Rogue Wolf by Paige Tyler
Chapter 23
“You might be wondering why I’m not using a serum based on your blood, like I did with your friend,” Louis murmured, motioning casually at Kyson before carefully inserting a second catheter into Trey’s femoral artery, then taping it down with multiple pieces of surgical tape.
The excessive amount of tape the doctor used worried Trey. It was like Louis expected him to jerk around all over the place on the freezing cold steel table at some point very soon.
“But my son has been dead for almost three years now, versus your friend, who’d only been deceased for a few hours before I resurrected him,” Louis said, moving on from the catheter to the thick electrical cables he began to attach to the shackles holding Trey’s wrist down to the table. “Even with the stasis gel I’ve maintained him in that whole time, the amount of healing he’ll require during the process will be significantly greater. I believe transferring the blood straight from your body to his while subjecting you both to high levels of electrical ionization will be the most effective way to overcome the existing cellular damage he’s already sustained.”
Trey let most of that go in one ear and out the other, so he wouldn’t freak out about the prospects of being subjected to those high levels of electrical ionization. Instead, he used the doctor’s rambling distraction to focus on his right arm, tensing the muscles until he felt the metal shackle around his wrist start to dig into his skin a bit. It hurt, but at the same time, he could already sense the cuff beginning to give. If he really tried, he could rip his way out of the shackles, along with the leather straps across his chest, hips, and thighs. It would be painful, and probably bloody, but he could do it. One look at Rogi standing off to the side of the basement, however, and the way the a-hole was fingering the remote in his hand, practically salivating at the chance to hurt Samantha, convinced him that tearing himself loose right now wasn’t the best idea. At least not yet.
He glanced Samantha’s way to see her standing at the door of her cage, looking terrified. Shaylee was beside her, eyes flitting back and forth between him and Kyson.
His friend seemed almost an afterthought now that Louis had finished experimenting on him. They’d left him strapped to the inclined rack, but even if they hadn’t, it didn’t seem like it mattered. Kyson simply stood there, eyes mostly vacant. He’d gazed at Shaylee for a while after Nadia had tossed her in the cage with Samantha, but then he’d shut down. Like there was no one home anymore. It was hard as hell seeing him like that. Trey knew he should be thrilled his best friend was alive. But truthfully, he wasn’t sure how much of the man he knew was still in there.
Was this the life Kyson would have wanted?
Was this even a life at all?
Even with those thoughts bouncing around in his head, Trey was worried about what Louis was planning to do with his friend. Was the son of a bitch inhuman enough to kill Kyson now that he’d gotten what he wanted out of him? Trey worried the answer was yes and that there wasn’t enough of his friend left to even fight back when the time came. The blankness in his eyes suggested he’d completely given up.
Trey subconsciously strained against the shackles again, only to feel the sensation of something crawling across his skin. He looked over to see Nadia staring at him, her eyes larger than they should have been for a normal human but still smaller than they would have been if she’d gone fully vita. A smile curving her lips, she walked over to stand beside the table he was shackled to and leaned down to put her face close to his.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she whispered in his ear as Louis moved over to attach cables and catheters to his son. “And it won’t work. You’re not going to get off this table under your own power. And when the doctor is done with you, I’ll get whatever is left. Trust me, I will take my time with you. You’re not the first werewolf I’ve fed on, but you are the first alpha, and I won’t waste the pleasure I’ll get from consuming you by rushing it.”
“Hope you choke,” Trey said.
Nadia let out a soft laugh and walked away, leaving Louis to take her place alongside the table. By the time the doctor was done with him, there were so many needles, wires, and cables attached, all of them taped and retaped, that it all started to feel kind of over-the-top. Had it been this complicated when he’d resurrected Kyson?
To distract himself, Trey spent the time darting his gaze around the room, assessing the threats and trying to come up with a plan. He wasn’t worried about the doctor himself, other than the fact that he might be able to order Kyson to attack him. But with his best friend strapped securely to the rack in the corner, that wasn’t too much of a concern. That meant Trey could leave the doctor for last once he made his move. Rogi also wasn’t much a threat either, other than the remote he had in his hand. That thing could kill Samantha, so Rogi would have to go first.
That left Nadia, the soul-sucking vampire. She was the only one who could stand toe-to-toe with a werewolf. She’d already shown that. Trey knew that no matter what happened, he couldn’t let her get her hands on his bare skin. She’d suck the life out of him before he could even put up a fight.
He expected some kind of big announcement before something happened, but Louis simply stated they were about to start the “DNA transfer” and then the doctor flipped the big lever on the wall.
The pain as his body jerked and spasmed on the table was so unreal, Trey was sure he was going to die. He watched in horror as his blood began to flow through the endless number of tubes toward the kid in the glass tank, swearing he could feel his entire body being drained. A second later, electricity began to ripple across the surface of the red goo, and the teenager started to thrash around in the thick liquid. His mouth opened and Trey could hear screams even through the fluids and the glass casing.
The pain continued to climb higher and higher, until it seemed like his bones would shatter from the stress of his body fighting against the restraints. He knew that at any second, those bones would fly into pieces, tearing through his skin like shrapnel from a grenade. But even worse than the pain in his bones was the agony screaming through his skull. It was like church bells smashing around in there.
“I might have failed to mention that the transfer process is probably going to kill you,” Louis said in a nonchalant tone as he watched his son splashing around in his tank of red goo. “Or at least leave you without all your faculties.”
Trey could hear Samantha shouting and slamming her hands against the metal grating of her cage, pleading with Louis to stop. Shaylee was shouting, too, but at Kyson, begging him to do something. Even Nadia was complaining, saying the whole thing was taking too long. Apparently, she was impatient and wanted dinner.
Trey found it nearly impossible to focus on anything going on around him. The pain was ripping though his head like razor wire, shredding his mind to pieces. When his bones finally started to crack, he was sure it was the electricity killing him, and he berated himself for not doing something sooner. Now, Samantha would be left on her own with no way to protect herself.
“He’s alive!” Louis shouted, stepping closer to the glass tank as his son fought his way to the surface of the goo, screaming and thrashing around even harder. “It’s working!”
Trey ignored the doctor’s announcement as he realized that the cracking sounds signified something drastically different than he’d thought. Something that had only happened to him twice in his entire life, both times under the guidance of someone in the Pack who knew what the hell they were doing.
Holy crap.
He was going through a full shift while being electrocuted to death.
Just as he felt the unnatural and itchy sensation of fur pushing its way through his skin, there was a horrendous roar of anger from the side, immediately followed by the shrieking of tearing metal. Barely able to control his body, Trey somehow managed to flop his head to the side in time to see Kyson jerking himself away from the rack holding him, eyes full of anger as he launched himself forward only to be met halfway across the room by Nadia in her fully transformed vita lamia form.
It was almost comical seeing the much smaller, almost frail-looking vita preparing to fight the mountain of a man that was Kyson. His friend easily outweighed her by at least a hundred and fifty pounds. Then the pale-skinned creature backhanded Kyson across the room, bouncing him off the metal rack he’d broken loose from, and Trey realized the fight might be as lopsided as he’d thought, but in the opposite direction.
Trey continued his shift, the process made more complicated by the shackles and straps confining him to the table. A wide-eyed Rogi came running toward him, remote in hand. Skidding to a stop beside the table, he grabbed a scalpel from the tray and stabbed Trey in the chest over and over with the blade.
“Stop it!” Louis shouted. “You’ll ruin the resurrection process!”
Rogi ignored him. Apparently, he couldn’t give a shit about the boy and his resurrection.
So distracted in his desire to stab Trey, Rogi seemed to have forgotten the remote in his hand. Trey wasn’t complaining. The razor-sharp scalpel struck multiple times and hurt like hell, even though the agony of the electrical current was still rippling through him.
Once the shift had gone far enough, Trey was able to get a paw loose from one of the shackles. That freed him up enough to lunge forward. Rogi assumed Trey was going for his neck and threw up his hands to defend himself. Not going to turn down the target Rogi gave him, Trey sank his mostly formed fangs into the man’s left arm. The resulting crunch and cry of pain was intensely satisfying—almost as good as watching the remote hit the floor and bounce away.
With Rogi slashing away at him, Samantha and Shaylee shouting in the background, and Kyson fighting with Nadia, it was damn near impossible to stay calm enough to focus on finishing the shift. Taking wolf form had never come easily for Trey, which was why he’d only done it with his pack mates around to help. Listening to your own bones shatter and then knit back together in a completely different shape was terrifying. Getting through it meant relaxing and letting it happen. And no, he wasn’t exactly relaxed right now.
He was still fighting both the restraints and Rogi, barely avoiding a scalpel blade in the eye, when Louis showed up. The doctor threw his weight on top of Trey, trying to get his paw back under the shackle while attempting to reattach the catheters that were somehow still stuck in Trey’s now partially shifted leg.
“Jamison could die if the resurrection process isn’t finished properly,” Louis ground out as if he thought that would keep Trey from trying to save himself.
Trey planted his free paw in the doctor’s chest and shoved him away, propelling him halfway across the basement and bouncing the man off the glass case holding his struggling son. Jamison reached out and grabbed at his father, electricity continuing to sparkle across his goo-covered skin. Louis successfully shook off his son’s grip, making the glass tank rock. The liquid inside sloshed dangerously as Jamison grabbed onto his father’s lab coat.
Louis’s knees gave way and he collapsed to the floor, dragging his son out of the tank, red liquid splashing everywhere. Jamison’s cries of pain as he hit the floor made Trey’s stomach twist into knots. But for reasons Trey didn’t even attempt to understand, Jamison quickly jumped up and began to fight against his father, punching him.
Kyson suddenly came flying over the table, almost crushing Rogi in the process. Kyson bounced and slid across the floor, but immediately jumped to his feet, throwing himself right back into the fight with the vita. The battle was pure violence and rage, hisses and shouts filling the air and reverberating off the stone walls of the basement. Kyson and Nadia were both covered in blood, but they both healed as fast as the other tore them apart. Several times, he saw Nadia try to get her hands on his friend, probably to try to suck the life from his body. But every time she got that close, Kyson smashed the creature aside with one of his fists.
Trey was so worried about Kyson that he missed Rogi charging at him again. Trey didn’t even have a chance to move before the jackass slammed the scalpel into Trey’s chest, wedging the thin blade between two of his ribs before it snapped off. The pain was beyond description, but at least it gave him something to focus on besides the insanity all around him.
He used that focus to complete the shift, sliding out from under the leather straps before tumbling off the table and onto the concrete floor. The fall ripped out the catheters and remaining electrodes, ending those sources of pain at least. He was on his four paws immediately, off balance and unsteady, weak from blood loss, the electric shocks, and lack of practice. He looked around to figure out if he should help Kyson, try to free Samantha and Shaylee, or take down Rogi.
Kyson seemed to be holding his own, and even as much as Trey’s instincts screamed at him to go to his soul mate, he knew he’d never get through the lock of the cage in his present form. It was the sight of Rogi scrambling for the remote, obviously realizing it was the only thing that would keep him safe from Trey’s fangs and claws, that ultimately made the decision for him.
He launched himself at the man, reaching Rogi just as he found the remote under a bench full of surgery equipment. Trey dragged him out by his left leg, chomping down on his hand with the remote before he could push the button. Rogi dropped it with another whimper, the plastic device shattering into half a dozen pieces on impact with the floor.
Rogi jerked away, ignoring his damaged arm, and grabbed up the first weapon he could reach—a long surgical drill bit at least six inches. He plunged it into Trey’s shoulder. Rogi didn’t pause to see the results of his handiwork but, instead, turned and ran for the door at the end of the basement and the stairs beyond, shoving his way between Louis and Jamison in his effort to get way.
Louis stumbled backward, aided by a shove from his son, who barely seemed to be acting human at this point. The wounds that had been covering the kid’s body were only partially healed, but it was difficult to make out the fresh blood from all the red goo drying on his skin. But it was Jamison’s eyes—spread wide and filled with hatred and pain—that caught Trey’s attention. Hatred and pain that were aimed straight at his father.
Louis sailed through the air, falling into the rack of electrical gear along the back wall. His eyes widened as sparks erupted all around him. A split second later, he exploded in flames. Louis screamed, scrambling away to escape the pain, but he fell to his knees in front of the tank that had recently held his dead son. The fire spread quickly upon coming into contact with the red goo and the tank exploded, sending glass everywhere. Flames leaped up Jamison’s legs, sending him rolling across the concrete to the far wall, wailing in even greater pain than he had before.
Trey’s fur began to curl from the intense heat, and it struck him then how insane it was for Louis to have preserved his son in a vat of flammable liquid for almost three years.
Smoke filled the basement, flames racing up the heavy wooden columns and across the ceiling. Kyson roared in, his friend’s eyes filled with panic. Since getting burned in Afghanistan, Kyson had been deathly afraid of fire. Now that fear had left him paralyzed, cringing back against the wall even as the vita charged at him again.
Once more ignoring the instincts screaming at him to go to Samantha, Trey leaped, putting himself between his friend and the pale creature. Nadia hissed and came at him. They met in a fury of snarls and growls, fangs and claws.
The vita threw herself on Trey’s back, trying to latch her hands around his thick neck. He felt the slight tremor as she tried to pull the life out of him like she’d done back in his apartment, but his thick fur kept the creature from getting close enough to his skin to do it right. He slung her off his back, lunging forward to close his jaws around her forearm, crushing down until he heard the crunch of bones. The flavor of her blood was bitter and nasty, making him want to gag. She slashed his face open, freeing herself, then taking a quick step back.
They circled each other, the vicious wound on her arm healing within seconds. Fire was eating into the ceiling beam and planks like a living thing, smoke quickly filling the basement. As he and the vita danced around each other, he heard Samantha and Shaylee coughing and calling out for Kyson to help them. A quick glance in his friend’s direction showed that was a useless hope. Kyson was hunkered down against the nearest wall, eyes wide with terror and locked on the flames around him.
Trey knew he didn’t have much time. If it were just him, he could have handled the smoke and flames for a while. Kyson probably could have, too. But Samantha and Shaylee? No way.
He was about to launch himself at the vita again when the creature let out a shriek that practically shook the walls of the basement. A second later, Nadia spread her arms wide and the space around her was filled with an enormous pair of frigging wings. Pale gray and leathery, they were wide enough to nearly touch each wall and had sharp, curved claws at the very tips and another set midway along the upper side.
Vitas had wings. Like a frigging bat! Why hadn’t that “expert” at STAT known that? Of all the things to leave out, it had to be the wings?
The creature charged him, wings buffeting the air like a hurricane, roiling the smoke, flames, and loose pieces of lab equipment into a swirling storm of chaos. Heat scorched some of his fur away, blistering his skin. Then she was on him, wings and claws working together to savage him, slicing into him and ripping hunks of fur and flesh right off his bones.
He howled but ignored the pain, fire, and smoke—even the fear that his soul mate would die any second if he didn’t get her out of here—and attacked. He lunged forward and latched his jaws on the vita’s throat, twisting and jerking as savagely as he could. The inky fluid pouring out of the wound nearly drowned him, but he didn’t let go, continuing to yank and tear at the screeching creature. They rolled around on the floor, Nadia trying to yank him off her and Trey doing his best to rip out her throat.
She got her hands on his blistered skin, where the fur had been burned off and the agony of his life being ripped out of him felt worse than the electricity the doctor had dumped into him earlier. He felt himself weakening even as the vita began to get stronger. Trey swore he could feel the creature’s throat healing under his fangs even as he continued to twist his head back and forth, digging them in deeper and deeper.
Trey’s vision began to blur, and he knew he was close to passing out.
Suddenly, there was a loud roar above him, followed by a bloodcurdling scream. The vita fought to get away, apparently unconcerned about the fangs Trey had buried into her neck. He chomped down as hard as he could, figuring he’d do as much damage as possible in his last few seconds. The vita only struggled harder then, until one last savage yank pulled her away from Trey’s hold, leaving most of her throat behind.
The life-sucking sensation disappeared immediately, and Trey shoved himself upright, woozy but ready to attack again. Then he saw the vita lying dead on the concrete floor, head almost completely separated from its body, and Kyson holding a bloody pair of floppy leathery wings in his trembling hands. Kyson didn’t seem bothered by the smoke that was scorching Trey’s lungs. Instead, he stood there staring at Trey in his wolf form.
Trey had no idea how long he and Kyson stood there, but it felt like forever as his friend gazed down at him with one emotion after the next crossing his features. Confusion, fear, suspicious—they were all there. But the one that worried Trey the most was the anger. It was bubbling right there below the surface, waiting for the slightest provocation to come roaring out.
Trey would have said something to calm his friend, but that clearly wasn’t an option at the moment. And he sure as hell couldn’t attempt a shift back into his human shape, not until he knew whether Kyson was done ripping things apart.
It was the sound of screaming and coughing that shattered the stalemate, and Trey looked over to see Samantha and Shaylee kneeling close to the floor, trying to find breathable air as they attempted to get either of their attention.
Trey ran to the door of the cage, avoiding the pieces of burning wood falling from the ceiling, reaching for the hasp only to discover yet again that he didn’t have frigging hands. He considered tearing at the hasp with his jaws or physically smashing his way through the metal grating with his claws and the weight of his body. But at the last second, he turned and looked at Kyson, with eyes that he prayed communicated what he needed his friend to do.
Kyson hadn’t moved at all since Trey had turned away, his attention locked now on the fire raging all around them, his whole body shaking in fear. Seeing the terror in those eyes and knowing where it came from tore Trey’s heart out. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to help the man.
Then a soft voice intruded into the madness.
At first, Trey thought he was the only one who could possibly have heard those words in the cacophony of raging fire, creaking wood, and exploding medical equipment. But Kyson’s head immediately snapped away from the fire over his head, coming to rest on the young woman in the cage.
“Ky, I need your help,” Shaylee said softly, calmly, like she was talking to a wounded animal. “I need you to open the door.”
Kyson stared at Shaylee, his features relaxing and his gaze softening. But then a plank cracked above them, showering them all with flaming embers and a rush of heat, and the terror came roaring right back as Kyson’s whole body tensed. His friend was seconds from losing it.
“Ky,” Shaylee called out, a little louder this time. “I know you’re scared of the fire and that, right now, all you want to do is run and hide. But I need you. Your friends need you.”
Trey realized he was holding his breath as Kyson began to look back and forth between him, Samantha, and Shaylee, clearly unsure of what to do in the face of so much fear and confusion. But then his gaze locked on Shaylee’s and he was moving, heading straight for the cage. Trey had almost forgotten how fast the man could move. He was almost a blur as he closed the distance between him and the cage.
Samantha and Shaylee pointed desperately at the hasp on the outside of their prison, but Kyson ignored them, reaching out and wrapping his fingers in the framework of the door itself. With a single heave and a screech of tearing metal, the whole side of the cage gave way. He kept yanking until the grating came loose, then he was slinging the whole section of metal across the basement. Shaylee was up off the floor in a flash, rushing into Kyson’s arms, murmuring calming words to him even as she began to cough violently in the thick acrid smoke.
“We have to get out of here before we suffocate!” Samantha yelled, running out of the cage and over to Trey, laying her hand on his shoulder. “The ceiling could collapse any moment.”
He froze at the feel of her warm hand against his fur, subconsciously leaning against her hip as her fingers weaved themselves into its thickness and tugged gently. It was hard to put into words how amazing it felt. But he forced himself to put those thoughts out of his head. Samantha was right: they needed to get the hell out of here.
Trey moved toward the far end of the basement, and the stairs he knew were in that direction. Samantha was right beside him, but he’d barely gone ten feet through the heavy smoke and falling firebrands before he realized Kyson and Shaylee weren’t following.
Stopping, he swung his head around to look over his shoulder. Shaylee was trying to get Kyson to follow them, tugging on his hand and encouraging him, but his eyes were locked on the burning ceiling again and he wasn’t moving an inch. Shaylee wasn’t big enough to get him going, and her words were obviously having no effect.
Trey ran back to help but quickly realized there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot he could do, short of clamping his fangs down on one of his friend’s hands and trying to physically drag him out. Which was likely just going to piss Kyson off. Or freak him out.
Doubting they had time for this, but not knowing what else to do, Trey tried to calm down enough to reverse the werewolf shift and regain his human form. As he expected, it took longer than he’d hoped, but it helped when Samantha came over and knelt by his side, running her fingers through the fur of his shoulders and down his back. It was enough to help him forget the fire and smoke raging around them and the fact that his soul mate was choosing to stay down here with him instead of attempting to save her own life.
The pain of his bones cracking and reshaping was just as horrendous in this direction as it was in the other, and it was damn near impossible to ignore all the smoke pouring into his lungs as he gasped for air. But after another minute or so, Trey found himself lying naked on the concrete floor, the burns he’d gotten earlier in wolf form appearing along his back and sides. Huge pieces of the ceiling were falling all around them now, and the heat of the flames made every breath feel like his last. Samantha and Shaylee looked like they weren’t going to last more than a few more seconds.
Ignoring the curious way Kyson was staring at him, Trey shoved himself upright and ran toward his friend, grabbing one of his hands. He would have liked to try to talk his friend through this calmly, but there simply wasn’t time. “Kyson, we’re leaving. Now!”
Then he yanked his friend’s hand so hard Kyson almost tumbled off his feet. But when he kept pulling, Kyson didn’t resist. Samantha and Shaylee moved to join them.
They had to dodge several pieces of burning wood as they made their way to the stairs, along with an entire section of one of the massive support beams. Right before they made it to the door out of the basement, he couldn’t help looking back at the bodies they were leaving behind. The vita was lying limp and torn over by the cages, the doctor’s corpse burnt and curled into a ball in the midst of the broken glass from the vat his son had been suspended in. But when Trey glanced at the wall where Jamison had rolled earlier, he was surprised to find that the body wasn’t there.
Every instinct screamed at him to stop and find the kid, that something was wrong. But with the place falling apart all around them, he simply couldn’t. Samantha and Shaylee were barely able move as it was. He had to get them out of here.
They were halfway up the fire-filled staircase when Shaylee collapsed, though whether it was from smoke inhalation or exhaustion, Trey didn’t know.
“I got her,” Kyson called out as he reached down and scooped her up in his arms without even slowing. “Keep going!”
Trey had no idea which way to go when they reached the top of the stairs and stepped out into the middle of ornate open-air atrium, suits of armor everywhere and burning staircases curving up to the upper levels. He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but the fire seemed worse up here than it had been in the basement. This place wasn’t going to last long.
He was sniffing the air, hoping it would lead him to the nearest exit, when a completely unexpected scent hit his nose.
Trey spun in time to see Rogi standing there holding a large bore hunting rifle. In that split second before the man pulled the trigger, all Trey had time to do was take one step to put himself between Samantha and the weapon. Then he flew backward like a train had just smashed into his chest.