The Bear's Arranged Mate: A Bear Shifter Romance Novel (17 page)

“You’re sadistic,” she said, raising her intonation as if she had only just discovered it.

“No, I’m a pioneer. I was laughed out of my position, scorned. That isn’t science! Science is a constant question, a begging of the question… that is what I’m doing, Doctor Len-“ he stopped and grinned, “should I keep calling you that?”

Sarah let the lab coat slide off her shoulders, and pulled up the sleeves on her shirt. She could hear a clicking sound as Golding’s “pets” made their way down the hallway. She absently looked at her watch. Still five minutes.

“If you’re thinking about changing, I would advise against that,” Golding said, pushing off his desk and swaying on his soles. “If they sense any animal scent, they’ll attack. Tear you to pieces, all over these walls, and I won’t be able to stop them. As long as you stay, just as you are… they’ll listen to
me
.”

She froze and heard a gruff sound of breathing behind her, and a silhouette she had seen in the flesh appeared in the frosted glass of the office door. Two of them waltzed in, obedient as robots, although she could see their giant crusty noses sniffing the air, and the way they licked their lips when they passed. They both came and sat down beside Golding, who smiled and snapped his fingers.

In the full light, she could see that they were misshapen – probably a result of the drugs he’d given them to turn them into beasts, erasing their rational human minds. Their fur was thinner than actual wolves, grey and slicked back, and she could see their muscles were indeed bulging.
Double layered
. There was no way she could take on two of them, even in Bear form.

All animals who had engaged in combat did so with a latent fear of getting hurt. Any battle could be your last, and so most fights in the wild tended to be mostly posturing. No predator could afford to get injured, because it would spell death in the wilderness. These things were different. Those same instincts for self-preservation had been overwritten. In their place was just a fanaticism, a madness of the blood that boiled down to a primal rage.

Her lips tightened as the two Wolves approached her at their master’s command, one of them snapping at her, but keeping his distance. It was hard to believe they had been humans. Golding had found the perfect soldier – not fully Wolf but not fully human. They’d been drugged into something in between.

“You’re a monster,” she said to him, and checked her watch again.

“Again, matter of perspective. In the eye of the beholder,” he shrugged, and snapped his fingers  again. “Now, are you going to come quietly, or do I snap these fingers again?”

“What you’re doing is wrong. These aren’t animals. They’re people…”

“They’re whatever nature decided for them to be, and as we all know, nature is a cruel mistress. I do not limit myself according to
nature
. I defy nature. You will become one of mine. Who knows, maybe there’s something in that cute body of yours that will finally help me bridge the ribosomal flux and make it feasible for normal humans.”

“You won’t succeed,” she said, taking another step backward until her butt touched the door.

“Tchh, tchh,” he said, shaking his finger. The dogs snarled and leapt toward her and she pulled back, feeling the hot breath of them on her. It was damp, and seemed to soak through her shirt, touch her skin, and she cringed.

“Take her to a holding cell for now,” Golding said turning.

Sarah buttoned up her shirt and was pushed through the door by a big muzzle of a head. She took one last glance at Golding who turned and leaned over his desk. He looked tired, and she wondered what could have driven a man as brilliant as him to something so tragic. It didn’t make sense, but she couldn’t do anything but pity him.

She checked her watch again. The second hand passed over the twelve and she flinched, expecting something. Nothing happened immediately, but several seconds later there was a flickering of the lights and something that sounded like an explosion. The whole hallway shook and both Wolves stared fixedly at the lights, clearly alarmed.

One of them half-clucked, half-groaned something unintelligible and the other’s ears bristled as it turned and ran back down the corridor. The remaining Wolf snarled and nudged her forward again.

“Guess I’m not that lucky, huh?” she said.

Up ahead, she could see a sort of prison cell and a giant blue touch panel on the floor. The Wolf instinctively touched it and the gates opened.
Clever
, she thought. He’d made the whole facility operable by his pets. He nudged her again and she dragged her leg. In her right sleeve, she could feel something cold and smooth.

Golding had been too busy gloating to notice that she’d pushed one of the vials of Laudacite up her sleeve before she’d gotten out of the Cadillac. She lowered her arms and turned her back deftly, pretending to comply. The vial fell into her palm and she held it fast like a dagger. A small bronze syringe protruded from one end – probably as a delivery system.

As she was about to walk over the barrier of the prison she let her leg fall out from under her, as if she were fainting. The Wolf’s ears pricked as she toppled backward, and at the last moment swiveled on her heel. She brought down the vial hard on the Wolf’s neck and saw it inject immediately. The Wolf’s eyes turned on, instinct overtaking, and yelped, bucking his head, which caught her in the stomach and threw her against the far wall.

She coughed, face-down, and rolled onto her side. Stars were spinning around her head as she rolled to one side and narrowly missed the swinging end of the Wolf’s tail, which laid into the concrete foundation, indenting it.

Beside her, its huge body twisted in a spasm as the drug took effect; she made a mental note.
Stab them in the throat with a sedative
, and took off at a run. By this time Laura and the others should have breached the main fence, in which case she needed to find Golding before he could unleash more of his horde.

She reached his office and burst in, but there was no sign of him. She swore. Of course not. She tried to think, recalling the layout of the basement as she had seen it. There had to be another entrance off the main atrium, which led to the actual holding cells for other mind-controlled theriomorphs. She kept running, feeling her blood rising as she neared the double doors to the big circular room. She could smell the circuit boards and hear the humming of electrical cables before she barged through.

The area was deserted. In the main container in the center of the room, the Wolf under observation was twisting, as if in a bad dream, its eyes still closed. Clawing the water as if it were drowning in a kind of madness.
Poor soul
, she thought. There was nothing she could do for him now. She needed to find Golding.

She scanned the room and saw another door, double-hinged, leading to the east. This place was massive underground. One would never think, looking at the small squat operation on top, that there was a huge, nearly military-grade, research facility underneath. For a moment, she had the eerie sensation of moving through a wasp’s burrow. Or an ant’s. At any moment, she could run into one of the other soldiers. She undid the top button on her jeans and untucked the business shirt. If she
had
to turn, she’d need to do it quickly.

There was another hallway but this one had stairs, darkly illuminated by red warning lights that rotated behind wire grills. She could faintly make out another door at the bottom and hurried down the flight of cement steps. Each step was painful. There was something unnatural about the hardness of artificial places, and she could feel her legs working against her as they slapped painfully.
I wish I’d brought a pair of hiking boots instead
, she thought, suddenly hating her disguise, which had not only failed to fool Golding, but was now hampering her.

At the bottom of the stairs, she kicked her shoes off. Barefoot, at least, she could sprint. As she threw her shoulder into the door, she had to blink against another shock of light. It wasn’t bright this time, just… different. Like the frequency was off, in the same way the fluorescent lights in the hallway to Golding’s office seemed off. She suddenly understood why.

*

She had wondered just how
deep
the facility went, and now she saw that it probably wound its way into the sewers, and possibly even under the Thames to the south. It was a perfect escape route, but more than that, it was a perfect location for Dr. Golding’s final experiment.

She saw the room had likely been a hydro processing plant at one time, but it had been turned into another containment pod. This one looked smaller, but there was significantly more hardware plugged into it. Giant capacitors stuck obscenely out of it like electrodes, and a faint greenish glow issued from the liquid inside, casting the whole area in a swathe of vermillion that danced across the walls like reflection from the surface of water.

In the center of the containment pod, she saw Dr. Golding. He had pulled his shirt off, and was fully submerged, but had an oxygen mask attached to his face, which trailed hoses to another breathing apparatus outside the pod. He balanced there, and suddenly there was a static sound as electricity began to circulate and sparks coughed from the containment pod.

He raised his hand at her, and although she couldn’t see his mouth, his eyes said it all. He was smiling, cruelly. From several circular entrances she heard the same soft rasping sound and saw the other Wolf stride out, its gait deliberate and loping, and its eyes unbridled.
He’s given it a fresh injection of his own chemical
, he realized. And I’m fresh out of Laudacite.

She looked back at Golding. Whatever this containment pod was, she figured he had been cornered. Cornered animals became dangerous, unpredictable.
He hasn’t tested his theory of ribosomal flux on a human carrier
, she thought. He was going to try to test his research on himself; either it would kill him instantly, or he’d suddenly take on the attributes of the theriomorphs he’d tortured.

“Shit,” she said and took a step back from the approaching Wolf.

There was no choice left. She hoped that Laura would find this place soon. In the meantime, it was up to her. She thought of Connor, and tore her shirt off and struggled out of her pants. Golding, behind the plastic, seemed to recognize what she was doing and snapped his fingers. Even submerged, it made a definitive click, the Wolf’s ears bristled once and he lunged.

She was half-way through her transformation when the Wolf landed on her, its claws heading for her neck. She ducked it deftly, and snarled at him. She remembered what Laura had said about Golding’s creatures having some sort of venom in them – get tagged once, and she’d be dead before she could even reach the doctor.

She growled again, her full black pelt erupting like a time-lapse, and she braced her large Bear body on the cement floor, waiting for a second attack. The Wolf gave it, regaining its posture and lunging again; same tactic, a bad move in a fight. When Golding had taken away their humanity, he’d also taken their ability to reason. This thing was literally just acting on impulse, using the same attack over and over.

She easily deflected its blow by hitting it in the muzzle with an open paw, and the Wolf made a bleating sound like a dying sheep as it struck against the railing, bouncing off its ribs. Sarah growled and realized it had managed to sneak in an incision with its claw before it had been hit, and a small red streak darkened red on her fur.

The Wolf stood up, shook its head like a boxer recovering from a blow, and lowered its ears again.
Another attack
. This time it was different, but still predictable, and Sarah ran forward on all fours to meet him. At the last minute, she sprung off her hind leg and twisted in mid-air, missing the snapping jowls of the Wolf who emitted a surprised croak from its lean throat, and struck upward with her claws.

The Wolf’s underbelly was unprotected and she felt her paw slice neatly through the thick hide, sinking in deep against its ribs. She landed hard and rebounded, but when she turned back, the Wolf was limping badly and blood was pooling under it. It let out a throaty gasp and she realized she’d punctured one of its lungs, which was rapidly collapsing. It looked at her, almost fearful, and collapsed on its side. In his tank, Golding screamed mutely into his breathing mask, and Sarah winced as another electrical bolt filled the tank.

It looked as if he was in his death throes as he tore at his bare chest with his hands, his whole body in a kind of spasm. His arms began to grow in a geometric growth, doubling in size as he lurched. It was like watching a worm in the sunlight, struggling against the poison of UV light. His face began to twist as well, until he ripped the breathing apparatus from his face and bubbles streamed from his open lips, which began to curve inward.

A thin hair began to grow outward, fine and silken, but down his back, a huge mane of black bristles sprouted outward. It reminded her of a porcupine, except that his appearance was different, more fearsome. His legs folded back on themselves, becoming double jointed like a dog’s. He was bigger than his pet Wolves, and while there was something wolfish about his appearance, it was too grotesque to call canine. His face broke apart, elongating as the muscles and bones flexed into a half-human half-lupine visage that was hellish in itself.