Wild Ones (16 page)

"Why are you
telling me this?"

"Because Cade
and I are both Enforcers, and we will be called soon to help the
vampires take down this rogue. That means I won't be around to
protect you. In a couple of days you will start to smell different,
and they will leave you in peace. But they will still come for you
until then, and I need to keep you safe. I want to take you to the
witches tonight. They can look after you until I get back."

"What?
Witches?" I swung around to face him. "And what do you mean I'm
going to smell different?"

He looked at me
carefully and took a deep breath before speaking again.

"Liv, the
witches are a group of women with money and knowledge. They are not
supernatural, but they are powerful, and they help us occasionally
with issues like this. They also keep us on the straight and narrow
for the most part, and make sure the Law is followed. They'll know
how to keep you safe."

He watched my
face while this sunk in. Then he continued slowly.

"Your smell
will change when the embryo travelling down your Fallopian tubes
implants in your uterus."

I was still
processing the information about the witches when he said that, so
my reaction to his words was delayed for a few seconds.

"
What
?" He said nothing,
just waited and watched my face.

"
What
?" I said again,
louder this time. "You can't
know
something like that. And what if I don't want to be pregnant?
Which I don't, by the way. If that makes any difference at
all."

"It does make a
difference, little love, but only to how you feel about it all.
Because the pregnancy is inevitable. I am a wolf, and I could tell
that you were ovulating last night."

I stared at
him, open mouthed.

"These
pregnancies don't respond to hormonal manipulation either. So if
you wanted to terminate it, it would have to be done surgically.
And that doesn't always work." He spoke in an infuriatingly
matter-of-fact tone. I was finding it hard to breathe, I was so
angry.

"Get
out," I finally said, as the implications of everything he had told
me started to sink in. I had a life of my own, one that I had
worked unbelievably hard for. I was a doctor and I loved my job,
most days anyway. Now this man, this wolf, this
surgeon
had come along and he had invaded it, and
if what he said was true, he had irrevocably changed it. A cold
rage burned through me.

"Get out!" I
was almost shouting. He had ignored me the first time, but now he
stood up and nodded, and then he walked out. I heard him walk down
the stairs and I waited until he had closed the front door behind
him, and then I burst into tears.

I woke up the
next morning with a hangover and a sour taste in my mouth that had
nothing to do with the wine I had drunk the night before. I had
decided last night before I had finally fallen asleep, that I would
be trying the damn morning after pill anyway. Just in case it
worked. For some reason, the idea that it might work didn't fill me
with elation. I turned a blind eye to my ambivalence, and drank
coffee and dressed for work. I was still angry, but more with the
circumstances that had led me to this, rather than at Hugo himself.
It's a hell of a thing to be pissed at your own genetic makeup.

I drove to
work, and parked as close as I could to the ED entrance, worried
about another possible encounter with a group of men, sorry,
wolves. I was considering asking a security guard to accompany me
to my car after work when a shadow fell across my window. I jumped
slightly, and looked up to see Hugo standing next to my car. I
opened the door, and stepped out. He stood, watching me with a
slightly apprehensive look on his face.

"We've been
called," he said. I nodded, understanding immediately.

"I've asked a
couple of wolves to keep an eye on you. I would really appreciate
it if you would let them take you to the witches," he said
carefully.

"I'll be fine
at work," I told him, touched by his anxiety. "They can take me
there after work."

His expression
softened as he smiled with relief. "Thank you, Liv." He turned to
summon two big men across to where we stood. I hadn't noticed them
standing near an SUV with a crumpled bumper. Another man leaned
against the SUV, arms folded across his chest, bigger even than
Hugo, and just as dark. Cade, I thought. He smiled and nodded at
me.

"Aaron, Joe,
this is Olivia."

"Hi," I said,
and lifted a hand in a brief wave. They both inclined their heads
in acknowledgement. I turned back to Hugo.

"Be careful," I
told him, suddenly and irrationally worried for his safety.

"You too, my
little love," he said softly, and he leaned in to kiss me. "Be
safe."

I stood flanked
by those two big and less than chatty guys as Hugo and Cade climbed
in the car and drove off. Joe and Aaron accompanied me to the doors
of the ED and then indicated somehow that they would be waiting
outside for me until after my shift. That's how I interpreted the
shrugs and gestures, anyway. They could have been telling me that
they were going for cream and scones for all I knew. Either way
they stayed outside as I walked in to start my working day.

For some
bizarre reason the ED was half empty when I arrived that morning,
and it actually stayed like that for a couple of hours. I wondered
if the two wolves at the door were keeping people away.

It was some
time before lunch and I was just about to reduce a dislocated
shoulder in one of the resus bays when someone outside screamed. I
waited for the screaming to stop, while I continued to mix up a
solution of ketamine and propofol that I was planning to use to
sedate my patient. Reducing a shoulder is nowhere near as easy as
they make out on TV, and doing it without good analgesia and
sedation was just cruel. The scream stopped, but then another
started. I looked around to see that the nurse had abandoned me,
and the patient was looking more nervous than ever. I covered the
needle on the syringe and jammed the whole thing in my pocket,
reluctant to leave a dangerous cocktail like this lying around. I
smiled reassuringly at the man on the trolley bed and went to see
what was happening, and find out if I could help.

I walked
straight into it. Two big guys who looked just like Aaron and Joe
were being wheeled into a couple of adjacent bays. They were pale
and covered in blood, and both had huge lacerations across their
bellies with bowel protruding through. I stood horrified for a
second, wondering what the hell could have done this to two
shapeshifters who were allegedly almost indestructible. Two more
senior docs had been summoned, and they had started working on the
wolves already. I asked one then the other if they needed any help,
but they smiled at me and shook their heads. I was relieved, to be
honest. I had never worked on anyone I'd actually known, and even
though my acquaintance with those two was of short duration, I
still knew them. I stood back and watched as the monitoring
equipment was attached to them, and noted that they were both
pretty stable. I sighed with relief. It looked like they were
probably going to be OK. I turned to head back to my patient with
the dislocated shoulder, remembering the ketafol in my pocket.

I had
almost made it to my resus bay when a man I didn't know stepped out
in front of me. He was tall, with thick dark hair, and nice
looking, but he had a creepy grin and an air of menace around him
that I couldn't quite define. He stared at me with a frightening
intensity for a couple of seconds. I stepped backwards,
instinctively trying to put some space between us. He sniggered and
then he suddenly reached out and grabbed me by the neck with his
left hand and swung me so my back was jammed against the wall
opposite the resus bay.

"Hello, bitch,"
he drawled in a tone that made me feel sick with fear. "I hear
you've been screwing Hugo Grantham. Has he given it to you doggy
style yet?"

I said nothing.
My mouth was dry, and his grip on my throat made talking impossible
anyway. 

"You smell
gooood," he dragged the last word out as he shifted his position so
his body was pressed up against mine. "Good enough to eat. Spread
your legs, bitch." I shook my head at him and tried to glare my
disapproval as I started to feel faint from lack of blood going to
my head. I remember wondering where the hell everyone had gone, and
knowing at the same time that they were looking after the wolves on
the other side of the ED. I was in deep shit, and I knew it.

"Your guard
doggies turned out to be quite a useful distraction," my assailant
smirked. He reached behind him and pulled a knife out from wherever
it had been hidden. Probably a sheath of some sort, I thought,
desperately trying to distract myself from the paralysing fear that
gripped me. He grinned evilly, and plunged the knife into my left
thigh, just lateral to the bone. I gasped as the pain seared
through me, and almost collapsed against him. The only thing
holding me up was his hand around my neck. 

He sniggered
again and used the opportunity to push a leg between my thighs, and
he let go the knife and slipped his hand under the elastic
waistbands of my scrubs and my panties. I was so focused on not
fainting from the pain that I hardly noticed him roughly insert a
finger inside me. He removed it and sucked on it, grinning. Then he
reached down and pulled the knife from my leg.

"You're coming
with me, bitch," was the last thing I heard before I passed
out.

I woke up lying
across the back seat of a moving car, a blanked draped across me,
and a pillow under my head. I noticed that straight after the pain
hit. Actually, my leg hurt like buggery, so I had to try and focus
on something else to stop the pain from becoming overwhelming. So I
focused on the blanket, an unexpected kindness. 

I wondered then
if I'd already been rescued, and my rescuer was now driving me
home. Pain intruded again so I sat up, hoping a change in
position would stop the throbbing. No luck there. It became worse,
an all encompassing screaming agony that made me feel nauseated and
lightheaded. The driver of the vehicle came into focus in front of
my swimming eyes. Same dark thick hair as the man who had stabbed
me. What were the odds of this being a different person? 

Pretty
high, as it turns out. Stratospheric even. He turned his head
to glance contemptuously at me, and then turned back to watch the
road and the other traffic. I glanced out of the window and saw
that we were travelling along some major highway that I didn't
recognise. Pine trees lay just beyond the grass hugging the road,
rows and rows of pine trees. Beyond them were more bloody pine
trees. Not a single proper landmark in sight. I had no idea where I
was, but I had a bloody good suspicion I was heading into the arse
end of nowhere. 

"Feel free to
try and attack me now, bitch," the man sniggered, his eyes
following me in the rear-view mirror. "You won't get far, but I'll
enjoy it. Not as much as I'm going to enjoy fucking you soon, but
feel free nonetheless."

I said nothing
for a few moments. I had deduced that in all probability this
maniac had to be a wolf or a vampire. Who else could overwhelm and
gravely injure two men who were supposed to be more or less
indestructible? And from the way he spoke of Hugo and the two shape
shifters he'd assaulted, I was leaning more towards a diagnosis of
vampire. Seriously what other doc in the world was forced to come
to conclusions like this one? Everyone else was diagnosing
haemorrhoids and sprained wrists, and here I was, the unluckiest
woman in the world, about to be raped by an invincible sadist.

I adjusted my
position, feeling the pain less as the adrenaline kicked in. Thank
God for catecholamines, I though fleetingly as something else
intruded on my consciousness. The bulky syringe in my scrubs pocket
nudged my hip, demanding my attention. I put my right hand into my
pocket and wound my fingers around it as I recalled its
contents.

Two hundred
beautiful milligrams of ketamine with two hundred equally
delightful milligrams of propofol.    Enough to
anaesthetise a few humans. I went over the figures in my mind. One
milligram per kilo of propofol to knock out a human. One to two
milligrams per kilo of ketamine. Together you needed half the dose.
So for a one hundred kilo man, twenty five to fifty milligrams to
make him sleep. Occasionally they stopped breathing, which was a
recognised side effect to propofol especially, and which was why we
only used it in resus where we had the equipment to breathe for the
patient when they couldn't breathe for themselves. I had two
hundred milligrams of each, enough to knock down two hundred to
four hundred kilograms worth of humanity. I wondered if it would
affect a vampire. I looked at the head in front of me and
shuddered. It was worth a try. 

Next thing -
where to inject? Ideally these drugs should be injected into a
large vein, and slowly, to avoid irritation of the vein and the
pain that accompanied that. Ha, I thought. That was so obviously
not an issue here. Venous access was going to be an issue here. I
considered stabbing him through the seat, but rejected that idea
almost immediately. My needle was never going to be long enough to
penetrate the driver's seat back as well as the layers of muscle
below. And there's a lot of bone in the back of the thorax - ribs,
scapulae, spine. Unless I was very lucky, I wasn't going to hit any
big blood vessels that way either. Crap idea.

So that left
only the neck. I had always laughed at the way people on TV just
randomly injected into someone's neck, amazingly hitting the
underlying blood vessels with unerring accuracy. I was an ED doc,
and knew all about blood vessels and anatomy, and I still used an
ultrasound to insert central lines. And occasionally, despite all
of this, the veins remained stubbornly elusive.