun, I
sprang through the door and into the night.

~*~

Elodie

I don’t know how long I ran or even where.
There was no thought to laying a false trail or doubling back. No
careful walking up the river bed. There was just running. Every
step was an agony because my body didn’t have time to finish
shifting to one form or the other, and I didn’t stop to let it. I
had to put as much distance between me and Patrick as possible. And
a part of me desperately wanted to escape the reality lying back
there in that cabin because if I let myself think about it, let
myself voice the thought, I would break. So I kept running, kept
tripping over my feet and falling, picking myself back up and
running some more because the pain kept truth at bay.