Guarding Mari
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Guarding Mari
Copyright © 2014 by Ella Grey
ISBN: 978-1-61333-719-6
Cover art by Lacey Savage
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Guarding Mari
A Black Paw Pack Story
By
Ella Grey
Three Years Ago
The rogue wanted to lose him in the deserts straddling the Nevada California border. Sand and dust tickled his wolf nose, masking his target’s trail. Skidding to a halt, he shook his head and tried to catch Ryback’s distinctive scent. A growl of frustration escaped him when he came up empty. Wolves relied heavily on their noses, and his had never failed him before. Time slipped away, and the distance between him and his target only got bigger.
Daniel closed his eyes and breathed out. As the pack enforcer, he tracked down and killed rogue wolves, not a cub wet behind the ears. As soon as a wolf tasted human blood, blood lust consumed them. The rogues craved it, and no cure existed. It would follow them like a black shadow—an addict needing their fix. The only way out was death. He killed a lot of wolves. Some had begged for their lives. Others tried to bribe him, but the ones that hurt the most were the ones who asked for help.
Adam Reece, the pack alpha, had given him a file prior to the hunt. Wild, vicious animal attacks were being reported in the Las Vegas area, and they couldn’t be anything but the work of a rogue. Ten women butchered and killed. Whispers circulated in government circles that a mass culling of wolves would go into effect soon if the deaths didn’t stop.
Daniel needed to stop him before hundreds paid the price for the rogue’s madness. He’d narrowly managed to prevent him from claiming victim number eleven before he’d tracked his scent here. The surrounding smells of sand, dust, and desert flowers still danced around his nose. He strained his ears and cut out the sounds one by one, splitting his focus. Small animals scurried across the sand. Cars cut through the air at speed. A rustle from a fur-covered body. The rogue stalked him. Ready for a last stand? Only one of them would leave the desert. The monster murdered defenseless human women. He didn’t deserve mercy, and Daniel needed to take him down hard.
He tested the air again, trying to pinpoint the rogue’s approach. He missed the grassy hills around the Rocky Mountains. As far as the local townsfolk were concerned, the compound was home to doomsday preppers and the wolves didn’t bother to correct them. Nobody believed in shifters these days, and it was safer that way. Katherine Moon, their resident earth witch, made certain they were never short of vegetables or food. They hunted bears and other large game but never in the same place. They preferred to protect their mountains and the animal populations, rather than deplete their resources.
The sound of stones tumbling down the uneven rock face warned Daniel scant seconds before a hard body slammed into him. They rolled together off the path and deeper into the sand, snapping at each other’s throats. Ryback tried to pin him, his legs bent down into his underbelly. Instead Daniel darted out of the way of the rogue’s snapping jaws and pushed out with his paws, throwing the rogue off. They both got up, snapping and snarling at each other. The rogue’s eyes were cold and calculated. Not what he expected at all. A werewolf with a taste of human blood was borderline crazy. The fact the killer acted differently worried him. How could he be in control? Did he plan out his attacks? That would explain his trouble chasing him down.
Lunging, he knocked the rogue off of his feet, revealing its soft underbelly. He lashed out with his claws, and the bitter aroma of blood filled his nose. A howl tore through the air, and the rogue jerked forward, sinking his teeth into Daniel’s shoulder. He growled, white-hot pain pulsating through him.
Ryback took off again, leaving a path of blood in the sand. The rogue ran to the road and the cars on it. Beams of light traveled left and right, cutting through the dark. Everything happened in slow motion—a split second dragged out—the rogue planned to dart through the traffic and outrun him. With his torn-up shoulder Daniel couldn’t keep up. Ryback didn’t let up his pace, but a wounded wolf couldn’t outrace a truck.
A screech of brakes, and then everything went to hell.
***
Chaos and screams filled the emergency room. A pile up on Route 66 had seen all of the hospitals in the surrounding areas flooded with bodies, broken, bruised, or dead. Mari Stonewall excelled under the pressure even if she worked on too little sleep. It still hurt, though, emotional pain to see bodies too young to go through the trauma of a car crash. No one deserved it.
A brutal shift, the life of an ER doctor. Mari pulled the blood-stained scrubs off and threw them into a waiting bin. Her last patient had been a little girl with a dislocated arm. She’d arrived unconscious after being pulled from one of the cars. Mari closed her eyes, as if it would help block the memory. The smell of alcohol came off him in waves, impossible to miss. What kind of parent got drunk and then got behind the wheel? The little girl—he’d called her Julia, his words slurred—with light-blonde hair in pigtails and a
Hello Kitty
T-shirt on under pink overalls.
She’d wake up to a very different world. Her arm would need to be set in a cast. Her father would be in police custody. The social worker on shift, Mary Ann, had called Julia’s mother, while Mari’d been busy assisting Doctor Johnston in removing shards of steel and glass out of a fifteen-year-old boy.
“Doctor Stonewall, are you still on shift?”
She glared at the intern with tired eyes. A twelve-hour shift drained the life right out of her. She really needed to fall into a bed soon. It didn’t even have to be hers, and a pillow on the floor would work. She took a deep breath and called on any reserves that she might be storing. There wasn’t many. “What is it, Lindsay?”
“A man’s been brought in with severe lacerations to the lower abdomen. We’ve tried to stop the bleeding but the damage is too severe. We can really use the extra help, or we might end up losing him.”
Mari snatched up another pair of surgical gloves and pulled them on. “Come on then, lead the way.” She followed Lindsay into exam room 3. Two interns fought a losing battle against blood loss. Thirty minutes later, she knew it was a lost cause. Ten minutes in, and the bleeding hadn’t stopped. She didn’t let that stop her, though. Mari had been born stubborn, but the line between that and being unrealistic was thin. The ragged cuts of the wounds were impossible to sew together. The intestines were split, cut up by glass, probably. A pungent scent filled the air. The situation had been impossible before she’d even started.
“Time of death three a.m.” Mari pushed the strands of dark hair away from a peaceful face. “Did he have any identification on him?”
“No, he didn’t, Doctor,” Lindsay spoke up, writing on the folder in her hands. “The police are trying to place him at the pileup. They told us he was found a few feet away from the main site, and it doesn’t look like he was in a car. There wasn’t any glass in the wound.”
The fact hadn’t escaped her notice. “Clean up his face, take a picture, and turn it over to the cops. Maybe something will come up. If you have any trouble writing up the details on this, let me know. I need to grab a shower and get some sleep.”
“Are you heading home?”
Mari glanced up at the clock and sighed. “There isn’t any point. I’m back on in six hours.” She nodded at the interns and went in search of a shower.
The knock on the door disturbed her up all too soon. She bolted upright, awake and not very happy about it. With a yawn, Mari checked her watch, helped by the soft light from the lamp by the makeshift bed.
Four hours, not nearly enough
.
Groaning, she fell back onto the bed again. This was ridiculous. She’d always known being a doctor meant surviving on little sleep, but she’d hit her limit. In the space of a week she’d had maybe half of what she needed to function. She wouldn’t be any good to her patients with the brainpower of a zombie and the bedside manner to match.
“What is it?”
More light crept in as the door opened. Mari smiled at Doctor Malcolm Fisher and didn’t bother to rise. He worked in a different department and her patients didn’t go down to the bottom floor unless they were missing a pulse. Their paths rarely crossed unless someone died on her operating table. The old man looked a little perplexed. He carried a chart in one hand and a cup of hot coffee in the other. “I’m sorry to wake you, Mari, but there seem to be some faults in the notes for my latest addition to the morgue. He was one of yours, wasn’t he?”
Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she got off the cot. After accepting the coffee, she took a long satisfying drink before studying the chart. “I only lost one today. I know how much you like to keep order in your morgue.” The older man blushed, but she didn’t find any discrepancies in her charting. “What’s the problem? Everything looks all right here. Young man brought in with severe trauma to his lower stomach.”
Malcolm looked unsure. “The notes don’t match with the body I’ve got downstairs. Can you confirm for me?”
She cast a longing glance at the cot. “Only since it’s you who’s asking. I have a few more hours before my next shift starts, but I’d rather grab another doze before I have to handle a scalpel.”
***
Daniel pushed open the two heavy doors leading into the hospital. He should have finished the job, but he’d never thought the rogue would try to dart across the busy road to escape him. The guilt of how many people the rogue had hurt
after
he’d caused the six-car pileup weighed heavily on his mind. He’d ended up shifting and staying, observing from a safe distance when every part of him wanted to help. The whole naked thing would have raised too many questions. He left as soon as he found out which hospital they were taking the rogue to from the initials MRI on the side of the ambulance. Ryback had shifted back into human form, precariously close to death. A werewolf only shifted back into human form when they were seriously injured.
Either way, Daniel couldn’t take the chance Ryback survived. Everything would go to hell if he woke in the hospital. Another wolf would get out as quickly as possible, but a rogue wouldn’t think that way. He’d smell the blood, the disease, and the weakness and see prey. Easy prey.
He’d never seen so much chaos before. The victims of the pileup spread out over three hospitals. The waiting room of the Majestic Royal Infirmary was fit to burst, filled with crying people with wide eyes, trapped in a state of shock. Blood masked the scent of the rogue. People sat in the waiting room holding makeshift compresses to bleeding heads or arms. He scanned the room, pausing at a solitary man holding a battered teddy bear. If only he’d been quicker. Then it never would have gotten this far. He shook his head, angry with himself.
