Rogue Wolf by Paige Tyler

Chapter 20

Trey stumbled twice as he slowly walked up the last few steps in front of his apartment, nearly face-planting both times. His head was so fuzzy that doing math at this point was damn near impossible, but the best he could remember, he hadn’t slept at all in the last forty-eight hours. And had maybe gotten four or five hours in the past three days. Smacking his face on the concrete before he could get to his place was a very real possibility.

The past six hours had been gut-wrenchingly brutal. While Connor had sat down with Crystal and Louis to go over Samantha’s autopsy notes, trying to figure out what she’d learned right before leaving him that message, Trey had focused on finding Samantha and Nadia. With help from the rest of the Pack, STAT, and dozens of other DPD officers he knew well enough to call in a few favors, Trey had gone all out to find them.

He’d started with the traffic cameras around the institute, using them to track Samantha and Nadia after they’d each left work. Nadia had disappeared from camera view almost immediately, but Trey had been able to follow Samantha for almost fifteen miles until they’d lost her on Interstate 30 heading west toward Fort Worth. Since he had no idea where she might have been heading at that point, he’d tracked down her sister and talked to her, hoping Samantha might have told her something. But beyond freaking the poor woman out, he hadn’t gotten anything useful from that conversation. Though it seemed pretty damn obvious Loralei was suspicious of him for some reason. If he wasn’t so worried about Samantha, he would have been concerned that his soul mate had already spilled his pack’s secrets to her sister. Right now, he simply didn’t have time to think about it.

STAT had done their thing next, digging through the hours of tollbooth video from all over the Dallas/Fort Worth area, checking into Samantha’s and Nadia’s credit cards, even trying to ping the location of their cell phones. Nothing had worked. When Connor had called to tell him that they’d struck out with the autopsy records, Trey had been left with little choice but to drive around the city, hoping to get lucky.

By the time the sun had come up, he had been forced to accept that plan wasn’t going to work. With no other avenues to explore, he’d finally headed back to his apartment before he fell asleep at the wheel. He prayed that a hot shower and a little food would clear his head enough to allow him to come up with another angle to approach this situation—because he was so scared for Samantha that he was about to lose his damn mind.

When he opened the door to his apartment, his nose was assaulted by multiple scents that had his body fighting to wake up. There was that overly sweet odor coming from inside even as the burnt electrical smell suddenly filled the hallway behind him.

Trey was reaching for his service-issued weapon when a ton of bricks slammed into his back, pinning his arms to his side and smashing him through the partially opened door of his apartment. His werewolf instincts responded faster than his sluggish human mind was in the mood for, claws and fangs extending, muscles shifting, to twist him around in midair so he landed on top of whoever had tackled him.

But the grunt of pain that exploded through the small apartment was all his. Shit. It felt like he’d landed on a frigging boulder. He knew without even being able to see him that he was dealing with the guy he’d fought with in the Cedar Ridge Preserve.

Trey moved to gain a little space, then slammed his head backward as hard as he could. He connected with something that crunched—the guy’s nose most likely. But even though the sound told Trey he’d done some damage, the arms around his torso and arms didn’t loosen a bit. If anything, they clamped down even harder. It was like this thing couldn’t feel pain at all.

Movement to the side caught his eye. Trey jerked his head that way to see a short, stocky man who was all shoulders and arms swinging a baseball bat in his direction. He yanked aside just in time to keep the guy from smashing in his skull, the bat glancing off his temple and thudding hard into his shoulder. Stars exploded behind his eyes and Trey had to fight to keep his grip on consciousness as hard as he fought against the man holding him.

“He wants him alive you fool!” a female voice hissed as the arms around his chest loosened a little and the guy with the bat was suddenly jerked back out of Trey’s sight and sent flying across the room. “He’s no use if his head is bashed in.”

“How are we supposed to get him out of here if we don’t knock him out?” the man across the room muttered. “He’s got frigging claws and fangs!”

There was a laugh and then Nadia Payne was in front of Trey, a vicious grin on her face. “Claws and fangs are overrated.”

Before Trey had time to blink, she morphed from her human form to a bug-eyed vita lamia with a cackling laugh. From the grunt of shock that came out of the goon on the far side of the living room, the man with the baseball bat was clearly surprised to discover Nadia was a life-sucking vampire. He stopped wondering how much the stocky guy knew when the vita reached out her pale hands toward him. If she got her hands on him while he was trapped like this, he was done for.

He let his wolf instincts take over, shifting until he heard bones cracking as his whole body began to reshape itself. The noise must have startled the monstrously large man holding him because his grip loosened. Trey broke free with a savage growl, slashing his claws across the vita’s face and shoving her away at the same time. He paused for half a second to make sure the guy with the bat was still standing on the far side of the living room, then he spun, reaching for his SIG, ready to put a bullet through the man who’d been holding him captive. But then he saw the guy’s face and he froze.

“Kyson?”

Trey suddenly felt like he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs as his eyes locked with the friend he thought was dead.

Trey was faintly aware of long, cold fingers wrapping around his neck from behind, but couldn’t force himself to care—not until he felt his soul being ripped out through the icy contact. His inner wolf responded, snarling and telling him to twist around to defend himself. But before he could move, Kyson’s huge hands came up and grabbed him again, holding him firm as the vita began to pull the life right out of him. Trey realized his groan of pain sounded a lot like that guy downtown had made right before Trey rescued him.

There was no one here to rescue Trey, though, and as every muscle in his body locked up in spasms of excruciating pain, there was no way in hell he was going to be able to rescue himself.

He felt like he was a battery being drained too fast. He went from exhausted to not caring about anything in the span of a few seconds. The last thing he saw before fading into darkness was Kyson gazing down at him with sad, sorrowful eyes, as if he didn’t want to be part of this.

If that was true, then why was his best friend helping the vita lamia kill him?

***

Samantha leaned back against one of the stone walls of her cell, trying her hardest to tune out the constant drone of Louis’s obnoxious voice. He was talking in the same tone she’d always identified as his mentoring voice, but now that she knew he was a certified whack-a-doodle, she decided she couldn’t stand it. Of course, it didn’t help that he’d spent the past two hours going on nonstop about how brilliant—if misunderstood—he was. During that time, she’d learned more about bringing dead people back to life than she ever wanted to know. The scary part of it was that Louis really was brilliant. Unfortunately, he was also bent as an old coat hanger.

“I first proposed my resurrection theory during my third-year rotation at Johns Hopkins,” he murmured.

When he didn’t say any more, Samantha looked up, curious despite herself. Louis was staring intently at a monitor on the wall, which was displaying an enlarged image from the electron microscope on the desk. From her angle, she couldn’t see what he was so interested in, but it shut him up and that was good enough for her.

“My ideas were not well received,” Louis continued, as if he hadn’t just been silent for the past five minutes. “It was the primary reason my advisers steered me away from a more mainstream medical career. They thought my views were extremely unacceptable.”

Samantha considered pointing out that those advisers had obviously been correct when a loud noise at the far end of the basement caught her attention. She jumped up, moving close to the door of her cage and wedging herself against it so she could see what was coming, fearing the worse. In the cage next to hers, Shaylee did the same.

Samantha’s breath caught in her throat when she saw Kyson walking in with Trey’s body slung over his shoulder, Rogi behind him. The big man moved across the basement, his face expressionless as he gently placed Trey on the stainless steel table over by the rack full of electrical gear. Her heart started thumping harder as Trey remained completely motionless on the table. There was blood running down the side of his head, soaking his hair and the collar of his shirt. Trey’s skin was pale and sallow, like he was wiped out.

“What the hell did you do to him?” she shouted, banging the palm of her hand against the metal grating of her cage. “Is he alive?”

The three men ignored her, which only freaked her out even more. Kyson moved over to stand near the inclined table he’d been strapped to earlier, his eyes slanting momentarily toward Shaylee before staring straight ahead again. When Rogi came over and strapped him down on the rack a moment later, Kyson didn’t resist at all.

Samantha didn’t bother trying to get Kyson to tell her anything because she knew that would be useless. Instead, she focused all her attention on Trey, praying she would see his chest rising and falling. She was still holding her breath for such a sight when there was more movement over by the door. A moment later, Nadia strolled into the basement as if she were walking into the break room at the institute. She didn’t bat an eye at the sight of Trey lying on the table bleeding, or the hulking Kyson strapped in place near the wall.

When the woman cupped Trey’s jaw in one of her small, long-fingered hands and turned his head to the side to check the wound at his temple, Samantha started to hyperventilate a little. Her hand had been the one that had held the cloth to Samantha’s mouth and nose and chloroformed her last night.

Hugh might not be involved in this mess, but Nadia sure as hell was. Crap. How was this even possible?

“What did you do to him?” Louis asked harshly, grabbing one of Trey’s wrists to take his pulse, looking straight at Rogi the whole time. “If you’ve damaged him so much that I can’t get any use from him, I will eviscerate you. And you’d better believe I will make sure you live long enough to experience every agonizing second of it.”

Rogi turned a pale shade of green, shaking his head the entire time. “Okay, okay. I may have tapped him in the head with a baseball bat, but I wouldn’t have had to do it if the asshole hadn’t spouted frigging fangs and claws. He damn near killed us.”

Fangs and claws?

For the second time in the span of a few minutes, the air seemed to freeze in Samantha’s lungs. It only got worse as she listened to Rogi and Nadia go into detail as they told Louis about what they’d seen. If the things they were describing didn’t match up so perfectly with the wounds she’d found at various SWAT crime scenes over the past two years, Samantha wouldn’t have believed them. Strangely, Louis didn’t seem surprised by anything they told him, making her wonder exactly what he’d seen during the fight between Trey and Kyson at the Cedar Ridge Preserve the other night.

Louis glared at Nadia as he shoved a syringe into one of Trey’s forearms and drew blood. “I’m assuming you’re responsible for his unconscious condition. How long did you feed on him?”

Feed on him?

Samantha jerked her head up. She had no idea what Louis was talking about, but she knew it couldn’t be good.

“You knew?” Rogi demanded, his normally small beady eyes wide in shock as he threw a terrified look in Nadia’s direction. “You knew she was…whatever the fuck she is, and you sent me out with her anyway? What if she lost control and decided to feed on me instead of him?”

Louis didn’t say anything as he moved over to the counter and began to use the blood he’d taken from Trey to prep slides for the electron microscope.

Nadia laughed as she motioned toward a still unconscious Trey. “Trust me, Rogi. There will never come a day when you have to worry about me feeding on you instead of him. Why have cold cuts when I could have wagyu beef?”

Rogi bristled at that even as Nadia turned and looked at Louis. “And don’t worry about how long I fed on him. Like I told you before, Officer Duncan is extremely strong. I fed enough to render him unconscious, but I have no doubt he’ll wake up soon enough. Probably a lot sooner than we’d like, too, so I suggest you complete your examination as quickly as possible. We don’t want him coming to before we’re ready. Not unless you want me to feed on him again.”

Samantha spent the next hour shouting questions at Louis and Nadia, receiving few if any answers in return. Her former boss was too intent on whatever he was doing to Trey and his blood, while her former coworker seemed far more interested in torturing Samantha about getting a taste of her man. It drove her crazy that she still had no idea what the whole “feeding” thing was about, but if she was picking up properly on the occasional comment, it seemed like Nadia was somehow able to absorb energy from Trey by touching him. Simply thinking something like that made Samantha feel like the world was tipping off its axis, but it was the only thing that made sense based on what she’d heard.

Samantha winced as Louis pulled a scalpel out and sliced open Trey’s arm. The wound was deep and bloody, and she slammed herself against the door of her cage in an attempt to get free. It was useless, of course, but she couldn’t stop trying to get to Trey. She was so freaked out she almost missed the awe in Louis’s eyes when the wound stopped bleeding and began to scar over in seconds. She’d seen that same thing before, when Trey had cut his hand on the piece of broken coffee mug, but it was still too incredible to believe.

Muttering something to himself that sounded like, “Fascinating,” Louis picked up a knife and stabbed Trey in the chest.

Samantha screamed. Even from where she stood, she knew Louis had deliberately missed Trey’s heart, but that didn’t make the agony of seeing the man she loved in pain any less, not even when that wound healed as easily and quickly as the one on his arm.

She was given a few moments of distraction when Nadia released Shaylee from her cage and handed her a plate of food. Samantha wondered for a second why they hadn’t simply slid the tray into the cell with Shaylee until she saw the girl walk over and stand beside Kyson, straining up on her toes to slowly feed him bit by bit with her tiny hands. Samantha had no idea why, but seeing a man as gigantic as Kyson eat so carefully and gently from Shaylee’s hand struck her as the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Even Rogi, who was standing a few feet away, leering at Shaylee, couldn’t ruin the tender moment.

Samantha was so caught up in the scene, she barely realized Louis had stopped torturing Trey and come over to stand in front of her cage. She’d missed most of what he said until one word snapped her attention back to him.

“What did you just say?” she asked.

She was sure she’d heard wrong. Because there was no way even a psychopath like Louis would use that word in a serious conversation.

Louis’s mouth twitched in amusement. “I said that it turns out your boyfriend is a werewolf. I must admit that when Nadia told me her suspicious, I wasn’t sure I believed her. But the blood work confirms it. The man you’ve been going out with is definitely a werewolf.”

Samantha stared, speechless. A person could only have so many bombs dropped on them before becoming numb to the sensation.

“You…you’re…crazy,” she finally forced out, unable to come up with anything more rational.

Louis’s expression twisted into something that almost seemed like disappointment. “Please, Samantha. Are you really going to tell me this is a total surprise to you? I know you’ve been collecting evidence on the SWAT team for some time now. You’ve tried to do a good job covering up your interest, but it didn’t escape my notice how you jumped up to take any call involving them. After spending so much time investigating them, I know you had to have picked up on all the strange things that happen around them. The torn-up bodies at the crime scenes, the silly coyote explanation that gets used over and over to cover it up, the way they go up against unbelievable odds and come out on top time after time. And the injuries they survive? That by itself screams supernatural. Are you going to seriously tell me that you haven’t done your own DNA profile yet? Hell, for a time, I thought the only reason you were dating Officer Duncan was to get more conclusive evidence against them.”

That last part hit a little too close to home, making her wince. “But…a werewolf?” she murmured, looking over at Trey still lying unmoving on the stainless-steel table. “That can’t be true.”

Louis merely smiled as he handed her a piece of paper. She recognized it immediately as a DNA profile sheet. It seemed his basement lab was very well stocked when it came to high-tech equipment.

“There’s some kind of wolf DNA mixed in with your boyfriend’s otherwise normal genetic material,” Louis said calmly. “I can’t tell you exactly what kind of wolf, not with the equipment I have here, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Claws, fangs, extreme strength, and speed on top of rapid healing? It spells werewolf, whether you believe it or not.”

Yes, it was insane. Samantha knew that. But so was bringing a dead person back to life, and Kyson was walking, talking proof of that. Maybe it was time to stop dismissing what was right in front of her face. With that thought in mind, she turned and moved to the back of her cage, dropping down to her thin uncomfortable mattress. Louis was saying something else, but she found it much easier to tune him out this time.

Samantha was still lost in thought when the door of her cage suddenly opened. She lifted her head to see Nadia and Rogi drag Trey’s unconscious form in. It was all Samantha could do to get in the way so Trey wouldn’t crash straight to the ground when the pair shoved him at her. Even then, her legs buckled under his weight, and they both ended up on the floor in a tangle of arms and legs.

She was attempting to get out from under Trey’s heavy body without hurting him when a pair of big hands grabbed her. Samantha struggled against them, but Rogi was so much stronger than she was that it was useless. Before she could even think about stopping him, the jerk wrapped something hard and rough around her neck, metal clicking on metal as he tightened it. She struggled, kicking and punching at him, and when he took his hands off her, she thought maybe she’d won. Until she realized there was still something around her neck.

Her hands immediately started scrambling, desperately trying to figure out what Rogi had put on her and, more importantly, how to get it off.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Rogi said sharply.

Samantha looked up in time to see him and Nadia stepping out the door of her cage, closing it behind them. She was all set to ignore his dumbass advice until she saw the small black box in his big hand. But it was the evil expression on his ugly face that had her hands freezing on the edges of the stiff leather wrapped around her throat.

“Doc originally designed that shock collar to control his pet before he realized that threatening the girlfriend was way more effective at making the creature behave,” Rogi said, motioning with his chin toward Kyson. “But unfortunately for you, the collar is still powered to take down a three-hundred-pound monster. It would probably kill a woman your size and all it would take is one push of this button. So keep your hands off the collar or I’ll have to test it out just to see if I’m right.”

Rogi walked away with a smile, tossing the remote box casually into the air, catching it with first one hand and then the other, seemingly thrilled at the prospect of getting to electrocute her to death.

“Don’t worry about the collar,” Nadia said as she leaned against the metal grating of the cage and regarded Samantha coolly. “It’s not really for you. It’s meant to keep your boyfriend under control until Louis gets around to figuring out exactly how he’s going to use his werewolf blood and healing abilities to resolve this little transplant rejection issue he’d been dealing with. Can’t have Officer Duncan going all werewolf on us the second he wakes up. I have no doubt that seeing you wearing a shock collar will keep him nice and tame.”

Samantha began to panic at the thought of what Louis might do to Trey. She’d already accepted her former boss was a flat-out psychopath. His willingness to keep his dead son in a tank of red goo was a clear indication of that. She doubted there was anything he wouldn’t do to Trey if he thought it would get his mad experiment to the next stage.

“Oh, don’t look so glum,” Nadia gloated with a laugh. “You should be grateful there are only two cages down here. At least that way you’ll get a chance to have some quality private time with your boyfriend before Louis gives him back to me.”

Samantha’s blood ran cold. “What do you mean by that?” she asked, instinctively moving to put herself between Trey and the woman standing outside her cage. “What do you want with him?”

Nadia smiled so wide she looked like the Cheshire Cat. As Samantha watched, she leaned in closer, her eyes slowly changing, becoming larger and darker, causing tingles of fear to run up and down her spine.

“When Louis is done playing Dr. Frankenstein with your werewolf boyfriend, I’m going to suck every bit of life out of him until he’s nothing but a dried-up, old husk.”

As she spoke, Nadia’s eyes turned completely black and her skin started to take on a pale, waxy color. But instead of being afraid, Samantha was on her feet, moving forward until both hands were pressed on the metal grating of her cage door.

“You’ll have to go through me,” she ground out.

She wasn’t sure what she expected, but the peal of delighted laughter wasn’t it.

“Yes, that’s part of the plan as well,” Nadia said, suddenly abnormally long fingers reaching out to tease the palms of Samantha’s hands.

The effect of the slight contact was immediate, cold and tingly, like electricity running through her body and Samantha jerked away, earning yet another laugh from Nadia.

“Hope your boyfriend wakes up soon,” she said. “Wouldn’t want you two to waste this little private time I’m giving you.”

As Nadia walked away, Samantha dropped back down beside Trey and pulled his head into her lap, gently tracing her fingers along his scruffy jaw, praying he did wake up soon. Even if she was terrified of what would happen when he did.