IcySeduction (16 page)

“Come on, you know me. You know I’m not going to hurt you.
This is the safest place, okay? I’ll get you some food and water. You’ll have a
nice nap.” She got him fully in the closet, but then she had to maneuver around
him so she was the one closest to the door. She was cooing to him as if he were
a newborn. He was still responding to her voice, but she didn’t know if he was
hearing her with his human consciousness or with the wolf’s. “I’m going to put
this around your neck, okay?”

He growled.

“Really, it’ll keep you the safest.” She couldn’t leave him
loose and worry about him crashing through doors. But what if he could tear the
chain from the wall? She couldn’t deal with what ifs, just this one task. “I’m
putting this around your neck to keep you safe.” She managed to get it on and
was trying to buckle it when his long teeth locked onto her arm. Blood spurted.
Tears sprang into Christine’s eyes and she tried not to struggle, not to
scream. She just kept talking to him, getting the collar buckled with one hand.
She started backing toward the door, which meant letting her arm stretch farther
since it was still in his mouth. God, would she have to lose her arm to save
herself?

“Dean, drop it.” She tried for that firm alpha dog tone that
she’d seen trainers do on TV, while doing her damnedest not to look at the
blood, her blood, smearing on Dean’s fur. “Drop it. Be a good dog.”

He bit down harder, but he seemed confused, like the
instinct for prey was there but not what to do with it. Suddenly he opened his
mouth, which freed her arm. He sat on his haunches and howled, a long, loud howl.
Christine fell backward into the bedroom, closed the closet door and turned the
bedroom TV up full blast. Then she went into the living room and turned that TV
way up. Then she tried to figure out which channel was Animal Planet,
forgetting that she was getting blood everywhere. She just wanted to cover up
the howling and she couldn’t feel her arm anymore anyway.

Once the TV was on, she ran to the kitchen and started
rinsing her arm in cold water. The whole sink was red. Her skin was in slices.
She could see the muscle beneath and in some places the bone. Suddenly feeling
very lightheaded, she looked around for something to wrap her arm in. The paper
towels were on the counter, easy access, but the blood kept soaking through
when she tried to wrap them around. She switched to kitchen towels, but she
couldn’t apply the proper pressure one handed.

I need a hospital.
The thought flitted through her
head.
I’m going to bleed to death
.

But she couldn’t leave Dean. She couldn’t risk him being
found. Over the noisy TV she heard the door buzzer. She stumbled to the front
door and looked out the peep hole. An elderly lady on the other side looked
pissed. Christine opened the door the smallest crack.

“Where’s Jake? You don’t live here. Rude, thoughtless,
blasting the TV like that. My husband and I are mostly deaf, and it’s still
loud.”

Christine cleared her throat, but her voice still sounded
hoarse. “I’m turning it down now, ma’am. Sorry for bothering you.” She shut the
door on the lady mid-sentence. She turned that TV down to a normal level, didn’t
hear any howling, so she went into the bedroom and did the same. She heard what
she thought was digging or scratching at the floor.

“He needs food.” Still dripping blood everywhere, she went
back to the kitchen. No jerky, so bologna would have to do. God, the smell made
her want to pass out. She filled a saucepan with water. Back in Jake’s room,
she opened the closet door a crack and thrust the bologna, still in the
package, inside. Once the animal was preoccupied with figuring out how to get
the meat out, she shoved in the saucepan of water. She shut and locked the
door.

She found herself sitting in the same position, back against
the closet door, as she had after Jake’s change. She closed her eyes for a
moment, but that’s when her arm started throbbing again. She looked down at her
towel-wrapped arm. The towel was red. Then she looked at the rest of the
bedroom. Blood everywhere. Jake and Dean were both going to kill her when they
saw what a mess she’d made of the apartment. She peeked under the towel at her
arm and thought she was going to pass out, but it did look as if the blood was
clotting in some places. At least she was already sitting on the floor. She
patted her fingertips along her cheeks and forehead. She felt clammy.

Shock, you’re going into shock.

If she could get up, she could go look for bandages in the
bathroom, but she didn’t think she could get up. First aid class said you
treated shock by keeping the person warm and something about their feet. What
was she supposed to do with her feet? She crawled her way to the foot of the
bed and tugged until the bedspread, blanket, and sheet fell on top of her. She
tried to arrange it some.

“Raise feet,” she told herself, suddenly remembering. She
lay back on the floor and propped her feet against the bed and spread the heavy
layer of covers over her as best as possible. It seemed counterintuitive to be
sweating and covering herself, but she was pretty sure that was what she’d
learned in first aid class, which she’d taken as part of her company’s disaster
training.

She turned her head sideways—something about gagging—and
listened to her far-too-fast breathing. She just needed to survive until
morning. Then Dean would be Dean again and she could call an ambulance without
risking his discovery. Her thoughts became less coherent and she blacked out.

Jake didn’t know why changing back into human form was so
much easier than changing into the wolf. Maybe the wolf felt more natural about
it, or maybe the wolf felt the same pain, but he couldn’t remember it once he
was human again. He woke up lying naked on Saron’s deck. The sun was struggling
to come up over the trees, but it was definitely daybreak or he wouldn’t be
conscious. He sat up trying to remember why he felt this sense of urgency. He
was worrying about Dean? Why? His mother wouldn’t take him. Who did? Christine.

He shook his head to speed up the synapses. Why worry about
Christine? She was extremely responsible. She’d take care of Dean.

Suddenly Dean’s confusion and fear came crashing through.
Jake launched to his feet. He needed his phone. He remembered talking to
Christine before his change. Where the hell were his clothes? He was too far
away. It would take hours to get to him.

Saron loped in from the field. “I put the helicopter on
stand-by last night.”

“You did?”

“Last thing I did before I changed.” He started looking
around for his clothes as well, but his closet was here so the task wasn’t
quite as hard. “We can be there in half an hour.”

Jake remembered everything about his conversation with
Christine now and was beyond panic. He could sense how upset Dean was. He asked
Saron about it as they, now dressed and equipped with their phones, loped to
the large front drive where they could hear the whoop of helicopter blades.

“Any familial blood allows for that extra connection, but it’s
usually not as strong as with your mate,” Saron said before it was impossible
to talk anymore from the noise and the wind. They got into the helicopter, put
on seatbelts and headsets, and were off the ground in seconds.

“But I’m only sensing Dean. I’m not sensing Christine at
all.” His own voice sounded funny in the headset. He had been trying Christine’s
cell, Dean’s cell, the apartment’s landline ever since he’d found his phone.
All went directly to voice mail.

Saron turned to him with a grim look on his face. “Do you
normally feel her if she’s asleep?”

“Sometimes even more than if awake.” It was starting to sink
in. Why couldn’t he sense Christine? Why weren’t her thoughts and emotions,
which had to be strong with Dean changing and all, strobing in his head? “Jesus
fuckin’ Christ, do you think…?” He couldn’t even say it. “I didn’t hurt her at
all as the wolf.”

“But you said you pushed her out of the closet during your
change. A first change—the pain, the fear, the hunger.”

“Oh my God.” What were they going to find when they finally
got to his apartment? What if Dean had gotten out of the apartment and was now
waking up somewhere in the city, alone, confused and naked?

“Jake, concentrate on your son. Close your eyes. You may be
able to see where he is.”

Jake obeyed his mentor’s instructions. Hazy, but that soon
cleared. He was pretty sure he was now seeing through Dean’s eyes. “It looks
like he’s in my closet.” The overhead light, a bare bulb, was on. There was an
overturned pot and some sort of wrapper. The closet smelled like piss. Dean was
struggling with something on his neck. Had to be the collar.

“Now see if you can send him some sort of message, not words
so much, but calm. Let him know you’re on the way,” Saron said.

Jake decided to first concentrate on the collar. As a human,
Dean could unbuckle it, but he was too upset by the prongs to figure that out.
Jake pictured the collar and the buckle and hands unbuckling it. Dean seemed to
get the message since he finally undid the buckle and pulled the collar off.
But his panic rose again as he looked around him and realized there was blood
everywhere, smeared on the pan and on the bologna packaging, on the floor and
the few clothes hanging in the closet. He’d been smelling that too, but hadn’t
understood what it was.

Jake’s concentration broke as panic set in for Christine. He
tried to connect with her, but there was nothing. The beat of the helicopter’s
blades banged through his head, and he suddenly felt nauseous with its
movement, though that wasn’t really what was making him feel sick. God, was she
dead? Was his mate dead?

Had his son killed her?

How would his son live with that, knowing he’d killed someone,
even if Jake never told him how important Christine really was?

Saron was talking to the pilot over the headset about
Manhattan air traffic. Jake had no idea where they would land. He only prayed
it was close so he could get to his son quickly.

He took several deep breaths and tried to focus in on Dean’s
view again. He was banging on the closet door, which must have been locked.

Dean, calm down. I’m on my way.
He mentally kept
repeating that mantra, trying to project it to his son.

“Will he understand the link between us? I mean, does he
sense that I’m there in his head?” he asked Saron.

“I think if it was a calm moment, he might have a sense of
being watched, as I’m sure Christine did. With his confusing feelings at the
moment, I’m not sure he’d notice.” Saron obviously empathized with Dean, even
though his first change had been decades ago.

Jake was glad Dean couldn’t get out of the closet. He didn’t
want his son to see what was beyond the door. Jake didn’t want to see what was
beyond the door. Christine was not responding to Dean any more than she was her
phone, so Jake was feeling less and less hope. Perhaps someone had heard and
called 9-1-1.

“If Christine was unconscious in a hospital, would I be able
to sense her?”

Saron cocked his head in thought. “I think it would depend
on how deeply she was under.” The helicopter was banking, giving a good view of
the city out of its side windows. Jake could see a helipad on top of a couple
of the buildings. Looked like there was one on the West Side. It would still be
several blocks’ hike north from the building they were landing on to his
apartment.

Saron was again talking to the pilot as the bird lowered
evenly to the tarmac. He turned to Jake. “My driver is waiting out front
already. It should take us less than five minutes to get to your place since
the traffic is light at this time of the morning and it being Sunday.”

Jake could feel that his son’s panic had turned into
desolation.

I’m almost there, Dean. Hold on.

Even the elevator ride down to the car seemed to take too
long. They drove up Columbus Avenue to his apartment. He preceded Saron out of
the car since the older man was giving his driver more instructions. Once
inside the building Jake bolted up the stairs, not even breathing hard. Saron
easily followed him, one of the perks of being were.

Mrs. Wajowski was lingering in the hall near Jake’s front
door. “I thought I heard banging and yelling a few minutes ago, but it stopped.”
She pointed to her own door. “My husband said it was just the TV.”

Jake tried for a calm voice just to get the old lady out of
the way. “It probably was. Dean is home and probably has it turned up too loud.”

“Oh okay. That happened last night too, but a lady came to
the door. She turned it down after that.”

Jake was glad to hear news of Christine, but he didn’t want
to waste time asking more questions. He fumbled his key into the lock because
his hands were starting to shake. His left eye was twitching too, something it
did when he was under extreme stress, like in court during the custody hearing.

He and Saron stepped inside the apartment, with Saron
shutting the door firmly behind him to keep prying eyes out. Part of Jake’s
apartment looked like a Jackson Pollock painting, mostly the floor. Besides
drips and spray, there were bloody footprints. They were small, so most likely
Christine’s. Even more blood was in the kitchen, on the fridge handle and on
cabinet doors. Bloody towels on the counter, both cloth and paper. Pinkish
water in the sink.

But no sign of Christine. So, was she dead in his bedroom or
unconscious at a hospital somewhere? His nosy neighbor hadn’t mentioned seeing
paramedics. Jake found the bedroom door locked, so he broke the handle off with
brute strength. The first thing he saw inside was a mound of blankets at the
end of the bed. Saron was saying something, but Jake could hear Dean’s yells
coming from the closet. He broke the handle on the closet too, too impatient to
unlock it. Dean launched into his arms.

“Dad, I don’t know what happened to me. Dad, I’m so sorry. I
didn’t mean it. I don’t know what happened!”

“I’ll explain it all, son. You’ve nothing to be sorry about.
It wasn’t your fault.” He didn’t yet know if he was saying Christine’s death
wasn’t his fault. He guided Dean out of the closet and found Saron kneeling
next to the mound of blankets, also bloodstained, and the tiny head poking out
from underneath them. Saron was talking on his phone, but Christine’s eyes were
closed and her expression peaceful. Jake knew she had to be dead.

Dean fell to his knees. “Oh Daddy, I’m so sorry.” Daddy was
a name he hadn’t called Jake for several years.

Saron put the phone into his pocket as he stood up. “She’s
not dead. Feel for her pulse. It’s there but weak.”

Jake knelt near Christine, where Saron had been and felt her
neck for her pulse. He detected one, but it seemed irregular. He started to
shift the blankets off her.

“No, leave her. My men are on the way.”

“She needs an ambulance, a doctor.”

“Believe me, we’ll take quicker and more thorough care of
her.” Someone shouted from the front room. “In here!”

Four men pushed their way into the room, two with scrubs
underneath jackets, two with what turned out to be a fold-out stretcher. A
woman followed them in. She went straight to Dean, guided him to the chair in the
corner and started checking him over. The men in scrubs uncovered Christine and
Jake finally saw the source of the blood. Her arm was mangled, though it looked
as if she’d tried to wash the blood off at one point. What was left on her skin
was a crusty brown, some of it oozing.

“Lucky it didn’t hit a major vessel or she wouldn’t still be
here,” one of the paramedics said.

“Shocking it didn’t, the way everything’s shredded,” the
other man said. “But the blood loss is severe.”

Saron pulled Jake toward Dean to keep him from hovering over
the paramedics. “Let them do what they need to and get her where she can be
healed. Besides, your son needs you.”

“How is he?” Jake asked the woman, who introduced herself as
Dr. Navarro.

“He’s a bit shocky, but with his constitution that should go
away quickly.” Jake assumed she meant because Dean was were. “I imagine it’s
his emotions that are most tender right now.”

“Is she going to be okay?” Dean asked, his eyes on Christine
as the men moved her onto the stretcher.

Dr. Navarro answered. “The fact that she’s still alive is a
good sign. No large vein or artery was torn. She would have died very quickly
from that. And she didn’t die from shock. I’d say our main concern now is
getting blood and fluids back in her and to wash out that arm and prevent
infection.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Jake said, keeping his arm tight around
his son’s shoulders.

“Dad, I didn’t mean to hurt her. I don’t know what happened.”

Jake moved so he could look directly into his son’s watery
eyes. “This is not your fault, and Christine will understand that once she’s
recovered and will say the same thing. I’ve got some complicated things to
explain to you that I would have told you sooner if I’d known there was going
to be a need to.”

Saron walked up to them. “Even I didn’t know when or if this
would happen in Dean’s case. I’m sorry.”

Jake tried for a grin. “You just probably won’t want to tell
your mom.”

“I kinda figured that.”

As they worked their way to the front of the apartment to go
to whatever medical center Saron had lined up, a second wave of men and a
couple women swept in. Judging by the buckets and mops, this was the cleaning
crew.

Jake hugged his boy again and prayed that he would feel
Christine’s presence in his head soon.

* * * * *

“I bit her, Dad. Is she going to turn into one of us?”

The doctor in the room answered. “No, for us it is a curse
of genetics.”

“You’re one of us?” Dean asked, amazed, sounding much
younger than his years considering what he’d just been through.

“Well, you and your dad are a bit rarer, since you are part
human. We don’t know as much about you.” Dr. Navarro used the IV line to add
more medicine to Christine’s comatose body.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re not as sure of onset. Adolescence, yes, but
age, not exactly. If we’d known more about this, we could have made sure you
and your dad were ready.” She glanced up at Jake. “It’s good for her to still
be unconscious. We want all the meds working in her before she wakes up,
especially the pain meds. And she’ll be pretty loopy when she does wake up.”

“You’re sure…?” He didn’t say the rest—are you sure she’ll
ever wake up? He tapped his son’s shoulder. “Hey, why don’t you find some food?”
The single-story private medical center had a small cafeteria with vending
machines at one end.

Once Dean was out of the room, Dr. Navarro nodded. “She’ll
need more surgery to repair nerve damage and possibly skin grafts, depending on
how bad the scarring is.”

“And the scarring will be bad?”

“At first, but she’s a healthy young woman. I expect most of
her wounds to clear up in a couple of weeks.”

Jake was glad that Dr. Navarro was talking about Christine
waking up and dealing with scars instead of a coma in the near future, but he
was still doubtful. Why couldn’t he hear her in his head? Why couldn’t he sense
her dreaming? Even when he’d dozed off, he’d felt as if he was on a trapeze
reaching for her and missing the connection. He’d been too busy explaining
things to Dean and calling his jobs and sorting things out with the medical
center to feel the widening chasm inside him, the piece of his soul that only a
mate could fill. Only one mate per lifetime.