Dark Wrath (9 page)

“Clones! 
You’re insane!” Erin exclaimed, struggling against the restraints as he picked
up antiseptic and began to swab the skin around the mouth of her sex. 
Frustrated when she couldn’t escape him, she started screaming and cursing him.

Wagner glared at
her.  “This is a delicate operation.  You must be still!”

“I’m not just
going to
let
you do this to me, you fucking lunatic!” Erin screamed,
trying to fight off the effects of the sedative they’d given her.

Furious, Wagner
shot to his feet abruptly.  “I can’t work like this!  Johnson, get
another syringe and tranquilize her!”

“Don’t you dare
come near me with that thing, you son of a bitch!” Erin cried out, twisting her
head to watch as the technician moved to the cabinets and began searching the
drawer for a syringe and the medication Wagner had ordered.

“What’s that?”
the guard demanded abruptly.

It was several
moments before Erin realized that the men in the room with her had frozen like
deer caught in the crosshairs of a hunter’s rifle, their heads lifted to listen
to some distant sound.

Almost the moment
Erin quieted to see if she could hear whatever it was that had caught their
attention, the alarm began to blare.  Her heart jerked painfully at the
high pitched sound and then began to race with hopefulness and fear as she
heard the sound of distant gunfire.

T
he
radios clipped to the guards’ belts set up a squawk of static.  “All
units, all units.  We’re under attack.  This is not a drill. 
Three men down.  I say again.  Three m--”

The voice cut off
abruptly, interrupted by another burst of static.  One of the men grabbed
the walkie-talkie off his belt and jerked the door open, peering up and down
the corridor outside.  “This is twelve.  Say again.”

Nothing but
static greeted him.  He turned to stare at Dr. Wagner, as if searching for
an answer.  “Stay here.  Phillips, come with me,” he added. 
Barely glancing at the other guard to see if he was complying with the order,
he strode into the corridor.

“Hold on a
minute!” Wagner shouted even as the men dashed out the door.  “You can’t
leave us unarmed!”

“What should we
do?” Johnson demanded anxiously.

Wagner stared at
him a long moment.  “Nothing,” he responded finally.  “I’m sure
they’ll have everything under control in a few minutes.  Did you get the
syringe ready?”

“You want to
proceed?” Johnson demanded, obviously outraged that Wagner could even consider
going on as if the facility weren’t under attack.

“You’d prefer to
cower in one corner?” Wagner snapped.  “We’re perfectly safe.  We’re
three levels below the entrance.  The militia will contain the security
problem.”

“They won’t!”
Erin put in.  “It’s Jesse.  I told you he said he would come after
you, you son of a bitch!”  She turned her head toward the door then and
began screaming Jesse’s name as loudly as she could, crying for help.

“Shut up!” Wagner
glared at her.  “The Lycans are fierce creatures, but he won’t make it
past the lobby.  Get the syringe, Johnson.  Sedate her and gag
her.  We’ll continue with the implantation.”

Johnson merely
stared at Wagner for many moments, as if trying to decide whether it was worth
the risk of ignoring Wagner’s order and fleeing.  Finally, he seemed to
shake himself, his gaze zeroing in on Erin as she continued to shout in the
hope that Jesse would hear her and come to her.

Jerkily, he
strode toward her and clamped a hand over her mouth, then looked around
distractedly for something he could use as a gag.  Wagner strode to the
supply cabinets and began jerking out one drawer after another.  Finally,
he turned with a roll of tape in one hand and a small towel in the other and
headed for her purposefully.

Struggling, Erin
managed to wrench free of Johnson’s hand long enough to utter one last scream
for help before Wagner shoved the rolled towel in her mouth and held it tightly
while Johnson wound tape around it to hold it in place.

“The sedative
now, Johnson,” he said when Johnson had finished securing the gag, “and we’ll
just give that a minute to kick in--” Wagner broke off before he’d finished
what he’d been about to say as the sound of pounding feet came to them from the
corridor beyond the room.

Something slammed
into the door hard enough all three of them jumped.  Johnson dropped the
syringe from suddenly nerveless fingers and whirled to stare at the door. 
His eyes nearly bulged from his head as he saw the steel door buckle.

Someone screamed
as the door suddenly gave way to the pounding against it and nightmarish
creatures filled the doorway.

Letting out a
bellow of rage, the Lycan in the forefront surged toward Wagner.  Gripping
him by the throat, he lifted the scientist from the floor.  Wagner’s
scream of terror was cut off abruptly.  Blood surged into his face until
his head looked in imminent danger of exploding from the pressure.  He
clawed at the arm holding him aloft.

A second Lycan
surged toward Johnson, swiping a blow at him with bared claws.  His scream
of terror became a gurgle as he was lifted off his feet by the blow and flung
across the room.  He hit the wall like a rag doll, his arms and legs limp
and dangling uselessly even before impact.  The Lycan that had struck him
surged toward the supply cabinets at one end of the room.  The third Lycan
that had entered the examination room had headed directly for the equipment and
was occupied with beating it into palm sized pieces.

Erin dragged her
gaze from the Lycans moving around her to the one that stood near her feet,
slowly squeezing the life out of Wagner.  “Jesse?” she asked, her voice
muffled by the gag.

The Lycan whipped
his head in her direction.  After studying her broodingly for a moment, he
dropped the limp form he was holding and turned toward her.  Her heart
managed a little gallop of fear in spite of the sedative she’d been given
earlier as one of his great paws settled on her thigh.  Grasping the
restraint, he snapped it as if it had been no more than a thread and then moved
to the next.

Uncertain of
whether he meant to kill her or not now that he’d finished with Wagner, Erin
began struggling to remove the gag the moment he’d freed one of her hands,
hoping she could convince him to set aside their private war until Joshua was
safe.

“They’ve got the
baby--your son,” she said a little frantically, wondering just how much Jesse
really understood when he was in his beast form.

Jesse grasped her
jaw tightly, his eyes seeming to burn a hole in her as he met her gaze. 
Apparently satisfied, he moved back to Wagner as the man uttered a groan,
placing a foot in the center of the scientist’s chest.

“Join the others
and make sure every lab is searched, and every specimen destroyed,” he growled
at the other two Lycans.  “I will have a little talk with Wagner about my
son.”

Wagner’s eyelids
twitched and then, slowly, his eyes opened and more slowly focused on the beast
standing over him.  They began to bulge then with fear.

Leaning down,
Jesse grasped him by his shoulders and hauled him to his feet.  “Today you
die, Wagner,” he said in a rumbling growl.  “You have two choices, quick
and easy, or slow and very painful.  Where is my son?”

* * * *

Apparently Wagner
was laboring under the mistaken belief that he wouldn’t die if he held onto the
information Jesse wanted.  Jesse stared down at the unconscious man
speculatively for several moments, realizing that the child would be moved the
moment word got out about the assault on the lab and, quite possibly, any
information he did manage to get out of Wagner would be useless by the time he
could test the truth of it.  Even if he’d wanted to, though, he couldn’t
leave Erin to her own devices.  She’d been sedated.  She was still
conscious, but her reflexes were sluggish and awkward, and in any case he
needed to move her to a secure location for his own reasons as well as her
safety before he went after the child.

Kneeling, he used
the restraints he’d ripped off of Erin to bind the scientist, then dragged him
into the corridor and handed the prisoner over to Tavian for further
questioning.

Returning for
Erin, he scooped her off of the table and left the examination room, following
the corridor to the elevator and taking it to the ground level entrance. 
Even before the doors opened, however, he heard gunfire.  The guards had
dug in at the entrance.  Punching the button again, he went down two
levels and got off.  The Lycans who’d followed him down the air shaft were
still moving from lab to lab destroying the research they could find, but that
was
their
objective.  His was to get Erin and the baby, and only
that.

“I can walk,”
Erin said stiffly.

Jesse slid a
glance at her.  Without answering, he shifted her onto one shoulder and
loped down the corridor in search of the main ventilation shaft.  When
he’d found it, he settled her on the floor and began pounding at the wall until
he’d made a hole large enough to fit through.  The fans had only been
disabled temporarily and were once more churning, but subterfuge was no longer
necessary.  Searching for the wires that powered them, he ripped them
loose.  Instantly, the fan motors died and the lights all over the facility
began to flicker.

Lifting Erin
again, he hoisted her over his shoulder and began the climb, pausing as he
reached the first fan and ripping half the blades out to climb past it. 
He hesitated when he reached the top, listening, but all of the gun fire seemed
to be coming from the entrance.  After a moment, he shoved the protective
grid from the opening and climbed out.

Almost the moment
he emerged a bullet whizzed past him.  It was followed in quick succession
by a half a dozen more.  Launching into a run, he headed for the cover of
the trees.  A bullet slammed into him before he reached them, punching a
cry of pain from him and causing him to stumble.  Recovering his balance
with an effort, he gritted his teeth and kept going.  He didn’t stop until
he was certain there was no pursuit.

When he thought
it was safe to do so, he paused long enough to check to be certain that Erin
hadn’t been hit by a stray bullet and then hoisted her onto his shoulder and
headed for the rendezvous.

* * * *

Erin didn’t even
realize she’d succumbed to the sedative she’d been given until she roused and
discovered that she was no longer moving, at least not in the miserable
position she’d been in from the moment she demanded Jesse let her get around on
her own steam.

The last thing
she remembered was thinking she was going to die when Jesse had climbed into
the air shaft with her slung over one shoulder.

Maybe it wasn’t
the sedative so much as abject terror that had made her pass out?

She was almost
surprised to discover she wasn’t hog tied when she roused enough to look around
and discovered she was wedged into the back seat of a Hummer between two
Cajuns--the same two, she thought with a mixture of dread and anger, who’d
captured her at the old facility and dragged her through the swamp to hand her
over to Jesse.

It was night, and
except for the pale glow from the instrument panel of the vehicle and the faint
light from the moon and stars, the vehicle was dark inside and yet she could
discern enough to identify the men on either side of her and Jesse.

Jesse, now once
more in human form as the others were, was driving.  In the front seat
beside him was a man that was a stranger to her but whom she had no doubt was
also Lycan.

A noise behind
her drew her attention and she turned to discover two more men in the rear of
the Hummer--make that three.  Wagner, who
was
hog tied and gagged,
was lying between them in the cargo space.  The two Lycans were wearing
bloodied bandages and had obviously been wounded in the battle.

She didn’t
flatter herself that the skirmish that had taken place between the FEDS and the
Lycan had been because of her--Jesse had made it clear enough that the focus of
the raid was to destroy research about the Lycan--but she still felt guilty to
see that they’d had casualties.

The soldiers must
have had silver bullets issued, she decided.  She’d seen the miraculous
healing powers the Lycan had.  If they’d been shot with anything else they
would’ve healed themselves by now.

Wagner didn’t
look as if he was in great shape, but then she was surprised he was even still
alive.

She doubted he
would be long if the looks his two guards were giving him were any indication
of the general attitude toward the man who’d so callously chosen their species
for his experiments.

After the brief
glance behind her, Erin covered her face with her hands, massaging the
throbbing pain in her temples and between her eyes.  Her mouth felt as if
it had been stuffed with cotton.  She swallowed several times, trying to
gather moisture into her mouth, realizing it was the after effect of the
sedative, as was her swimming, throbbing head.

Something nagged
at her.  She frowned, trying to focus on what it was.

“They’ve
implanted a tracker on me,” she said finally.  “Jesse!  It’s how they
found me before.  Wagner’s probably got one, too.”

Jesse glanced at
her in the rearview mirror but said nothing.

The man beside
him swiveled around in the seat and gave her a once over that made her
distinctly uneasy.  “Doan you worry about it,
chère. 
We’re
goin’ to take good care of you.”

Dark or not, Erin
was all too aware of the hungry gleam in the man’s eyes and it unnerved the
hell out of her.  She glanced uneasily at the back of Jesse’s head and
then at the two men beside her and subsided, wishing she’d simply kept her
mouth shut.

She was still
wearing the hospital gown, but nothing else, and she felt completely naked and
vulnerable.  Clothing wouldn’t have protected her if the man was serious
about what he had in mind, but it would’ve given her the illusion of security,
at least.

* * * *

By Erin’s
reckoning, it was nearly midnight when Jesse pulled the Hummer off the freeway
and took to the narrow backstreets of the city.  Some forty five minutes
later, they pulled off the road and into a small parking lot in front a small
block building.  Instead of parking in front, Jesse drove around the side
of the building and parked behind it beside another Hummer which, as nearly as
she could tell in the dim light, was painted jungle camouflage.

She wondered if
it was a custom job or if the vehicle had been purchased from the military.

A light came on
by the rear entrance even as Jesse stepped out of the vehicle.  Erin
thought at first that the light was motion activated, but at almost the same
moment a woman opened the door wide and stepped back, inviting them to
enter.  As Erin climbed out, she heard the barking of what sounded like a
sizeable pack of dogs.  The Lycan that had been seated on her right side
grasped her arm just above the elbow, urging her toward the door and Erin realized
the barking was growing louder as they approached the door.