Forever, page 25
His new boss had put his money where his mouth was—
I’m not just putting my money where my mouth is—I’m putting my life on it.
As C.P.’s voice barged into his head like a squatter pitching a pup tent in the front yard, he punched the garage opener as if his forefinger were a fire poker.
Great. If these sound bites were the way shit was going to go from now on? He was going to lose it.
As the horizontal panels took their sweet time ascending their track, he glanced around at the condo development. There were probably fifty units circling a central core, and most of them had an extra vehicle in their short driveways or parallel parked on the street in front because no one had a two-car garage. Landscaping was kept to a minimum, but maintained well, and the streetlights were glowing peach in the darkness, turning the cold night into something that made him think of an old-fashioned movie set.
North Dakota, huh, he thought as he drove forward and turned off the Tesla. Guess it’s as good a place as any—although talk about remote.
Then again, that was the point, wasn’t it.
Getting out, he went to the door into his kitchen and hit the button mounted by the jamb as he opened things up. Inside the condo, he tossed his keys on the counter and then stalled out. The fact that there was no one to call with his news—and he wouldn’t have had the energy to go through it all anyway—was kind of depressing. But the former was the consequence of his focus, and the latter something that could be cured with a trip to his refrigerator and a fucking nap.
On that note, he went over, cracked his icebox, and reached in for a Coke. Two cardboard boxes with half-eaten takeout were molting in a field of single-serving condiments, and instead of throwing them out, he just let that door shut itself.
Bet Frigidaire would have been surprised to know that their product could be used as a calorie crypt.
He cracked the top on the Coke and looked out to the front of the condo. There was a mail slot in the door, and the pile of unopened mail that fanned out on the square of entry tile was another mess caused by his neglect.
For all his IQ, he’d never been any good at the nuances of adulting, and yeah, it was true, he hid behind the noble pillars of his Very Important Work to blow off things like registering his car, doing his taxes, getting annual physicals. Thank God for online banking or his credit score would have been in the double digits.
As he wandered across to the envelopes and flyers—because he didn’t know what the hell else to do with himself—he frowned and got down on his haunches. Putting the soda aside, he picked up a large manila envelope that was on top of the scatter. When he turned it right side up, he read the handwritten inscription that included his name and address, and then noted, at the bottom, the red letters: HAND DELIVER ONLY.
“What the fuck?”
Letting himself fall back onto his ass, he went to open the flap, only to find it taped shut to within an inch of its inanimate life.
He got up and went into the kitchen with whatever it was, and he needed a full minute to find a sharp knife because he never cooked and always ate with the plastic stuff that came with his takeout. Digging the tip of the blade into the layers of packing tape, he reflected on how he had no more interest in cleaning dirty cutlery than he did in dealing with his Visa bill—
What came out of the envelope… stopped the whole world.
It was a legal document that, after he scanned it… twice… seemed to suggest…
… that one Catherine Phillips Phalen, being of very sound mind, had given to him all of the rights to the ownership of Vita-12b, its precursors, and any forthcoming research associated with the compound.
“What the fuck did you do, Cathy,” he breathed as he read things for a third time.
After which he looked up to find a shadowy figure standing about five feet away from him.
“Greetings, Dr. St. Claire,” a mechanical voice announced.
When a gun was pointed at him, Gus shouted and thrust his arms forward. But that didn’t do shit. As the contract fell off the counter in a flutter, he was shot, right in the chest.
THIRTY-TWO
THE MALE FIGURE was about to disappear, so she had to act fast.
Up on Deer Mountain, that was the thought that went through Lydia’s mind as she stared through wolven eyes at the red-robed entity before her. Spurred on by a sense of urgency, she immediately went into her transformation, shifting her form—and sure enough, as she initiated the change, he became totally transfixed.
Whatever it took, she thought as she gave herself up to the magic, the energy flowing through her being, her body trading its identities as easily as a suit of clothing.
When she was once again of biped nature, she put out her hands. “Don’t go.”
The male in all the robing simply stared at her, his eyes wide, his stance steady and tilted forward on his hips as if he were utterly astonished with what he had just seen—and for some reason, she didn’t think that boded well for him as some kind of savior. Weren’t destiny’s messengers supposed to be otherworldly and all-knowing?
Was this what Xhex had told her to come and find? If so, where was the light?
In the tense silence, Lydia thought of the number of times the ghost of her grandfather had visited her when she’d most needed his guidance—except he had only ever been a beacon warning her of a threat or dire consequence. He’d never actually told her anything about her situation.
Was this male here to give her direction about Daniel?
“Don’t go,” she repeated more softly.
As his eyes left hers and ran down her naked form, she had a thought he was just marveling about what she could do at will. Except then they returned and lingered on her breasts—and all at once, a scent carried over to her on the breeze… a scent of arousal.
Just as it registered, she was blinded by light, the illumination bright as a lightning strike, its origin unknown.
Yet she knew what it meant.
“Oh… God,” she whispered as she covered her mouth with one hand and her breasts with the other arm.
“Are you unwell,” the male blurted. “Here, allow me.”
As she heard a flapping of cloth and felt a swoosh of fabric around her body, she knew he had covered her with his robing. And she gripped the fine folds and held them to her trembling body as if they were a shield against arrows.
“What ails you,” he demanded.
“Who are you?” she tossed back as she blinked blindly and tried to make sure her legs continued to accept her weight.
But then the illumination disappeared. As quickly as the light arrived, the glow was gone, and the mysterious man reappeared to her. Not that he’d gone anywhere.
When she just stared at him, he took a step back. No longer covered by the robes, she saw that he was dressed in a tight-fitting black uniform that made her think he was a soldier, especially given the gun belt around his hips.
Blinking quickly, she sagged in her own skin as tears welled.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said in a tense voice.
Lydia shook her head and it was a while before she could find her voice. “I was told to come to the mountain, that something would be waiting for me, something that I was going to need to go on…”
She started shaking her head. “Oh, God… no. I don’t want this… I don’t…”
Lydia stumbled back from the male, thinking about what her grandfather had told her, about where to go to see her future.
This was not dawn, though. This was still night—
“Watch out,” the stranger said, “you’re about to fall off the rocks—stop!”
“I don’t want you!” she screamed at him. “I won’t have you!”
Just as her foot twisted out from under her, the discharge of a gun, high-pitched and alarming, sounded right behind her.
The last thing she saw, before she stumbled to the ground and hit her head on something hard, was the male who had taken off his robes to protect her modesty getting shot in the shoulder.
Disorientated, she forced her eyes to focus.
The man who came up on them with the gun was also dressed in all black, but the uniform was different—and there was something about his face that didn’t make sense. Then again, she’d been knocked in the head pretty badly—
As the soldier stepped over her, with his weapon still pointed at the male who had fallen to his knees, it dawned on her that she had seen him before. Back in the spring. When she and Daniel had been in the woods, up in the deer stand. He was the one who had been stalking them, who Daniel had taken down to the ground.
She couldn’t forget that face.
With that connection going through her mind, her eyes narrowed on the attacker, who was clearly taking for granted that she had lost consciousness. Just as that gun took aim at the mysterious male again, she lunged up and threw herself onto the shooter. She had no idea what she was doing, but she had the sense that if she could just get that muzzle angled away—
Somehow, she nailed things exactly right, pile-driving into the soldier, knocking him off-balance just as he pulled that trigger. As the bullet sailed harmlessly into the view, he shoved her free of him with such force, she went flying, her body airborne and then some.
This was going to go very, very badly, she thought in mid-flight.
Sure enough, the soldier steadied himself in what seemed like slow motion, rerouted the gun back toward the other male…
… and pulled the trigger—
* * *
They knew who he was. And he knew about them.
That was what was going through Blade’s mind at the moment the soldier came out of the pine trees right behind Lydia while she stumbled. He barely had time to turn away from the gunshot, and even as he did, he was caught in the shoulder, the bullet entering the meat of his upper arm. But he didn’t give a shit about that.
The wolven. He had to save the wolven.
As he landed on his knees, the soldier with the gun stepped over Lydia and retargeted that weapon in Blade’s direction.
Going for his own weapon, he fumbled and dropped it because of his injury—
From out of nowhere, Lydia threw herself at the soldier, hitting the uniformed fighter at precisely the right moment, not a second to lose, and in exactly the right place, not an inch to spare. She knocked that aim off, but not for long. The soldier swung his arm and sent her pinwheeling through the air, her body cast away as if it weighed next to nothing.
And then the gun was back, like Blade was its home.
Death, he thought. Finally. After all these years… it had come to find him.
“Not tonight, motherfucker,” he said out loud.
Barging into the soldier’s mind—
He got nothing; it was the strangest thing. There were no thoughts behind those eyes, no impulses, no emotions.
Oh, fucking hell, it was one of those—
A wolf attacked from over on the right, leaping from an outcropping of boulders, tackling the biomechanical nightmare off its feet—and then there were more of Lydia’s kind, too many others to count, a swarm of the lupines covering the male form, biting, protecting their own.
Blade looked over at Lydia. She wasn’t moving as she lay in the dirt.
Groaning, he crawled over uneven rocks to get to her, terrified about what he was going to find. His robes were heavy, he told himself; they would protect her.
Bullshit they would protect her.
Behind him, a series of yelping stopped him, and he looked back. The wolves were rearing away and shaking their heads as if they’d been stung. But of course… the electrical current. They’d breached the skin and gotten into the volts of the thing.
He kept going to Lydia. And as he came up to her, her eyes fluttered.
“Are you okay?” she mumbled at him.
“Yes, but are you… all… right…”
Those were the last words he said before he lost consciousness from blood loss.
Guess he’d been hit somewhere more serious than just his shoulder.
But at least his wolf was with her kind.
THIRTY-THREE
AS SOON AS Lydia had recovered a little, she got back up on her feet, and even though she had a head wound that was bleeding and her vision was blurry, she managed to get herself together and pull the male’s body away from where the wolven attack had occurred. As she dragged him by the armpits, she met the eyes of the lupine predators who were standing around the soldier they’d taken down. The wolven had formed a circle around him, but they weren’t savaging him, as if they were determined to keep him alive.
She nodded in thanks, recognizing each of their faces, all of their coat patterns, every tilt of their ears. They would hold the soldier where he lay while she assessed the male who had come to find her. And then she would call Daniel. He would know what to do—
“Ow.”
She stopped and looked down. “You’re alive?”
The male she did not want to know glanced up at her. “Stop. Stop. You’re going to tear my arms off.”
“Oh, sorry. I—”
As she dropped her hold, he landed like a side of beef. “Ow!”
“Shit!”
One of the wolves angled its head as if inquiring whether she needed help.
“Please,” the male said as he sat up with a groan, “do resist the urge to help me. I’m already on the verge of passing out again.”
“Sorry. You’re bleeding.”
“Thank you, I had no idea.” Annoyed eyes struggled to focus on her as he put his hand up to the red rush at the top of his arm. “Now do us both a favor. Take my other gun out of my holster and flip the safety off. That thing over there is going to wake up again.”
“What?”
“Gun—now! You’re going to have to use it in—”
As he trailed off and listed to the side as if he were about to faint, she lunged down his body and grabbed the weapon from its holster. Releasing a howl into the air, she warned her brethren, even though surely that torn-apart soldier was well and truly dead—
Somehow, even though their attacker had been taken down and one of his legs had been ripped off, he sat up, turned his head toward her—and lifted his gun again.
“Fuck you,” she growled.
Rage at everything, at Daniel’s disease, at the death that was coming for him, at the male who had turned up in a blaze of light on this mountain—and at the goddamn soldier who had started shooting in the first place—came out in a shower of bullets. Lydia pulled the trigger over and over again until she was walking toward an enemy that she didn’t need to define or to understand.
To utterly hate them.
In the back of her mind, the pinging noises of metal hitting metal didn’t make a lot of sense, but she was too into her fury to care about anything. All of the built-up pressure from the previous six months came out until the magazine was empty—and when the clicking of the trigger was the only sound rising up from her spasming hand, she went still.
But not for long. With no more bullets at her disposal, she switched her grip and jumped forward. Landing with one knee on each side of the chest, she began pistol-whipping the soldier, beating his face and head, becoming even more unhinged.
Images of the most recent two weeks were fresh gasoline in her veins, especially those scans that had shown the tumor growth and new development. Her anger that it was all so unfair was the spark that started and kept her explosion going. She had endless reserves of strength and power, more than she’d ever had—
Someone was hauling her off the body. Someone was peeling her back.
She fought against them because she was outside of herself, beyond anything rational—
“Stop! Jesus Christ! It’s fucking dead! Not that it was ever alive!”
* * *
Xhex just kept hauling the female back, no matter how much she got a fight in return. And finally, the wolven’s energy started to fade, thank fuck. No one needed any more kicks to the shin.
“Lydia!” she barked. “Chill, just fucking chill!”
Saying the female’s name helped get the wolven’s attention, and all of a sudden, everything that had been engaged in the beatdown went limp: arms, legs, torso, the whole body turned into a noodle.
As Xhex held the female up off the ground, the wolven’s panting was hoarse and the ocean-breeze scent of her tears replaced all the pine tree fragrance.
“You cool,” Xhex muttered. “We fucking done with this?”
When a nod came back at her, she was careful as she lowered the female down to a soft patch of pine needles—and then it was a case of spoiled for choice when it came to focusing on something: She could pick either that apparent cyborg sonofabitch in a chewed-up uniform over there… the ring-around-the-dog-pound of wolves who were pacing the periphery… the female shapeshifter with the Rocky Balboa complex… or—
“Is he okay? Oh, God, is he dead?”
With a sudden surge, Lydia scrambled over to the gunshot victim, which was the last in the buffet of bullshit.
Blade, Xhex’s brother, lay on his back with blood all over his chest. But the fucker was alive. Of course he was. Talk about your nine lives.
“Thank God you’re here,” Lydia said as she looked up at Xhex. “I didn’t know who to call for help. Can we get a doctor—we need a doctor—or I can call Gus—”
Her brother’s robes. The wolven was draped… in Blade’s red robes.
Jesus Christ.
“I’ll handle everything,” Xhex heard herself say with an edge.
Lydia leaned over the fallen male, patting at his chest. “He’s still breathing. Quick, we need a—”
“I’ll take care of him. You need to go.”
