Wolver's Rescue (16 page)

“
How long has he been that
way?” Bull asked as he opened and closed the doors of a short row
of cabinets. He found the key hanging inside one of
them.

“
This thing with Eli’s been
hovering over him for years. Without our Molly to keep him
grounded, he’s gone quick. He ain’t shifted yet, but he’s been like
this since the last full moon. He goes over now, he’s not coming
back. I hate to say it, he’s like one of my own, but you see how he
is. There’s going to be hell to pay. He’s always been wild, but now
the madness is on him,” he said and then he added, “We got no Alpha
to do the job and the others...” Samuel hunched his shoulders and
let them drop. “They ain’t got it in ‘em.”

Bull handed Tommie two manila folders that
were lying on the counter. “See if there’s anything in there that
shouldn’t be.” He held the key in his hand, but didn’t approach the
cage. “What about you? How are you going to take it if I eliminate
the problem?”

“
Me?” Samuel sounded
insulted and held up the stump. “Hell, boy, I chewed my own paw off
when I was just a cub. I can do what needs doing. I don’t have the
strength to do it, but that don’t mean I won’t back the man who
does.”

“
Good to know, because I
don’t want to fight the two of you.”

Tommie heard the words, but refused to
believe what she was hearing. “You aren’t... You can’t... I
promised Molly,” she said lamely. “And you promised me.”

“
I said if I could help it,
Tommie.”

“
You haven’t even tried to
help it.” Horrified, she backed toward the door, reaching behind
her for the knob.

“
Tommie, wait outside in the
hall. Remember, if you look like you belong, people will think you
do. Don’t go running off and creating another problem.”

“
Why not? Then you can just
eliminate me, too,” she said as she stepped through the
door.

“
Damn it.” Bull stepped
toward the closing door, but stopped himself before he made another
mistake. Tommie wasn’t the priority here, though everything in him
screamed that she was. He turned back to the cage and dropped to
one knee.

“
You need me to, I can hold
the fort here while you go get your woman. Just get me out of this
damn cage.”

“
She’s not my woman and
she’ll do as she’s told.”

“
If you say so. How you want
to do this?”

While the cage was divided, there was only
one door. It latched on Eli’s side which meant it had to be fully
opened for Samuel to emerge. Eli watched, eyes blazing with
madness, his body poised to launch as soon as the door opened. Bull
had seen this behavior before. The wolver saw nothing, heard
nothing and felt only the call of the moon. That always made it
more difficult to take them down, since they didn’t feel much pain
either.

“
Let him out first. I’ll
take him down. All you have to do is get dressed.”

“
Look, son, I know you’re
big and you’ve got some power behind you, but ol’ Eli’s pretty big,
too, and like I said, he’s always been a wild one. He don’t fight
like most. Even our Alphas were a little afraid of the
boy.”

“
I get paid to take care of
wolvers like him,” Bull said loud enough to be heard if Eli was
still capable of listening, “and I haven’t lost a paycheck
yet.”

Samuel sat back. “Never heard of such a
thing, but if you say so, I got no reason to say you ain’t,
especially since you’re holding the key to my freedom. Is that why
your woman’s so upset? She doesn’t like how you earn your
keep?”

“
Tommie doesn’t know how I
earn my living and she’s not my woman. Now back up, and get out of
my way, old man. We’ve got about four minutes before
moonrise.”

Bull watched a little shiver run through
Samuel’s body. He felt it, too. The old wolver had some mileage on
him, but he was in good shape considering his circumstances and his
body looked strong.

“
Best get on with it then.”
Samuel stepped back, not as far as Bull would have liked, but far
enough.

Bull released the lock and barely had time to
step aside before the wild wolver charged. Hands locked together,
Bull put his considerable strength behind the two fisted blow that
should have landed on his quarry’s neck. Shit! The guy was fast.
The strike landed on the man’s lower back, over the hips, and Bull
felt the shock of it travel up his arms and into his shoulders.

Knee bent and braced beneath him, the
target’s leg absorbed the blow. He pushed off on the same foot and
lunged for the door. Naked, there was no shirt or waistband to
grab. Bull dove with him, riding his back, using his full weight to
drive him to the floor. The fucker’s momentum carried them both
into the door. Pain lanced through Bull’s forehead as his skin
split with the impact.

The power within him rose with the pain and
his anger. The moon was rising and his wolf wanted out. Bull
couldn’t let that happen. The burst of energy that came with the
shift often created a chain reaction among the wolvers in a pack.
One flash followed another from strongest to weakest. His power
would ignite the bastard’s and he couldn’t let that happen.
Outdoors, this was to Bull’s advantage. Here in the confines of the
room, it would be a risk of exposure.

He grabbed the wolver by the hair and slammed
his head into the ground. Except for a grunt, the move had little
effect. The feral rose beneath him and tossed Bull from his back.
Bull rolled to his feet, ready to charge back in, when the feral
stiffened, jerked upright, and then collapsed to the ground.

“
Sorry, son, but it had to
be done,” Samuel said to the unconscious wolver whose body still
twitched with the current running through it. Samuel tossed the
prod aside with a look of disgust. “I hate the damn thing, but you
two were making too much noise. Had to wait until you broke apart
before I could use it. Didn’t want to zap you, too. Damn shame,” he
said, shaking his head. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but
he was a good packmate, a good mate to my Molly and a good daddy to
his cubs. Living in that damn cage was more than he could
bear.”

Bull didn’t have time for sentiment. “Get
dressed. I’ll take care of him. We need to move.”

Samuel didn’t need to be told. He was already
tying the drawstring at the waist of the grey cotton pants. “You’d
better go tell your woman everything’s all right.”

“
She’s not my
woman.”

Bull slipped the shirt over the unconscious
wolver’s head while Samuel went to the sink.

“
You keep saying that,” he
said as he washed off what dirt he could from his face and hands.
“What’d you say your name was again?”

“
Bull.”

“
Hmm. I thought it might be
Blind.”

~*~

“
And I don’t want to hear it
from you,” Tommie said to the growling somewhere in the vicinity of
her stomach. “We are not like them. Do you hear me? We do not kill
people. We help them. If I’d wanted to be a murderer, I wouldn’t
have spent all that money on college.”

She marched up the hall, folders in hand,
muttering to herself. Two orderlies, walking in the opposite
direction, snickered once they were past. She turned and called to
them.

“
You two,” she snapped,
“Yes, you. Let me see those badges.” She made a show of writing
down their names, pleased that it made them nervous. “What’s your
business here?”

“
We were, uh, just going for
a smoke.”

“
And is it your break time?”
she asked, mostly because they looked guilty as sin. “I don’t think
the Gantnor Clinic pays you to smoke and I don’t have time for your
nonsense. Where are the research offices?”

They pointed out the way and she tapped the
folders with her pen. “Thank you. You didn’t see me and I didn’t
see you.” She paused. “Unless I see you loitering about down here
again.”

She did a little skip-hop once she was out of
sight. “Act like you belong, and people will think you do.”

Gantnor would be here tomorrow. With her
escape and now Samuel and Eli’s, a raid on his file would be the
next logical step. He’d be prepared. Bull’s return tomorrow night
would be a fool’s errand.

“
So it falls to me to take
care of the fool.”

The door was locked, but Tommie had watched
Bull do it and knew where to strike. She, having no broad shoulders
or massive muscle, used a fire extinguisher hanging on the
wall.

The computer on the console in the corner was
exactly as she expected to find it, long unused and covered in
dust. Her father used to tease Ray, the modern scientist, about
refusing to use modern technology.

“
A computer can be hacked.
Only I can read my notes,” Uncle Ray would laugh back.

He wasn’t kidding. With the exception of
official Clinic records, every file and notebook Tommie pulled from
the drawers was scribbled in a shorthand that looked nothing like
the real thing. File after file was thrown to the floor; each toss
an expression of her growing anger.

She wanted to know who she was, where she
came from, and how Gantnor found her. Did her parents know the
truth? She searched her memories for anything that might give her a
hint. Her name came immediately to mind. She’d always accepted
their story as true, but was it? Mortimer was a family name and yet
she’d never met any family and when her parents died, she found no
references to family among their papers. Did they really love her
or was that, like Gantnor, another violation of trust? Had Gantnor
robbed her of that, too? There was no one she could ask and no one
she trusted.

“
Bull,
” the voice inside her argued.

“
Bull-shit.” He couldn’t be
trusted either.

The last six-drawer cabinet was locked, but
that too, was no problem. Tommie had only been in this office once
and she wasn’t fully conscious at the time, but she saw no reason
why the good doctor would change his habits.

As a youngster, Tommie loved visiting Uncle
Ray in his office upstairs. The top drawer of his locked cabinet
was filled with what he called his petty vices and the key was
hidden behind one of the diplomas and awards that hung on his wall.
She used to win an extra candy bar if she guessed which one. She
didn’t see then what she saw now. He was buying her trust.

She found the key taped to the back of an
award for Animal Behavioral Studies and the top drawer held more
than candy.

“
You’ve been holding out on
me, Doc,” she said aloud, and laughed bitterly at the irony of her
comment. He’d been holding out a helluva lot more than the contents
of the drawer.

In addition to the expected candy bars, the
drawer held two bottles of Scotch and a carton of cigarettes,
ashtray and lighter. The other drawers held more files, most of
which she was sure were hers, but could read no better than the
others. The files were dated, beginning with the year she was
adopted and they’d estimated her age at two. Each file was labeled
SUBJECT. To Gantnor, she wasn’t even worthy of a name. It didn’t
make her feel any better to find the files in the bottom drawer
marked SUBJECT 2 and SUBJECT 3.

In this new wolver context, everything
Gantnor had said over the years now made sense. She was special.
The ‘problems’ her parents had were passed on to her. He knew the
thing inside her was real. He knew the voice inside her head was
real. He knew what she was, even if he had no name for it. He’d
referred to it over and over. He’d assured her, while he had her
locked in that cage and living in filth, that all she had to do was
reveal that inner beast and she could be free and famous, too. She
thought he'd been talking psychosis, not wolves. These files proved
otherwise.

She, Samuel, and Eli were nothing more than
lab rats to him; an experiment that might someday make him
famous.

She tossed their files on the pile with the
others. Her fury grew with the pile.

There was only one thing of value to be found
in the drawers and it held her ticket to freedom and escape. She no
longer needed the big Bull. Dr. Gantnor had saved her purse.

Tommie looked over the mountain of paper
she’d created in her frenzied search. She added every diploma and
award on the wall. Finally, she went back to the top drawer,
stuffed her pockets and purse with candy and grabbed the lighter.
The scotch was an afterthought.

She closed the door behind her saying, “This
is how you solve a problem, Mr. Bull-headed. No killing.” Though
even as she said the words, she wondered what her reaction would be
if she ran into Raymond Gantnor in the hall.

In just two short days, so many things had
changed; so many things were explained. Yes, her limited knowledge
of who and what she was brought new worries and concerns, but it
also brought understanding. At that very moment, her beast, her
wolf, stirred inside her; her human body ached with desire, but she
no longer thought in terms of sexual deviance. It was the call of
the moon and simply knowing its cause was a natural occurrence made
it easier to tolerate and control. She would no longer need to hide
away in frustration and shame or make medical excuses that didn’t
exist. She had questions to ask and things to learn, but there was
a bottom line to it.

She was a wolver. The idea of being something
other than human should frighten her, particularly in light of her
psychiatric history. It didn’t. It brought her a joy she now
celebrated with the being inside her.