Raven Moon (14 page)

Back in the car they drove north. He sighed. “I haven’t seen any safe hospitals to stop at so I’m afraid I’ll need to shift to werewolf form when we come across the next one and find materials for your cast. Then I’ll set your broken arm.”

“Honest, I think I’m good.”

“If it doesn’t heal correctly won’t that mean you’ll never fly properly or at all?” His wolf wagged his tail, imagining her with her black wings spread and cawing in freedom as she soared in the sky.

Rave snorted. “Why, so your prisoner can just fly away?”

A well deserved jibe.
“No. But at least you can be more comfortable and your human arm will heal sooner.”
You’ll no longer be my prisoner, when
I f feel you are safe enough to travel by yourself.

Rave cocked her head. “But how can I trust you to set it correctly, unless you are also capable of taking x-rays?”

Maddox inhaled deeply and slowly exhaled. “I once helped set a hawk shifter’s wing. We found casting material. It worked. Four months later, he flew.”

Rave gave him an incredulous look. “Since when does a Benandanti warrior go around healing wounded pagan shifters?” She lifted her left hand. “Not that I’m complaining.”

He bristled. “How much do you know about my past?”

“Dirk said you were once an Arbor werewolf boy rescued from the Kindred by the British Benandanti.” Her tone turned harsh, “Rather than return you to an Arbor pack, they stole you and Mariah away from close relatives.”

Maddox laughed with an edge. “My pack was decimated and with the Kindred on the offensive, they had no choice but to take us with them. After a year of hiding, we grew to love our new pack. It would have been cruel to return us.”

“Still, not cool. They stole you and then indoctrinated you into their cult.”

Maddox flushed. “Not a cult.” He stared back at the road. “I was four when I was baptized into the faith.” His tone softened. “I loved my adopted mother.”

“And you don’t remember your parents?”

Maddox slowly smiled. “I still remember my biological mother’s beautiful lullabies.”

“Hey, I can help you return to your roots or look up your AKC pedigree.”

He bounced a glare at her. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

“So why help a hawk shifter?”

“Whilst I was in England, rescuing humans from zombies, I worked alongside other shifters. One was a hawk named Henry. He broke his wing when he was trampled by a swarm. It turned out, he was my biological aunt’s husband.” He snorted. “Imagine how ridiculous it was to learn that I’m related, although just by marriage, to a bird.”

Hurt glinted in her eyes but then she scoffed, “Well then welcome to the flock.”

Maddox scowled. “Mating outside our kind is sacrilegious.”

“Says you.” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you know the Tlingit Indian tribe of the North Pacific believed ravens must only marry wolves?”

His inner wolf arose from his slumber and howled in approval. He flushed and cleared his throat. “Aren’t you supposed to marry Prince Bram of England?”

“No, we broke up. Seems he prefers your type.”

“Wolves?”

“No, silly, men.”

He shot her a horrified glare and then stared ahead, toward a timely distraction. “A hospital.”

Chapter 9

Unbelievable, Rave thought. The holy Benandanti Templar had a bird shifter in his family tree. Who knows, maybe not just birds, but cat or bear. No wonder he was grumpy. He was stuck with another bird, one he wanted to fuck. Both figuratively and literally. But maybe not for long. Rave could sneak away after her arm was properly set. That is, if she could slip him a little wolfsbane cocktail. She’d prefer to save the vial in case he was shot with silver bullets. Enemy or not, Rave could not bear the thought of him dying. Not on her watch.

Maddox drove in silence as he navigated around the empty suburban streets toward the hospital’s emergency room entrance. She peered out the window and opened it as they got closer. A good sign. The hospital was a fortress barricaded by a circle of transit and school buses. In front of the buses, stacked tires prevented zombies from crawling under. Instead of tires, a few buses were blocked with strewn vending machines and filing cabinets. Several had standing machine guns but no gunner. Whoever set up the fortress had strength in numbers, yet the area was silent. Maybe after all their trouble, everybody had turned.

Outside the barricade, abandoned ambulances and emergency vehicles dotted the nearly empty overflow parking lot. Empty artillery shells littered the entry. Yet no killed zombies with their heads blown off lay on the pavement. Odd. Could there have been a clean-up crew? She muttered, “Whatever happened here happened months ago.”

Maddox narrowed his eyes. “Not necessarily.”

Her eyes widened. “Look.” A huge makeshift sign, a white bed sheet, hung on the third floor. Painted on it was ‘Welcome Survivors to Stonefield Hospital.’ Too good to be true. Any moment, the car’s running engine would attract the ghouls. “This is the first time I’ve ever run across a hospital fortress.”

Maddox sighed. “Same here.” He drove around the perimeter. “It’s possible the hospital evacuated before patients turned.”

“Or, well-armed survivors took it back.”

He scowled. “Let’s hope not tankers or the Kindred.” He pulled in and parked near one of the two entryways.

Barricaded between two yellow school buses was a shark cage with two entries. Rave had gone on a great white shark cage dive in South Australia on a dare. Needless to say, she won the thousand dollar bet. A sign on top of the cage read, ‘If not bit, press the red button to your left.’ “Who would ever think you would find a shark cage in Texas?”

“This cage came from a zoo. Built to hold a tiger or bear. “

Rave furrowed her brow. “Hmm, I think you’re right.” Behind the cage entry, glass doors led to the emergency room. Her raven foresight prickled her scalp. “I don’t know about this place.”

Maddox ignored her concern, stepped out and opened her door. “You could probably use a stretch.”

He steadied her as Rave stood but she flinched away from his hold. “I’m fine.” It felt good to walk but it would have felt even better to fly. His tender touch one moment marked by his dark devotion to his faith the next moment confused the hell out of her. Talk about repression. One moment Jekyll and then next Hyde, only which one was his inner wolf?

“Shh.” Maddox scanned the area, tilted his head to listen and then sniffed the air. “Humans.”

Rave stiffened. “Live ones?”

“Of course, live ones,” he retorted as if she’d offended his wolf
sense of smell IQ.
He flared his nose. “Definitely not the Kindred. Or at least those I’m familiar with.”

Rave scanned for quick cover, in case of sudden danger. “But what if they used gleipnir powder to mask their presence?”

“As I noted earlier, their scent, at least Jaeger’s, had not been covered. Putrid ape smell still trails north. Besides, who would have told him I was back from England?”

“He could have spies near your compound. If so, it could be a trap.”

“Or since he plans to use the apes against us, he doesn’t give a damn.”

Rave glanced at the welcome sign. “Hmm. So living people are here.” She raised a brow. “Patients or doctors?”

Maddox smirked. “You expect me to sniff out professions?”

Rave scoffed, “I guess you’re nose is not that good.”

He paused and sniffed.

Rave instinctively stepped closer. “Do you smell zombies?”

“Their stench is everywhere, even beneath the building.” He pointed his chin toward a hospital access road. “Look.” Zombie heads on posts lined the street.

She turned and scrunched her face. “Time to fire the landscaper.” And creepier, why were they keeping zombies below? Maybe the ghouls were former patients, kept in case of a cure.

“Some people believe zombie heads serve as a deterrent rather than a warning. Zombies are not attracted to the odor of the dead so they probably go elsewhere. Their bodies mask the scent of humans.”

“Zombie cologne will definitely be the new trend. Hmm. That might be why they keep zombies below ground level. Just hope they are well secured.”

Maddox glanced at her and a look of concern crossed his face. “It might be better if you shifted.”

“I prefer to stay in human form.” Maybe she could stay here until she healed, that is, if they were nice people. Her raven foresight was not always accurate, at least not since the zombie apocalypse. Every action brought potential danger. She whipped out her compact and checked her light makeup. Not bad.

His tone scolded, “The people inside might be tankers.”

Rave tensed. The tankers were rapist, murderers, and worse. Dora was still treating Jen, a woman who survived a week with five tankers. Physically, she was only bruised, but Jen had watched her sister and two other women raped, and then thrown to the zombies. The poor woman would have been next in line had a team of shifters not killed the men.

“Don’t worry. I’m not leaving even you for the tankers.”

Rave lifted her nose to the air.
I’m a raven not a chicken
. “Who says I’m worried?”

“The smell of your fear is enough to draw every predator out from the wood.”

Damn wolf nose. Flight had always been her means to escape and she could always count on her guards to watch her back. “I’m not going to apologize for being scared, which I might add is a good thing when death is behind every door.” The entire planet had become one giant haunted house with monsters from zombies to tankers jumping out of every hidden panel.

“Agreed. I just don’t want you to worry into bird paralysis.” Maddox pressed the red button and waited.

Rave smirked. “Why? Afraid you’ll lose control and take advantage of me while I’m incapacitated? Again.” She turned her back to him and murmured. “Sure, I’ve nothing to worry about. I’m being held captive by a Benandanti bent on collecting a reward for my head so I can be burned at the stake.”

Maddox turned her around, his blue eyes blazing through her with the intensity of a lover not a foe. “Ravenna, I need… I’ve decided to…”

Before he finished what he was painfully trying to say, a window cracked open from the second floor. A man aimed a shotgun at them and from behind its barrel, shouted, “What brings you here?”

Rave rolled her eyes and snarked. “The ‘welcome’ sign.”

Maddox stiffened and protectively stepped in front of her. “We don’t want trouble.”

The man snorted, “I’ll be damned. You sound like one of them English fellows.”

“Quite right.” Maddox raised his arms. “Are there any doctors inside?”

“Just one, but you ain’t coming in if you’re bit.”

Two other men on the third window aimed their rifles at their heads.

Maddox faced them like a warrior. Although normal bullets would not kill him, there would be pain and temporary damage. Enough to piss him off. Bird shifters on the other hand, could be as easily killed by bullets as humans.

“Just the two of us.”

“Why’s her arm in a sling?”

Maddox shouted, “It’s broken. She needs a doctor.”

A woman, in her early sixties peered out behind the man. “Stand in front of the cage. Don’t move. After we check you for bites, we’ll cast her arm.”

Maddox draped a possessive arm around Rave, warming her heart, not that she had the right to feel that way. He only wanted her alive so she could survive a trial and execution. Earn him Benandanti points, proving he was devoted despite his Arbor wolf pack background and his repressed lust for her.

A dark bearded man in his early thirties wearing army combat clothes and a gray baseball cap unlocked the cage enclosure and stepped in. He twisted a toothpick about his mouth and sneered. “Remove your coats.”

Maddox turned to her. “I’ll help you.”

Rave winced as he carefully removed her arm from the sling, and helped her out of her coat, displaying her swollen unnaturally bent fractured arm.

The redneck survivor didn’t take his leering eyes off her. “Pretty little thing, sorry you’re hurt. I need to check your limbs, back and middle.”

Maddox snarled. “You can see her arm is broke and not bitten.”

“Them’s the rule, but we’ll start with you, your highness.”

Maddox took off his shirt and bore his fierce eyes into the man. Rave gaped at the sight of his broad muscular chest, his six-pack abs and his muscular arms. This wasn’t the first time she seen his raw masculine body, but the way he tensed while being observed by the redneck was hotter than hell.

The bearded man turned to three other men who had just joined him inside the huge cage. “Boy’s done some soldiering.” He snickered. “Or maybe he was a cover model for one of them pretty boy magazines.”

They laughed, and Maddox clenched his knuckles into fists. If only they knew, the alpha werewolf could rip them apart. They wouldn’t be so cocky then. Rave jibed at the men. “Whatever rocks your boat.”

The bearded man removed the toothpick from his mouth and pointed its chewed end at Maddox. “Pull your pants down.”

Maddox glared at Rave. “Turn around.”

Rave rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She turned around. “It’s not like I haven’t seen your ass.”

The men hooted laughs but stumbled back when Maddox suddenly rattled the cage’s first door. They raised their weapons. He towered over them and grinned, “Seen enough?”

The leader gestured with his weapon. He chewed his toothpick and gave him a hard smile. “You’re clean. Time to check the little lady.” The men behind him jeered and gave each other a knowing nod as if it was time to watch a porno flick.

Rave stepped forward. “Fine, but don’t forget tips. I don’t do strip shows for nothing.” At one time, she took a pole dancing class for fun, but often fantasized what it would be like to perform in front of men. But men that looked like Maddox, not yellow-teethed rednecks.

Maddox gently pulled her back by her good arm, which must have been an effort. His face reddened and his tense muscles knotted. Rave cocked her head at him like an inquisitive raven.
I would say a high ten on the werewolf pissed-off-manometer.

Maddox’s tone darkened. “Keep your clothes on.”