Circe's Recruits 2: Zack and Ace (8 page)

* * * * *

Zack drove down the Garden State Parkway like the car was on fire. He didn’t give two shits about cops, other drivers, or Ace at the moment. The darkness of night soothed that part of him that wanted to curl into a ball and lick his wounds. And that sadness kick-started the anger already brewing within. A rage unlike any other filled him, and he knew if he didn’t get far away, he’d hurt someone he cared about. Probably the same person who didn’t care about him.

To hear Ace admit he thought about Kelly while Zack fucked him really hurt. Sure, Zack had fantasized about Kelly as well. It didn’t matter who he was with at the time; so long as the person was female, she wore Kelly’s face. But when he was with Ace, his focus shifted.

No one could replace Ace in his heart. No matter how many times the mating heat had forced him to seek pleasure with Roane and the others; it was always Ace he came back to.

Lately, they’d both satisfied each other. Zack had foolishly believed Ace had come to accept him as more than his beast. If not, why the hell had Ace jacked him off in his bedroom? Why blow him before they’d left? Was it simply lust? Was Ace exorcising him out of his blood to make room for Kelly?

An odd jealousy formed, but for whom, Zack wasn’t sure. He wanted Kelly just as much as Ace did. He cried out for her with every breath he took. But Ace had her. Ace was probably still fucking her, uncaring that Zack was gone. Because he had Kelly, Ace had no more need for Zack. She’d effectively excluded him, and she had no idea what she’d done.

Speeding toward an exit and uncaring of where it led, Zack wanted to move as far away from his heart as he could. Fuck Ace Two Bears. Zack’s vision blurred, making him even angrier. He could just hear Ace taunting him. Yeah, you’re a real man now. Crying like a fucking girl. Damned pussy. You should have been born with one. Rage and hurt mingled until Zack was blinded by it. He accelerated off the main road into a wooded area. Crashing through the barrier, the Wrangler smashed into a tree. Instinct was the only thing that saved him. He changed as he smashed through the windshield into a thick tree trunk.

Bone crunched, but the hard shell of his skull held firm. Trying to clear the haze in his mind, Zack stood up on shaky feet and clutched his side. He’d reopened the stitching in his wound and might have broken a rib. Dammit. The pain amped his temper.

Muttering under his breath, he stomped into the marsh surrounding the wreck of his car. The lateness of the hour and lack of moonlight helped camouflage him, but he really needed to avoid the roads until he changed back.

So much for maintaining control. Derrick was right. Women were trouble.

Things had been going so well with Ace. Then she’d come between them. Kelly, the woman he wanted as much as his next breath. Apparently, she found Ace as captivating as he did. Now he was ass out, both of his mates drawn to each other, but not to him.

Oh, Zack knew he’d made Kelly feel good. He could fuck like a stallion. But she hadn’t looked at him the way she’d looked at Ace, with love in her eyes.

Furious and not sure what to do about it, Zack tried to find a way out of the mess his life had become as he headed deeper into the marsh. He was a Circ. He couldn’t turn that off.

Every month he had to endure the mating heat. With Ace so close, yet so distant, Zack didn’t think he could handle forcing his friend to take him anymore. No matter how hard they came together when changed, Ace always resented it afterward. Zack had hoped Ace might change his mind, especially after their last few days together. But now, he didn’t know what to think.

Brooding, he pushed onward, the mosquitoes and gnats unable to bite through his thick skin. Thick only in the physical sense. All this emotional bullshit is annoying.

So mired in his worries, Zack failed to note the warning silence around him until it was too late. He turned as he sensed eyes upon him. At the same instant, something solid plowed into him, taking him to the ground.

“Dammit, she’s mine,” a hoarse voice snarled as claws ripped into him.

Grunting under the assault, Zack quickly shoved the Circ from him and stood, cursing himself for his lack of attention.

Facing off against a rogue as tall as himself, Zack wondered how far gone this one might be. “What the fuck’s your problem?”

“The female’s scent all over you is wrong. She’s mine,” the Circ growled before he launched himself again.

Prepared, Zack caught him and flipped the asshole over his shoulder. The rage he’d felt about Kelly and Ace returned full force. Now this guy thought he had a claim to Kelly too?

“Stand in line, pal.” Zack met him blow for blow. He slipped under the male’s defenses with a long slash to his stomach followed by a kick to his solar plexus. As the Circ went down, Zack followed, continually striking the Circ’s face and abdomen. He managed a swift kick to his opponent’s groin as well, the haze of rage he felt further encouraging him.

Moments later, a satisfying groan of pain stopped him, and he stared down in shock at what he’d done. The Circ lay in a broken heap at his feet. The dumbass had started it, but still, Zack wasn’t this much of a brute. Not usually.

Feeling guilty, but wanting to make the most of this confrontation, he yanked the Circ up by his hair. “You don’t seem psychotic, just out of your mind if you think Kelly’s yours.”

“Not all of us are crazy, English. We’ve been developing quite nicely with what Weston’s bitch gave us.”

Caitlyn? What did she have to do with this? Then what the rogue said hit him. Holy shit. Pearson Labs was producing sane Circs again. But how long until they went nuts this time?

“How long you been a Circ?”

“A few months. So what?”

That was longer than the others Pearson Labs had turned out.

“What makes you think my female is yours?” he asked, avoiding the Circ’s question.

The rogue snorted. “Yours? Why? Because you own her right now? She was promised to me. I was designed just for her.” The rogue smiled, his left fang chipped, his mouth a bloody mask of joy. “She won’t be able to deny her blood, any more than she’ll deny her change. With you and Two Bears dead, and the right male by her side, she and I will --”

The male grimaced and stopped talking as several darts hit him hard in the neck.

Another planted itself in Zack’s thigh, and he dived for cover. His night had gone from bad to worse. He needed desperately to get back to Doc with this news. Elliot Pearl had managed to discover a new way to tamper with the Circe serum. Who knew how badly this next batch would behave? It had taken the original Circe’s Recruits five years before most of them had manifested dangerously aggressive behavior. The current rogues they encountered only took days, a few weeks at most, before they lost it. But this guy had been Circ for months?

A man stepped out of the shadows. Zack watched him from where he crouched in the brush as a familiar face spoke into a handheld device. “Fuck! If Pearl finds out about this, we’re all dead. Find Chenko and drag his ass back to base. I want the other Circ alive. I’ve got this one.”

Simon Dunn. The same asshole who’d almost raped Caitlyn weeks ago, and who’d threatened her yet again not soon after. Zack looked forward to this battle. Then more vehicles arrived, and with them the sound of many voices, more than he could handle at this point, alone and drugged.

Logic prevailed. Zack yanked the dart out of his side and prayed it wouldn’t make him too woozy to seek shelter. He tore through the marsh, uncaring about making noise, and sought the bliss of the ocean.

Sinking under the cold waves of life, he swam as if his own depended upon it.

* * * * *

Derrick cursed the shrill sound of his cell phone, pissed that Hale had managed, yet again, to change his ringtone into something earsplitting and just plain ugly.

“What?” He swore and glared at the blue glow of his alarm clock. Four thirty in the goddamn morning. “This had better be good.”

“Yo, D. I need a ride. A quiet ride, real soon.” Zack’s slurred voice shook him wide awake. Zack was supposed to be chilling out with Ace and Kelly. Doc had been pretty adamant they weren’t to be bothered with anything until he gave the go-ahead. Frankly, Derrick thought it was about damned time. He didn’t know what to make of this, but his instincts warned he wasn’t going to like it.

“Where are you?” Derrick rolled out of bed and threw on some clothes. He stuffed his feet into sandals and made his way quietly out the back door toward the garage.

“Not sure.” Zack’s breathing didn’t sound right. “I’m at a gas station, a Wawa, but…” He paused, and Derrick heard voices in the background. “Try Tuckahoe Road. Bring a med kit.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Sit tight.” Derrick disconnected. After finding a medical kit and a set of towels from the utility room in the garage, he grabbed keys off the key rack, slammed into Hale’s Toyota 4Runner, and took off.

Forty-five minutes later, he had Zack bundled up and lying down in the backseat.

“You look like shit.” Derrick glared into the rearview mirror, but Zack seemed too weary to care. Starting the vehicle, he took pains to watch the speed limit, driving away from traffic into the darkness of the rural roads he was more familiar with. Taking a long, back way home, he drove another ten minutes before jerking the car off the road.

“Here it comes,” Zack murmured.

“What the fuck is going on?” Derrick roared. “It’s nearly five in the morning, and instead of shacking up with your boyfriend and your new girlfriend far away from your horny buddies, you’re what, picking a fight in the swamp?” Zack groaned. “I hate when my bones heal. Fucking hurts.”

“I don’t care.” Derrick hated feeling worried. Ever since encountering that bloodbath in the woods a few days ago, he’d done nothing but worry. First for Ace, now for Zack. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“Things were…intense…at Kelly’s. I needed some space.” Zack swallowed. “I accidentally ran off the road somewhere off the Parkway. I don’t even remember the exit I took. I busted my ribs and my stitches. Then the PPA found me.”

“No shit?” Derrick saw Zack’s half-assed attempt to sit up and swore again. “Don’t move.”

He left the vehicle and popped the rear hatch. Then he carried Zack out of the backseat and sat him in the way back, as if he weighed no more than a child. Zack said nothing. His eyes were glazed, but Derrick didn’t know if it was due to his injuries or the faint scent of wrongness he smelled.

“Keep talking while I stitch you up.” Zack remained silent. “Unless you’d rather Doc did it?”

“Hell.” Zack exhaled on a groan and lifted his arm over his head, giving Derrick access to the gravest of his wounds. “I wasn’t paying attention. A rogue Circ knocked me on my ass.

Don’t worry, I took care of him. The dick actually claimed Kelly belongs to him.” Changed muscle rippled under Zack’s skin.

“Calm down. We both know she’s yours.”

“Yeah, right.” Zack sighed. “Anyway, he said some things that really concerned me.” Zack proceeded to tell him about some weird-ass shit -- rogue Circs that weren’t crazy, Caitlyn’s DNA used as testing, and a Circ claiming he’d been created for Kelly.

What the fuck?

“Then the PPA showed up and bagged him before he could tell me more,” Zack finished.

“They killed him?” A good rogue Circ was a dead rogue Circ, in Derrick’s opinion. He didn’t share Doc’s Pollyanna attitude about saving the monsters.

“No. They shot him up with the same stuff they shot me with. I only took one dart.

They plugged him with them. The damned things penetrated my beast, man. Tough stuff.”

“So the PPA showed up. You’re lucky you escaped.” Derrick used the sealing tape Doc had shoved in the kits. Not all of Zack’s stitches had popped, but the wound did seep blood.

He bandaged the main injury and patched up a few other cuts healing at a sluggish rate, no doubt because of the PPA tranquilizer running in Zack’s bloodstream.

“I know.” Zack seemed to be wrestling with some decision. “Look, D, I need you to fill Doc in on this crap tomorrow.” He glanced beyond Derrick into the dark. “Hell, make that later today. But I’d consider it a real favor if you’d just drop me off at Kelly’s and keep my situation under wraps for now.”

“Ah, okay.” Zack never asked for anything. “You sure you want to go back to Kelly’s? If it was pretty intense there, you can always crash in my room. I won’t tell anyone you’re there.”

“Thanks, D. But Kelly needs me right now, even if she doesn’t realize it.” Zack smiled, and Derrick knew what Ace and Kelly saw when they looked at him.

Zack English had a masculine beauty that went so much deeper than his looks. He attracted women with ease, yet it was that selflessness, that eager warmth to share what he had, that pulled others closer. Derrick didn’t like many people, and he rarely let others know what he felt. With Zack, he’d never felt the need to protect himself. Zack provided for and protected others all the time. It seemed to Derrick that maybe, it was time somebody returned the favor.

“Lie down back here. I’ll have you back at Kelly’s in no time.”

“Thanks again.” Zack lay down and closed his eyes.

Yeah, he’d take Zack back, no more questions asked. Zack needed his help, no doubt with that dumbass Cree. Derrick and the entire squad knew the two men were a pair. He’d never known Ace or Zack to be with other men sexually and chalked up the unusual attraction to Circ genes. Then again, who knew what the others did on their limited off time? But the way Ace acted around Zack, drawn yet uncomfortable, spoke volumes.

If Derrick were a betting man, he’d say adding Kelly to the mix was a complication that made everything difficult to deal with. Driving in comfortable silence, they made it to Kelly’s in no time.

With Derrick’s help, Zack eased himself out of the truck. He slapped Derrick on the shoulder. “Thanks. You’re a good man.”

“Good luck.”

Waiting until Zack entered the house, Derrick sighed. Instead of returning back to base, he pulled over and parked down the street. He wanted to be close enough to keep an eye on the threesome, just in case the PPA decided on a return visit. Grumbling at what promised to be a shitty day without his necessary seven hours of shut-eye, he settled in with a favorite radio program. But just to be contrary, he decided not to refill the gas tank on the way home, no matter how much shit Hale gave him for it.