Blood Enchantment (20 page)

Jenni turns Adi's cart in the direction of the exit, and they slap through the swinging morgue doors.

Ceiling lights flicker above her as they pass through the hall.

They slow. Quiet words are exchanged. Adi hears a buzz then the soft whirring of automated doors.

Adi slows her vitals. She concentrates on her heartbeat and breathing. The heat cycles like a yo-yo from deep within. She focuses on the rush of her blood in her veins.

The cart stops suddenly, and Adi slides forward a little, feeling unbalanced. She almost barks at the poor human she commandeered for this little fiasco—then the smell hits her.

Were. They're here.
Close.

“Can I help you?” Jenni says. Her voice is neutral and indifferent, but her scent isn't.

Damn.

Jenni's heartbeat sounds like a deer on the run.
Worst physical response ever.
Her cancer's scent is like riddled Swiss cheese. The Lycan males will smell her disease—maybe Adi—everything.

We’re fucked.

Adi feels responsible for Jenni’s safety.

“You wear the smell of a female we are trying to locate.”

They're not even
trying
to sound like human men.
Moon.
Adi masked her smell, but not what she’d passed to Jenni.

Could I not think of that?

The male voice is growly. Adi works to stay loose and unconcerned—a supreme challenge.

“What are you talking about?” Jenni asks with convincing confusion. “ʻWear the smellʼ?”

“There was a female admitted in a car accident. Where is she?”

More growl in the tone.

Adi takes shallow breathes. She can't protect Jenni. Hell, she can't protect herself.

“I am not required to answer your questions, now step out of my way, or I'll call hospital security.”

Adi closes her eyes against the human female’s bravery. She would make a great Were. Jenni reminds Adi of Cyn, with a filter.

“Hey!” Jenni suddenly yells.

A hand touches the body bag, and Adi tenses. Her eyeball rolling to see through the tiny gap.

She can smell Lycan male. A shadow looms, blocking out what little light pierced the small opening.

Oh moon
.

She's never wished for Slash more than she does in that moment—or hated him more.

The zipper begins to slide away.

Slash

The landscape blurs as Slash charges expertly between branches that reach for his sprinting form.

He only slows when he needs to gather more of his mate's scent. When he picks up a cross-scent, he grinds to a halt. His talons leave deep gouges in the forest floor, and the hem of his athletic pants are drenched with moisture and dirt shot up from running. He re-ties the string at the waistband. His hands are awkward in this form, but Slash maintains it stubbornly.

He's not fucking around with his sense of smell. It's inferior in his human form, and he can't afford delays. And, unlike the females, he doesn't have the benefit of the quarter-change. It's wolfen or bust.

Three Lycan males have crossed Adi's scent trail. A low growl rumbles through Slash, breaking the seal of his lips as a howl shivers at the edge of his tongue.

Why are they here?
This is not a claimed territory by any Were. The Lanarre hold the Hoh Rain Forest, and all other packs are south and west of this area. They were asking for trouble, wandering uninvited in foreign Were territory.

Slash's brow furrows as he sinks to his knees. Lowering his face to barely an inch above the obvious footprints of Were in wolfen form, Slash closes his eyes, inhaling deeply.

The smell causes his blood to run hotter. An instant erection hardens, throbbing painfully between his legs, and his skull aches. Teeth lengthen automatically as his body burns to be his wolf.

Slash springs to his feet. A howl bursts from his throat as if torn and bloody. He feels his eyes go to those of his wolf, simmering inside the bones of his face. He holds back, knowing his restraint is not limitless, and tries for impossible calm.

His nose isn't perfect, but it's never made him a liar. Slash's heightened sense of smell tells him the horrible news:

Adrianna is in heat.

Their time together did more than cement their lifelong relationship. And if he knows her cycle has begun, the other three who stumbled across her scent trail know it, as well.

Slash hesitates, deliberating his odds of saving her from an uninvited mating and sentencing them both to death.

It takes him about three seconds to decide.

I'll have to take my chances
. Three to one is better odds than when Tramack and his people came and caught the two of them off guard.

Slash pivots, crouching slightly, then leaps forward powerfully, spraying leaves, fir needles, and moist earth behind him.

His revolving wolfen eyes assist him now, sweeping his periphery as his blinding speed causes the forest to be a green smear that flanks him. Slash crashes through a creek. Hitting the other side, he stops dead.

Toiletries are scattered about, standing out like beacons of civilization in the middle of nature. Slash scoops up a toothbrush half-buried in the muck of the creek and raises it to his nose. He salivates as his beast rises in recognition of his mate—and her heat.

The only thing his wolf wants to do is breed Adrianna. That is the very thing any other male werewolf will want to do.

Slash must get to her first.

He tosses the toothbrush to the ground. He studies the ravine rising away from the creek bed. The distant hum of human vehicles rushing beyond his line of sight emits a low mechanical purr.

Slash vacillates.
Why would Adrianna head toward the highway?
He drops to his haunches, scanning the dirt carefully. Many tracks obscure Adi’s. Her shampoo bottle is crushed. The contents are a vile blue against the rich earthy colors of the forest. An altered paw print has stomped the bottle. Talons have punctured the stout tube of plastic. Slash sucks in a breath.

They pursued her. Running.

Adrenaline surges. His attention hangs up at the other side of the broad creek. He furiously imagines what might have occurred.

Hot syrupy fear pumps through him as pins and needles bloom within his body. He sees the scene in living color. Adrianna is grooming. His eyes move to her filthy toothbrush and the burst shampoo bottle. Then his focus turns to a point directly across the water.

They saw her.

When Adrianna noticed them, she ran. He touches the smaller altered paw print. It’s smeared as though she pivoted. Hard.

Slash stands, clenching and unclenching his fists.

The hold on his wolf is tenuous. Slash must make time to settle his beast, or he runs the risk of exploding his wolfen form and going to Were. And
that
, he doesn't need. Three shifts in fewer than twenty-four hours is an energy zapper.

He
can't protect Adrianna if
he’s
weak
. He can't protect her if they have her already.

Moon, help me.

Slash inhales deeply, sprinting to where Adi’s trail ends at the edge of the road, and gazes at the center of the highway. The beast whimpers. His eyes burn, and his vision doubles to his own and that of his beast’s.

All he sees is her blood. All his beast scents is the remnants of her injury. A car whizzes by, and Slash staggers to the middle of the two-lane freeway, oblivious to the traffic.

Screeching tires slice his eardrums like razor blades. Slash realizes he's slipped back to his human form automatically. It doesn't matter. Adrianna's blood fills his nostrils. What she did destroys his mind.

She threw herself into traffic.

Slash doesn't howl. He leaves the catastrophic proof of Adrianna's accident and flies to the shoulder at the other side of the freeway.

Glass tinkling and metal kissing metal enters Slash's dull consciousness. Drivers exit their cars, hands in fists. One look from Slash, and they slow their progress toward him. His eyes burn with the change, his body fighting to complete the form alteration.

His revolving stare narrows to slivers as they draw nearer in challenge. They study him. The human men have just enough primal instincts of self-preservation to get their asses back into their vehicles.

He dismisses them.

Slash is Red. He can track.

But Adrianna's scent disappears from the spattering of blood covering the yellow dashes of the highway like an escaped ghost.

Someone took her.

The males?

Slash paces the shoulder as traffic increases with the hour and the abused cars that tried to avoid him roll to the shoulder. Humans exchange insurance information, casting dark looks at Slash.

They look away when his eyes meet theirs.

The wail of sirens approach, growing louder with each whoop.

His head snaps up at the noise the humans can't hear yet.

Of course.
The hospital.

Hope floods Slash as he tracks the ambulance speeding toward him. A grin of sheer pleasure overtakes his face, and he plunges into the woods. His body streams to wolfen as he paces the ambulance. His speed tops out at the same rate of motion as flashing strobes of red and blue splash across the highway.

When the rioting ambulance slows, so does Slash.

Chest heaving, he peers through the stiff branches of the forest that borders the brightly illuminated letters of the Olympic Medical Center.

His vision closes to a tunnel. He morphs to human form and steps from the woods. His pants float to his ankles, revealing his naked form to anyone who might notice.

Fuck.

With an impatient sigh, he jerks them up, re-cinching the drawstring, and strides toward the ER wing. The ambulance pulls up to the doors, and a medic hops out, opening the double doors at the back. His partner is inside with the patient, and the driving medic grabs hold of the handle at the foot of the gurney.

Slash intercepts them neatly, never breaking stride. “Hello.”

The medics turn like a pair of startled birds. Their hands fall away from the gurney.

Slash's nostrils flare, scenting the patient. “He's dying. Don't bother.” Then he turns and slaps the solid stainless handhold at the end of the gurney and shoves the whole thing back inside.

Let's not have
that
in the mix.

“Hey!” says the medic who drove. “Get your hands off the fucking cot!”

Slash rotates his neck. “Just did.” Slash has a touch of regret as he clocks the medic, checking his swing at the last minute so he doesn't break the human's neck. There is no honor in killing a healer.

As the medic crumples, Slash catches him underneath the armpits and easily hefts him inside the ambulance, lying him beside the dying patient.

The other medic, a male who obviously sees gym time, rushes him. W
ere don't do gym time.

Slash grabs the medic, jerking his forearm around the man's neck and hauling him against his chest.

The man bucks and writhes. He’s very strong, for a human.

Slash is at least four times stronger, though, even in his human form. “I won't kill you if you answer one question.”

“What? Fucking freak!” he squeaks.

Slash begins to wring his neck.

The medic gives a hoarse bark.

“A female came here today, young—badly injured.” Slash's heartbeat thunders like a herd of horses. He
presumes
Adrianna is here.

But that might be wishful thinking. Slash has loosely strung together the dots like the fibers of the finest spiderweb, waiting to be shredded.

“Yeah!” the medic screeches, fruitlessly clawing at Slash's forearms. “Early twenties, broken ribs and pelvis. Collapsed lung. Internal bleeding.”

Slash closes his eyes in relief. These
were
the responders. “This the ambulance you used for transport?”

“Fuck you!” the medic bellows.

I don't have time for this. Adi doesn't have time.

Slash's forearm tightens.

“Yes!”

Slash drags the medic by the neck and pokes his head inside the ambulance. Mentally shelving the sight of blood flowing out of the now-dead patient, he ignores the other medic’s fresh injuries.

He searches through the fine layers of scent: death, blood, injury, antiseptic, and drugs.

Beneath those, Adrianna lingers. He'd missed it before, while concentrating on extracting information.

Slash squeezes in a hard burst, cutting off the artery that feeds oxygen to the medic's brain. After thirty seconds of frantic thrashing, he goes limp.

Slash carefully moves him inside the ambulance, and before laying the man beside the first medic, he strips the medic’s uniform and puts it on himself. The fit isn't bad—the human was large—but the pant legs are too short. Slash closes the doors of the ambulance.

Turning, he notices his fingers are shaking with tension and unspent adrenaline.

Adrianna is near.

*

The human herd flows past him within the sterile confines of the hospital, moving in opposing directions, never making eye contact.

Perfect.

Slash sights the nurse at the receptionist desk and approaches. Smooth, austere laminate in a bleached ivory tops the countertop at a height that reveals only brown eyes staring above an oversized computer screen as he approaches.

He doesn't have much time. Soon, those medics will wake up. Then they'll get attention—the kind of notice Slash doesn't need.

The nurse’s smile fades when she takes in Slash’s face up close. The scar is a bisecting ripple of flesh that makes his features look harsh and unforgiving.

Slash
is
unforgiving.

“Hello,” he begins, having covertly flipped his badge in the wrong direction, hiding a face that doesn't remotely resemble the medic he just put into la-la land.

“Hi,” she says hesitantly, shoring up into the shell of politeness expected of humans.

Good girl.

“A family's arrived, asking questions about an admit.”

Her wide eyes narrow. “Oh, for a patient?”

Slash gives a shallow nod. “Yes. We had an early transfer in today—car wreck, young woman, early twenties?”

Beautiful. Vulnerable. Unprotected.
Slash swallows hard, feeling his Adam's apple like a resistant plow of flesh.

“Oh! Yes. She's Jenni's. Third floor.” The nurse glides her mouse over a pad. She looks up at him, missing the scars now, seeing him as a person.

Slash tries on a smile.

“Room 313.”

“Great,” Slash says then turns. “No name?”

The less they know, the better.

She shakes her head. Silky, fine brunette hair floats over her shoulders. Her neck is fragile, so easily smashed. Slash shoves his violent thoughts away. His emotions are really riding the edge of sanity. “Unknown,” she replies, her eyes drifting back to the huge screen.

“Thanks,” he says, dashing away.

Slash strides to the stairs. They'll be faster than the elevator.