Trail of Dead (28 page)

“Caroline’s wolf knocked a bunch of shit off the walls, glasses off the bar. She bit a woman, but then she made for the exit. She wanted to get out, into the wild. I’d gotten my gun by then, but I was between the two of them.” He shrugged miserably. “I couldn’t let her leave, and I couldn’t follow her while Eli was here killing people. So I shot her.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t shoot Eli too,” I said without thinking.

His smile was wry and a little sheepish. “I tried to. I got off four shots. I think I grazed his pelt once. He’s so damned
fast
.” Will shook his head. “I had him cornered when you came in. That was going to be the killing shot.”

He looked down at the woman in front of him. “This one’s alive,” he said. She was small and Asian, with a vine tattoo snaking its way along the outside of one arm. She had been curled into a ball behind a couple of barstools, maybe trying to hide. Will bent to look closer at the woman’s face, and his shoulders relaxed a few inches. “She’s Anastasia’s girlfriend. I don’t remember her name, though.”

“Lydia,” I said.

“That’s right.” He looked down at her like he was memorizing her face. “At least she won’t be alone.”

“She’s going to change?”

Will nodded. “She’s the one that Caroline bit on her way to the door. Her wounds are closing fast. She’s starting the process.” There was a lot he wasn’t saying in those words. For some years now, the werewolves and vampires have had trouble reproducing. Sometimes the process still worked, but much more often the victim simply died. If Lydia’s wounds were closing, she was going to be one of the few new wolves who survived. That didn’t exactly make her lucky, though. It takes three excruciating days for a werewolf to fully transform. But, like Will had said, at least the girl wouldn’t be alone in it.

“The other three?” I asked, nodding at the other bodies. Will shook his head. Dead.

Will went to the door and called Anastasia to come in. She looked at her fallen girlfriend and burst into tears, dropping to her knees to cradle Lydia in her lap. I looked away. Will spoke softly to Ana for a few minutes, until they both stood up and Will lifted Lydia into his arms.

“I’m going to put them in the janitorial room to give them some privacy,” he told me in a low voice. He carried Lydia past me, not
even shifting his grip when he lost his werewolf strength in my radius, and down the hall to the tiny room across from his office. I’d peeked in there once and knew the room held only cleaning supplies, a heavy-duty safe, and a single cot where Will let the werewolves camp out every now and then, when one of them needed a place.

After a couple of minutes, Will returned and slumped against the bar.

“What about Eli?” I asked, looking back at the unconscious man beside me. His chest was rising and falling, but he hadn’t so much as shifted his position since I’d gotten close to him. I concentrated on him for a moment, feeling out at him with whatever it is that makes me what I am. I blinked in surprise. “He feels
wrong
. Twisted and sick.”

Will rubbed his face. “Physically, he’s going to be fine. The wolfberry won’t hurt him in human form. The pack knows a doctor, in Orange County. I called him right after I called you. He has a…well, it isn’t really an antidote, but it’s a sedative designed for werewolves. It’ll knock Eli out until the wolfberry leaves his system.”

“You don’t keep it here?” I nodded toward the woman who was still collapsed at the bar. “Like that sedative?”

He shook his head, with some bitterness. “He won’t let me. It’s…well, let’s say it’s a controlled substance. A lot of the ingredients aren’t legal.”

It sounded like there was a story behind all that, but I was in no mood to ask for it. “Is Eli going to wake up before the doctor gets here?”

Will eyed the man on the floor. “I would think so. I’m not exactly sure what made him pass out, unless it was just the shock of changing so fast after all those other changes.” His gaze moved over to me. “Um, Scarlett…”

“What?” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.

“You look like a horror movie,” Will said simply. I looked down at myself. My hands were fine, except for the cuts on my left finger pads. But every other part of my body was coated with blood. My bare arms were covered with scratches from the glass, some of which was still in my skin. The bulletproof vest had protected most of my middle, but it was riddled with little holes where larger bits of glass had punctured the Kevlar. My jeans were the same. Will was right—I looked like I’d barely survived an encounter with Freddy Krueger.

“You know, when Bruce Willis rolls through glass, it’s like water off a duck,” I said casually.

Will just looked concerned. “I’m not kidding, Scarlett. That looks really bad.”

Suddenly, Eli shifted a little beside me. A faint smile flickered across his face.

“Scar?” he murmured, and then his eyes opened. He looked at me, then at Will a few feet away, and his face instantly caved in on itself. He remembered. “No,” he moaned. “
No.
” He curled into a ball on the side, either not seeing or not caring about all the glass. “Will, did I…are they…”

“Yes, Eli,” Will said, his voice empty. “They’re dead.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

“No.” Eli curved even tighter into the fetal position, his face pushing down into the glass. “Not again. You should have killed me first.” There was no accusation in his voice, just a sort of quiet lifelessness. I tried to keep the surprise off my face. Not again? Had Eli killed someone before? This wasn’t the time to ask.

“I tried, my friend,” Will said quietly. “I knew you wouldn’t want this. I’m sorry.”

“Shoot me now,” he whispered to Will. “I don’t want to be this thing anymore.” His body began to shake. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

Will looked at me for a moment and said very quietly, “It might be better—”

“
No.
” I was not going to let Will shoot Eli. There had been enough damage tonight, enough lives lost. Olivia had already taken too much away from me. And maybe that was selfish, but I’d work the ethics out later.

I glared up at Will, but the alpha werewolf was focused on Eli. “We’ll talk about this when you’re well again,” he said at last.

Eli’s body spasmed with grief, dry sobs escaping his throat in a desperate, wild sound that was more wolf than human. I had no idea what to say, so I put my hands lightly on his shoulders, trying to calm him down—but he didn’t seem to be aware of me anymore. His arms went above his head, instinctively protecting it as he sobbed and sobbed. I looked up at Will, tears in my own eyes. “Give him the sedative,” I demanded.

Will checked his watch. “The doctor won’t—”

“Not that one,” I snapped. “The one you gave that girl.” I nodded toward the woman sleeping on the bar.

Will hesitated. “The doctor will be here in a couple of minutes, then he can have the really serious stuff—”

“
Look at him
,” I shouted. “Give him the goddamned sedative.” My jaw trembled, but I didn’t look away from Will as he stared at me. He may have been in human form, but he was still the alpha. He wasn’t in the habit of taking orders, especially from a human employee. After a moment, though, he looked away. I had won the staring contest. Bully for me. Wordlessly, Will disappeared into the back office again. When he returned he was carrying a first-aid kit the size of a carry-on suitcase.

“Hold him still,” he said grimly, and I leaned onto Eli’s jackknifing body.

“Shh, Eli, it’ll be okay,” I soothed, but Eli was too far gone to even look at me. Between the two of us, we were able to hold him steady long enough for Will to get the needle in, and a moment
later Eli’s whole body went limp under me. I hadn’t realized until then that he’d been straining every muscle he had.

I looked across Eli’s body at Will. “Thank you,” I said sincerely. My voice must have sounded calm, because I think we were both surprised when I burst into tears.

I cried for a long time. I cried for Eli, who was broken. I cried for Caroline, who was dead, and Kirsten, who was hurt. I cried for Ana and Lydia, whose lives were changed forever just because they knew someone who knew me. I cried for me, for the person I should have been instead of the person who Olivia had made me. I cried for all of us. I couldn’t seem to stop.

While I was crying, Will disappeared for a moment, then came back and pulled me carefully to my feet. He rummaged in the first-aid suitcase and came up with a pair of scissors. I stood there sobbing as he cut away the bulletproof vest, and didn’t feel anything when he gently picked glass bits out of my arms and stomach. He walked around to my back and cut the strap of my sports bra vertically, so the bra straps slipped off my shoulders. A sprinkle of glass bits fell onto the ground with the fabric. He carefully took the ponytail holder out of my braid and fluffed at my hair. There was another muted sprinkle of glass.

I was trying to get control back by then, but it was a losing battle. Will stayed behind me, minding my privacy, and I felt him slip clothing over my head. I let him put the oversized Hair of the Dog T-shirt on me, and I didn’t move or struggle as he knelt in the glass to cut off my jeans and underpants. I didn’t feel the pain of the scratches or the sting of the glass being pulled out. The moment should have been creepy, but Will was being so gentle,
and I was crying so hard that it didn’t even occur to me. When he finally stood up, I was wearing only the T-shirt, which reached my midthighs, and my knee-high boots. It was a weird look.

By then I was working on breathing deeply, trying to calm down. When he saw me finally coming back to myself, Will handed me a clean pair of men’s boxer shorts, a bar towel that smelled like detergent, and a glass of water. He turned away while I put the shorts on under the huge bar T-shirt. I drank deeply, and then dipped the towel into the glass and washed my face. Will pulled out a chair from the table next to Eli and brushed it off, then made me sit down and take my boots off to shake out any glass fragments. There were some in my socks, so I took them off, and Will gave me a clean pair from the stash of spare clothing he keeps around for the werewolves, which was probably where the T-shirt and boxers had come from too. The leather boots had held out against the glass, God bless ’em, so I put them back on over the new socks. There were bloodstains on the leather, so they would have to be tossed by the end of the night, but for the moment it was comforting to have them. I gulped in air, completely spent.

Will sat down in the chair across from mine, looking as exhausted as I felt. Neither of us had said a word since I’d thanked him for giving Eli the sedative. I don’t know how long we sat there—time seemed to fuzz away from me for a long moment, and then suddenly someone was knocking on the back door at the end of the little hallway. I looked a question at Will.

“The doctor,” he assured me. “He always comes to the back door.”

Will went back there to let him in, and I stared at the floor, absently tracing a circle in the glass with my boot. The shock was beginning to fade again, and I realized I had no idea what to do now. I checked my watch: 10:50 p.m. And Olivia was still out there. Jesse was safe, surrounded by a legion of police. Molly and Jack were hiding. Kirsten was in the hospital. Dashiell was busy
taking care of cleanup—doing my job, I supposed—at Kirsten’s and then here. I had no one left to lose, but I also had no one left to help me. And whatever Olivia and Mallory were going to do, they were going to do it in just over an hour.

I was alone.

Will and the doctor returned from the back door. I had been picturing someone older, maybe a guy in his late fifties with nefarious horn-rimmed glasses, like the evil Nazi in
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, but I was wrong again. The guy who followed Will back toward Eli and me was forty at the most, carried a briefcase, and was movie-star handsome, with a perfect cleft chin and warm eyes that were almost as green as my own. He was wearing navy-blue scrubs, and he looked for all the world like one of those doctors on prime-time soaps, the ones who spend more time sleeping around than practicing medicine. “
You’re
the doctor?” I said, not bothering to keep the skepticism out of my voice.

He grinned and eyed my T-shirt-and-boots ensemble. “You’re the null?” he countered.

I glanced down at the outfit and shrugged. “Touché.”

“Scarlett, this is Matthias. Matthias, Scarlett.”

I considered a comment on his ridiculous name, but I didn’t exactly have a leg to stand on there, either. “Can you help him?” I said instead.

“Yes.” Matthias squatted down next to Eli, checking his pulse. He opened his briefcase, rummaged around, and pulled out the biggest needle I’d ever seen. Syrupy-looking pink fluid sloshed inside. “This is going to take a little finesse, though.”

He directed me to walk away from Eli, to whatever I thought the edge of my radius might be. I complied, and he got the mammoth needle into position at the vein on Eli’s arm. When he nodded, I took the last two steps away from Eli and felt him leave my radius. Matthias quickly drove in the needle’s plunger, injecting the pinkish fluid into the vein. I hovered, half-expecting it to not
work. I wanted to be ready to leap back toward Eli. But the unconscious man didn’t even stir, and Matthias checked his pulse and nodded to himself. “Keep him out of your range for the next four hours or so,” he said to me. “These drugs would kill a human pretty quickly.”

I nodded and took a few steps back, just to be sure. “Mind if I sit in your office a minute?” I asked Will. I wanted to be away from the carnage, and I had no interest in seeing Will and Matthias handle the doctor’s payment. Will nodded. I leaned down and carefully extracted my wallet, Jesse’s keys, and my phone from the bloody pile that used to be my jeans, hoping to find a plastic bag or something for them in the office.

Will’s office was unpretentious and comfortable: a solid old wooden desk and matching chair, a bulletin board with pictures of Will, his family, the pack. There was some debris in here too, from when Caroline had first changed: papers and office supplies scattered over the floor, trash cans upturned. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the bar, though. Her first instinct had probably been to get to a more open space.