Prisoner (Werewolf Marines) (4 page)

He hoped Roy hadn’t been left by himself in a
bed, but had some nurse or medic to hold his hand at the end. Roy
hated being alone.

“You did everything you could,” the doctor
said. “You even made him into a werewolf.”

Automatically, DJ nodded.

“Was it the first time you’d done that?”

DJ’s head jerked up, his mind abruptly
spinning into gear again. He’d been set up! “I’m sorry, what were
you saying? I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You heard me,” Dr. Semple said. “And I saw
you nod. You’re a werewolf.”

Adrenaline flooded DJ’s veins, making his
heart race and hands tingle.

I was so worried about Roy, I forgot to
ask where I was,
DJ thought.
I’m in one of
those
places. One of those evil secret labs they warned me about when
I was a pup. I’ve been captured by people who lock up shifters and
experiment on them— torture them—
dissect
them!

Then a surge of hope nearly washed away his
fear as he realized that
everything
might have been a
set-up. Roy might still be alive, a prisoner like himself.

“What do you want from me?” DJ asked
warily.

“What’s your power?”

DJ wondered if that was a test to see if he’d
lie. He lied anyway, giving the doctor his father’s power.
“Sometimes I dream of things happening in other countries. Every
now and then I can get on the internet and find out more about what
I saw, but usually it’s not the sort of thing that makes the
news.”

“Like what?”

“Ordinary people’s lives. Like, I’ll dream of
a Japanese schoolgirl taking a test. If I look up high schools in
Japan, I’ll see that it was a true dream, because all the details
will be the same, and I didn’t know them before. But I still won’t
know who she was or which school she was at, because I don’t know
Japanese.”

If the situation hadn’t been so dire, DJ
would have laughed at the hilariously unimpressed look that crossed
the doctor’s face. Personally, though DJ wouldn’t have traded his
power for his father’s, he’d always enjoyed hearing about Dad’s
dreams and thought it would be a fun power to have.

“Then let’s start with a demo,” said Dr.
Semple. “I’d like to see your wolf.”

Tempted as DJ was to agree and then
immediately attack her, there had to be precautions in place to
stop him from doing exactly that. The black box was probably a stun
gun. If he sprang, he’d get dropped. The door must be locked and
reinforced. Or else there were twenty guards outside. Or the room
could be instantly flooded with knockout gas. Or all of the
above.

“Let’s make a deal,” DJ suggested, trying not
to visibly gauge the distance between him and the box. “I’ll do it
if you tell me what really happened to Roy.”

Dr. Semple again tilted her head, then
nodded. DJ figured she was getting the go-ahead from a tiny
receiver in her ear. “He’s alive.”

DJ’s knees went so weak that he had to sit
down on the bed. It occurred to him that the doctor could be lying
again, but DJ couldn’t help believing her. Roy had endured wounds
that should have killed him before he’d even made it out of the
helo. He’d managed the intense effort and concentration that it
took to become a wolf when he was bleeding out and on the verge of
death. If he could do that, he could survive long enough to let his
new healing powers work their magic.

“And? How is he?” DJ heard his voice shake
with relief.

“He’s in critical condition.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“He’s unconscious and on a ventilator. He
can’t breathe on his own. His vital signs are unstable.” Dr. Semple
eyed DJ as if she was waiting for him to cry or pray or something,
then went on. “But his wounds are healing. His doctors believe that
he’ll recover.”

“Where is he?” DJ demanded. “Is he here? I
want to see him.”

“He’s at another facility, in a classified
location.”

“Where are we?”

“That’s also a classified location.”

“Oh, come on. You can at least tell me what
country I’m in. Am I still in Afghanistan?”

“That information is classified.” The doctor
winced slightly, as if the voice in her ear was too loud. “If you
cooperate, we could show you some video of your buddy.”

Never leave anyone behind.

If Roy was in the same lab, DJ wouldn’t try
to escape until he could take Roy with him. But if he really was
somewhere else, DJ needed to make an immediate break for it and go
rescue him.

“I’ll cooperate. Let’s see the video.”

“I don’t have it yet, but I can get it for
you after you shift.”

“Right now?”

The doctor nodded. “That’s the deal.”

“All right.”

DJ hesitated, uncomfortable and, bizarrely,
shy. In his entire life, he’d only shifted with two people who
weren’t wolves, and they both might as well have been family.
Becoming a wolf in front of a one-body stranger, and an evil doctor
at that, felt halfway between committing a crime and stripping in
public.

He felt silly turning his back, but it was
the only way he could bring himself to do it. Let the doctor get a
good look at his ass and tail. Facing the wall, DJ found his
wolf.

The plain white walls didn’t change, but the
scents that filled the air were bright as paint. His hope and
relief and fear and anger and embarrassment faded, as did his
racing thoughts, replaced by a wolf’s simple sense of purpose. He
was no longer DJ Torres, whose natural scent of salt, oil, and
burning wood had led his parents to give him the scent name Lechon,
but a wolf who thought of himself by the scent alone.

Lechon turned toward the air vent and sniffed
deeply, taking in the smell of antiseptic and air freshener and Dr.
Semple’ natural odor of candle wax. Then he closed his eyes and
inhaled again, seeking out all the scents that floated in the
air.

Lechon had always had an exceptionally good
sense of smell. In an enclosed building with air that circulated
around and around, he could pick up the scents of everyone inside.
He let hundreds of people’s scents drift by, seeking for Guinness’s
scent of dark chocolate, black leather, damp earth, and
charcoal.

It wasn’t there. Which meant Guinness wasn’t
there, either.

But he smelled something that intrigued him.
A scent of green, of cut grass and new leaves. It was the scent of
outside. If he tracked it, he’d get out, too.

Dr. Semple had the black box trained on him,
ready to nail Lechon if he leaped at her. Instead, he leaped for
the door.

He transformed in mid-air, slamming his
entire body and his human power of strength into the heavy door. It
ripped out of the wall. DJ was already lashing out with his fists
and feet as he landed, sending several guards flying across the
corridor. A few had already been knocked down by the door, but more
were scrambling into position, raising their guns.

As the quickest guards fired, DJ dropped to
the floor. He grabbed the fallen door and flipped it up, using it
as a shield. Darts hissed through the air, then smacked into the
door and clinked on the ground.

A movement from behind caught his eye. Dr.
Semple was sneaking up on him with the black box. DJ snatched up a
fallen dart gun and shot her in the chest. The doctor blinked,
staggered, then crumpled to the floor.

DJ threw the door forward, hoping to clear
the corridor. It slammed into four of the guards, and he used the
dart gun to pick off the two who managed to dodge. Then he bolted
down the hallway, lights flashing and sirens screaming in his
wake.

He skidded round a corner, then ran into more
guards. He was so close that he swung the gun rather than firing
it, hitting two and forcing the others to duck, and kept on
going.

DJ tore round another corner, hearing darts
smack into the wall only inches behind him. More guards to the
front. He fired a burst at them, then transformed as they started
to fire back. Their darts struck the wall several feet above him,
and they collapsed before they could try again.

Following the scent of green, he ran on as a
wolf. He became a man to kick in a door and tear up a flight of
stairs, then kicked his way out and became a wolf again. More
guards tried to stop him, and more guards went down.

He had never used his full strength in battle
before, nor had he ever fought as a wolf except in play. But it
didn’t feel like he was doing it for the first time. His Marine
training melded with his wolf instincts, filling him with the
fierce joy of combat and the hunt.

As Lechon came to another branching corridor,
the scent of green became so strong that outside had to be just a
door away. He became a man as he darted around the corner toward
it.

The corridor ended in a closed door. A woman
stood in front of it, blocking his way. Her hands were open and
empty, and her blue jeans and red tank top were tight enough that
it was obvious she wasn’t concealing any weapons.

DJ skidded to a stop and looked her over
again. This time he noticed that she was beautiful. She wasn’t his
type— too pale, too forbidding, too tall— but if you liked that
sort of thing, she was perfect. Her short hair was white as frost,
her cheekbones were sharp enough to cut, and her eyes, which she
was using to give him an amazingly cold stare, were blue as an
Arctic lake.

He’d had no qualms about taking down the
female guards, not to mention Dr. Semple. An armed woman was a
sister or an enemy, depending on what side she was on; he’d be an
asshole or an idiot to treat her differently from a man in the same
position. Bullets didn’t turn into flowers just because they were
fired from a woman’s rifle.

But this woman had to be a civilian employee
who had accidentally wandered into the crossfire. Her seemingly
chilly stare was probably because she was shell-shocked and
terrified.

DJ didn’t want to scare her even more by
yelling at her or shoving her out of his way. “Please step aside.
Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”

The woman laughed.

DJ undoubtedly looked more impressive in
uniform than barefoot and in hospital pajamas, but even so, he was
holding a weapon and was the obvious cause of the all-out alert. He
briefly wondered if the evil secret lab doubled as an asylum, then
decided that he’d already wasted too much time on the escaped
lunatic or absent-minded scientist or lost supermodel or whatever
she was.

He ran toward her, meaning to gently remove
her from his path if she was too paralyzed with fright to get out
of his way.

She darted forward to intercept him. Her
movement was so fast that he’d barely even registered it before she
grabbed his wrist, jerking him to a stop and wrenching his
shoulder. Then she twisted his arm so quickly that he barely
managed to catch her wrist before she would have broken his. The
dart gun clattered to the floor.

I’m an idiot,
DJ thought.
Taken in
by a tank top. She’s not a civilian, she’s just out of
uniform.

He jerked his arm, but she managed to hold
on. Her other hand swung out in a knife-hand strike, shockingly
fast. He ducked, but she clipped him across the top of his head,
hard enough to stagger him.

DJ swept her ankles, but he couldn’t break
her grip. She took him down with her. They hit the floor together,
wrestling, each struggling to pin the other.

“You’re a werewolf!” DJ gasped. “Fuck, you’re
strong.”

The woman caught him with an elbow to the
temple. The impact was as intense and dizzying as an electric
shock.

“Werewolves are a dime a dozen.” She didn’t
even sound out of breath. “I’m much more special than that.”

He managed to lift his foot and stomp on her
ankle, making her gasp in pain. But he still couldn’t break
free.

No one had ever given him this much of a
fight. He was pretty sure he was stronger, but she was more
flexible, lithe and slippery as a fucking eel. Just keeping her
from head-butting him was taking all his strength. The scar on his
side felt like it was splitting open every time he had to twist to
force her down, making him wonder if the wetness there was sweat or
blood.

DJ heard runners approaching, faint in the
distance.

“Tell me what you are,” he said, hoping to
distract her.

She dug her sharp nails into his hand,
drawing more blood, but he kept his grip tight on her wrists. The
two of them were tangled up like a knotted string, with DJ on top.
Her breath was warm on his face, and smelled like chocolate.

“Come on!” DJ yelled to cover up the
footsteps. “I’m a wolf! What are you? A cobra? A— ow!— a leopard? A
black widow spider? A duck-billed platypus?”

The woman’s pale eyebrows rose incredulously,
her ice-blue eyes fixing on his. “A
platypus?
”

“The cuteness is deceptive,” said DJ
solemnly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a guard peer round
the corner, raise a dart gun, and take careful aim at his back.
“Don’t underestimate them. They’re small, but fierce. Like me.”

As the guard’s finger tightened on the
trigger, DJ flipped them over, landing on his back with her on top.
The dart smacked into her shoulder.

“Son of a bitch!” the woman yelled.

“Fuck!” shouted the guard.

DJ laughed, giddy with adrenaline and
success. “Taken in by the old platypus trick!”

With a final burst of strength, the woman
freed her left hand and backfisted him across the mouth. DJ jerked
his head aside, lessening the force of the blow, but his lips split
in a bright burst of pain. Then her eyes closed, and she slumped
down on top of him.

DJ levered her off and snatched up his fallen
dart gun. The guard ducked back round the corner.

He hastily surveyed the area. There were no
other guards in sight. The door was unmarked and seemed to open
only by sensor, like the other doors DJ had gone through. So he
opened it the same way he’d opened the rest, by kicking it in.