Winter Wolf (35 page)

Patrick cleared his throat. “You’re assuming a lot, Dominic. I warned you it was a risky proposition at best. I can guarantee the life of
one
, not both.”

“Well, thanks for your honesty, Patrick,” I muttered.

The Fenerec barked, and I jumped, whirling around to face her. With her teeth bared, the wolf slammed her shoulder against the cage and its silver chains. A crackling sizzle drowned out Dominic’s startled cry. The stench of burning fur assaulted my nose.

The clatter of metal on metal drew my attention to a black iron lock near where the Fenerec had charged the bars.

The key, large and ornate, was still inside.

The Fenerec slammed against the cage one more time before backing away, tail tucked between her legs. She growled, her golden eyes blazing as she stared at me. Then she looked at Dominic and charged the bars again.

“Stop that!” my agent shouted. I twisted in time to see Dominic lunge towards me. With the choice of being used as a part of Dominic’s experiments or death by enraged Fenerec, I dove to the cage. I grabbed the lock and I managed to get a firm hold on the key before Dominic crashed into me from behind, shoving me against the bars.

With the breath driven out of my lungs, I used the last of my strength to unlock the cage and set the Fenerec free.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The cage’s door slammed into me as the Fenerec charged against it. The wolf’s weight shoved me aside as though I weighed nothing. I was crushed between the cage and door, the air whooshing out of my lungs. Dominic staggered backwards, retreating across the room.

There was nothing sickly about the Fenerec as she skidded to a halt, her fangs bared as she tried to decide which one of us she was going to finish off first. I slumped against the cage as I caught my breath.

Both Dominic and Patrick recoiled to the door.

“I thought she was your beloved.” I coughed and tasted blood. I lifted my hand to my mouth and cringed at the sharp stab where my teeth had cut into my gums. A sharp stab of pain lanced from my chest and up my throat. “I hope she eats you.”

Dominic’s eyes narrowed. “You bitch.”

“Which one of us?” My shoulders heaved as I still fought to catch my breath. The Fenerec jumped up on the table, snarling and snapping her teeth.

“You stupid, little bitch. She’ll kill us all,” Patrick hissed at me.

“Some of us deserve it more than others.” It was a stupid comeback, but I meant it. Maybe the Fenerec would turn on me, but the risk was worth it if she killed those responsible for the Las Vegas murders.

I didn’t need any other reason to hate Dominic or his creepy sorcerer friend. So long as the Fenerec killed one or both of them before turning on me, I’d be satisfied.

The longer she managed to distract them, the higher the chance I could escape—or that Amber might come to my rescue. I doubted she’d arrive in time, even if she abandoned the plan to pick up my father from the airport, but the thought of rescue gave me a little hope.

The Fenerec stayed on the table, her head ducked low as she snarled. Clumps of her fur drifted to the floor, revealing a crisscrossing of black burns.

“Switch them,” Dominic snapped. “Do it before it’s too late!”

“Can you keep her from killing us for five minutes?” Patrick asked.

Dominic ducked out of the room, reappearing with a gun. I didn’t recognize the model; it was larger than my Beretta, and to my horror, he handled it with confidence.

“I hope that’s not loaded with silver,” the sorcerer said.

“Of course not, you idiot. I want to knock her out not kill her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

The Fenerec made a sound between a yip and a bark. To my amazement, I understood what it meant:
danger.

But who was the warning for? For me or for the two men? Beneath the tattered fur, I could see the wolf’s muscles ripple.

“Five minutes,” Patrick repeated, making a gesture with his left hand.

The temperature in the room dropped and my breath emerged in white clouds. The scent of cinnamon strengthened. I sniffed and caught a whiff of something else in the air. I shuddered when I realized what I was smelling.

The Fenerec was infected with the plague. She smelled the same as Scott had when he had died. I shuddered, shaking my head in the futile hope of driving away the memory of his mangled body.

“She’s infected, isn’t she,” I managed to gasp out.

Dominic jerked and pointed the gun at me. “Shut up. You know
nothing
. All I ever needed from you was your body so she can live. Do you understand?”

I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. I pressed my back against the cage, the links of the silver chains biting into me. “You locked her in that cage so she couldn’t transform, didn’t you? You knew the Fenerec were dying. Are dying. You knew it!”

“Will you shut up?” Dominic snarled.

“I hope she kills you slowly,” I snarled back. “Do you know what happened to those women in Vegas?”

“I don’t care about them.” Dominic’s cold tone shocked me into silence.

“You had them raped and murdered, you son of a bitch!” I shrieked.

The Fenerec remained poised like a cat on the table though she didn’t move. Her growls, however, quieted to the silence of a hunting wolf. To my horror, Dominic met my gaze and shrugged.

“I did what needed to be done to save her. I am not sorry for that.”

My anger surged, but was quickly smothered under the strength of my self-disgust. I’d been right all along to suspect Dominic’s motivations for helping me, a scarred actress with a ruined voice. Weren’t there other women without my flaws who would serve as a better host for his Fenerec? Why me? I remembered the accident at the movie studio and wondered just how deep his treachery went. “Was it you who rigged the collapse at the studio?” I whispered.

“Why would I do something like that? You
are
stupid, aren’t you? I need you alive.”

I clenched my teeth. Without a watch, I had no way of knowing how far Patrick was into the magic he was using—and I had no idea what interrupting him would do. I grabbed hold of the cage and pulled myself to my feet.

The Fenerec remained on the table, one ear pricked forward while the other was cocked back, as though listening to our conversation and deciding who was the larger threat. She made no move to attack either man—or me.

If Dominic needed me alive so Patrick could evict me from my own body, there were two ways I could put an end to it. I could interrupt Patrick or I could make my body unsuitable for the Fenerec to take over.

If Dominic shot me, he could render me even more defenseless than I already was. If he shot the Fenerec and Patrick somehow forced me into the wolf body, I’d likely die anyway. If Patrick succeeded, I’d die because he could only keep one of us alive.

I couldn’t see a scenario where I lived. My best hope was lasting long enough for Amber to find me, but I suspected she’d find someone else in my body by the time she arrived.

“How do you know the plague won’t just infect my body once she’s in it?” I whispered.

Dominic flinched.

“You have no idea? You’re going to kill me on the chance—”

The concussive bang of the gun cut me off and a spray of shrapnel burst from the floor near my feet. A gouge in the concrete marked where the bullet had struck.

Twisting around, the Fenerec lunged from the table and slammed into me, her paws bearing down on my shoulders. Her fangs snapped at my throat. Instead of growling, she barked once. I froze. The Fenerec pressed her muzzle against me. Instead of the cold, wet sensation I expected, her nose was hot and dry.

I expected her to bite me, but when she shifted her weight, she lifted a paw and pressed it down on my throat. Her weight settled on my windpipe, cutting off my breath. The pressure intensified until spots appeared in my vision.

I lifted my arm enough to grab hold of her leg, but there was no strength left in my fingers. When I touched her, the Fenerec made a low groaning noise, her nose brushing against my cheek.

“What are you doing?” Dominic cried out. “Stop that! Get away from her, I need you
both—
”

The pressure on my throat strengthened. The last thing I heard was the Fenerec’s heartbroken whine.

~~*~~

Pain woke me and despair anchored me to consciousness. I hurt, and because of that, I knew the Fenerec had failed in her attempt to kill me. I tried to open my eyes, but my lids felt glued together. When moving didn’t work either, I focused on what hurt. I couldn’t tell what was wrong with me—my entire body throbbed in a slow beat and I was feverishly hot.

How had I lived?

My next thought chilled me. Was I a woman or a wolf?

I couldn’t tell and that frightened me more than anything else. Had the Fenerec somehow stopped whatever the sorcerer had been doing? I could remember her trying to kill me. Why she hadn’t ripped out my throat with her fangs? It would’ve been over in a short, bloody moment.

The simplest answer hurt; the Fenerec likely wanted to live as a human unfettered by the plague killing her. I couldn’t blame her for agreeing with Dominic’s plan.

She had a single choice: do or die.

I couldn’t blame her for what Dominic had done with Patrick’s help.

Since I hadn’t been able to stop Patrick, nor had I been able to do anything about the Fenerec, I was likely trapped in the Fenerec’s body. At least that theory explained why I was in so much pain.

I didn’t know how long it took me, but I forced my eyes open. Darkness greeted me, broken by a sliver of light in the distance. My eyes adjusted quicker than I expected, revealing the outline of a door across the room and the legs of the worktable.

The bars of the cage surrounded me. I sniffed, and my nose was filled with the cinnamon scent of a Fenerec, blood, and of sickness. With a sinking feeling, I dredged up the courage to look down.

Instead of a hand, I had a mangy paw with more bare skin visible than fur. Some tufts of tattered fur remained, while the pale hairs of new growth protruded from my skin. I flexed the paw with unsettling ease, scraping my claws against the concrete. The cage was locked and the key had once again been left in the lock.

I lurched upright, legs braced as I tried to adapt to standing on four paws instead of two feet. When I could move without falling over, I approached the bars with caution, remembering Richard’s aversion to my silver mirror. I felt nothing as I prodded one of the chains with my nose. The metal was soothingly cold. I leaned against the cage to lessen the heat of fever.

When I no longer felt like I was going to burn alive, I turned my attention to the lock and key. I tried forcing a paw through the tangle of chains and bars, but it didn’t fit. Huffing in frustration, I took several steps back, ducked my head low, and rammed my shoulder against the cage.

The lock held.

I glared at the lock. Either the stories about a Fenerec’s strength had been played up or the Fenerec’s body had been weakened by the plague. I hadn’t done any damage to the cage despite throwing all of my weight against it. If brute strength wasn’t going to work, I needed to find another way out.

Once I escaped, I’d try to get my body back, if the plague in the Fenerec’s body didn’t kill me first. I shuddered at the thought. Would I prove to be immune to the plague’s lethal consequences because I
wasn’t
a Fenerec? As far as I knew, the plague didn’t kill until a Fenerec
transformed
—something I was incapable of doing.

Maybe I wouldn’t die, but I’d be trapped in a wolf’s body with no hope of becoming human again.

I sat on my haunches and considered my predicament. I didn’t
feel
like a wolf, not that I had any idea what a wolf was supposed to feel like. I felt like
me
, a me stuck in a hot, aching body that didn’t move quite right. I wasn’t like Richard or Alex, who reacted with instincts more attuned to their canine selves than their human ones.

There was something comforting about the fact I didn’t have any unusual urges, including a desire to howl at the moon. It meant I was still a human, albeit one in a wolf’s body. Did that mean the Fenerec was a wolf trapped in a human body? I didn’t know enough about the relationship between a Fenerec’s human and wolf forms to know whether or not the being occupying my body was human, wolf, or some strange mixture of both.

No matter what, I needed to get my body back.

Getting my body back was important, but I wouldn’t stoop to Dominic’s level. I’d get my body back—but I’d cure the plague so the Fenerec had a body to return to.

It wasn’t her fault. She had been kept in a cage until her fur fell out and disease brought her to the brink of death. Unless I did something about it, that fate would be mine. I sat straighter, forced myself to ignore my weakness, and concentrated on the lock.

Relief washed over me as I was able to detect faint surges of electricity. I whipped my head in the direction of the source.

Amber’s cell phone lay broken against the wall. With my wolf-enhanced vision, I could see I had managed to shatter the screen and bend the frame. The battery, however, was still intact. It had a lot of charge left, and the phone was so damaged it wasn’t draining any of the power anymore.

I stared at it, and with ruthless delight, drained the device dry. As the electricity surged into me, I became aware of more sources of power waiting for me to tap into them. I stood, leaned my shoulder against the cage’s door, and stared at the lock and key intently. It was like when I had unlocked the gate to the dog park, but all I had to do was manipulate what was already there.

I concentrated, reached out with my powers, and used my magic to turn the key in the lock. I shoved open the door, grimacing at the grind of metal on concrete. I froze, watching the door on the other side of the room.

I couldn’t hear anything, so I eased my way out of the cage and padded my way over to the door. I didn’t appreciate just how large the Fenerec was until I realized my eyes were
higher
than the knob. When I had first saw her, I hadn’t thought she was quite so gargantuan. Tapping into the basement’s wiring for the lights, I siphoned enough energy to manipulate the knob. It rattled as I tried to open it.