Pack Dynamics (24 page)

More misfortune waited for him, however. He wasn’t sure he’d seen Megan look more pissed off than this before. Maybe after Pamplona … “What?”

“Barnhardt got a vote of no confidence passed. They’re filing an injunction.”

“Are they?” He couldn’t bring himself to care. “They can have fun with that. I’ve still got the controlling interest in the company.” He rolled the chair over to the couch, heaved himself onto it, and collapsed backwards, putting his feet up. “Barnhardt, huh? Peterson, too?”

“Who else? They’re serious this time, Mr. Jarrett.”

“One thing at a time, Miss Graham.” He closed his eyes. “You multitask on something like this, and it’ll bite you on the ass.”

“It’s already bitten you on the ass. You need to deal with it.”

“And I will. Just, not right now.”

“Soon.” She was worried, which gave him warm and fuzzy feelings toward her. Well. More warm and fuzzy feelings.

“Real soon,” he answered. “Put something on the books. If I’m not busy saving someone’s life, or dying myself, I’ll show up. Deal?”

“Deal.”

O O O

Ben hid his head in Janni’s lap and shivered. The human part of him had been pushed beyond the breaking point, and the wolf had taken over by default. But the wolf didn’t know what to do either. So he lay next to his mate, letting her soothe him with her hands and her voice.

He gradually relaxed, and Janni did, too. Lifting his head, he sniffed her ear and nuzzled her cheek, and she hugged him.

Tilting his head, he sniffed her again, harder. And again.

She stiffened. “What?”

Wolf. Janni was wolf.

She’d fed herself to him when he’d been a vampire, and just like Megan had said, werewolf saliva in the wound had transformed her. She wasn’t all the way there yet, but she would be soon.

For some reason, rather than stressing him, the knowledge decompressed him further. He didn’t stop to analyze why, but it was enough to let the human side come back out, and Ben found himself cuddled up next to Janni with her fingers in his hair. “Holy shit, I hate needles to
death,
” he said.

“Back with me?” she asked.

“Yeah, honey.” He breathed for a few seconds. “Other than one shining moment yesterday—” He reached for the engagement ring on her left hand and moved it back and forth with a forefinger. “—it’s been an awful week.”

“Mmm.” She tilted his chin up. “Let me see your teeth.”

He pulled his lips back, running his tongue against the insides of his gums. “No more fangs,” he said. “I think I’ve been de-vamped.”

She rested her hand on his chest and smiled. “Normal heartbeat. It worked.”

He closed his eyes and tightened his arm around her waist. “After all that, it better have.”

“Headache? Weakness?”

“Little bit. Getting better. Werewolf healing kicking in, probably.” He braced himself. “How’s your wrist?”

“It’s—” She stopped, peeled the bandage back. “It’s fine.”

“Yeah.”

She was silent for a few moments. “I knew the risk, and I’d do it again.”

He shook his head. “You know how awesome you are, right?”

“Maybe,” she said with a smile. “But I like to hear you say it.”

“You are so very awesome.” He looked down at himself and the shreds of clothing that surrounded him. “Were you awesome enough to bring me some clothes? I hate the naked thing.”

“I’m kind of a fan of it,” she said, “but I’ll go get you something. Stay put.”

She squeezed his hand before she got up, and he rolled onto his back, massaging his sternum. Remembering to breathe.

O O O

Megan watched Janni shut the door quietly and brace herself against the wall for a second.

“Hoo,” Janni said.

“Is he all right?” Megan asked.

“Yeah. Back to human and asking for his clothes. No more vampire fangs, and his heart is beating more than twice a minute.” She rubbed her upper arms. “And he’s not dying anymore.”

“Win,” said Alex from the couch, where he’d collapsed with his arm across his face, utterly drained.

“Go to bed, Alex,” Megan said with exasperation, as Janni headed upstairs, she assumed, to get Ben something to wear.

“Can’t. Ostheim …”

She stabbed at the air with her index finger. “Ostheim isn’t my problem, you are. You’ve had three hours of sleep in the last four days and an entire bottle of scotch in the last two—that I know about. Do I need to hit you on the head with a
mallet
?”

“This isn’t over yet,” he said wearily. “He called me this morning. Idna’s still sick.”

Megan bristled. She didn’t care about Idna either. “So? Are you forgetting that they came after Ben even after they killed him? She fully participated, Alex. It’s not like she’s a
victim
here.”

“I hadn’t forgotten, but if she dies, then he’ll come after all of us.” He heaved a sigh. “She may die anyway, even if I try to help her. No stem cells—she’s been a vampire too long, and those were key because they jump-started the repairs on a cellular level and got the heart going a little better.”

“If you can’t cure her, you can’t cure her.” Megan crossed her arms and glared. “Can’t say I’ll be upset.”

“Gotta try …”

Of course he did, because he was Alex Jarrett and it was part of him as much as the alcohol abuse and the risk-taking. Megan didn’t know if she wanted to kiss him or kill him.

“Fine. Call him. But send Ben and Janni out of here if you’re going to have them come over.”

“Oh, hell no, not here.” He took his arm off his eyes and gave her a what-do-you-take-me-for look. “Last thing I need is for something to go wrong and have him go apeshit in my house. He can meet me at the lab or all bets are off.”

At least he was being that sensible. Megan’s inclination was still to let the Ostheims pound sand, but once Alex was set on a course of action, getting him off it was nearly impossible. “Better,” she agreed.

“It’s not like I want to help him, Megan. I just think it’s the best way to get him out of our hair once and for all.”

“That may be.” Megan rubbed her forehead, trying to soothe the headache that had sprung up behind her eyes. “At least take the Beretta with a full load of silver bullets. If only for my own peace of mind.”

“Yeah, sure. Phone?”

She handed it to him, and he dialed.

Janni came back with some clothes for Ben and disappeared into the operating theater.

“Ostheim? How is she?” Alex said into the phone.

Megan pricked her ears and heard, “Sinking fast. For god’s sake, Jarrett …”

“What I did worked on Ben, but I needed his own stem cells, and it de-vamped him. Dr. McFoucher told me that she never got any stem cells from Idna, and they took a while to culture anyway. And the rabbit tests weren’t promising with donor cells.” Alex paused. “Honestly, Hans, I don’t think there’s anything I can— You still want me to try? Fine. I shouldn’t be willing, but I am.”

He pinched his nose. “
But
. You have to swear to me that no matter what, it’s over between us. And you won’t come after Ben or Janni or anyone else who works for me or who has worked for me, because none of this is their fault.”

Ben and Janni came out, and Megan sniffed at him discreetly. He smelled much healthier, to her relief. At least something was going right today.

“Meet me at the lab building over at Jarrett Biologicals,” Alex said into his phone. “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.” He hung up. “Okay. Megan, can you call Harris and get him on deck? I’m in no condition to drive.”

He was in no condition to do anything, but she got on the phone and made the call. The sooner they got this over and done with, the better.

Chapter Eighteen

Alex lay on his sofa and zoned out for a second.

Ben’s voice brought him back. “Alex? Thanks.”

Alex waved his hand. “Was all my fault, anyway. Least I could do was fix what I could. I’m not done yet, either, because we’ve still got the werewolf thing to deal with.” He closed his eyes. “Let me get Ostheim’s problem taken care of, and then I’ll get started on that.” So much on his plate …

“I’m coming to terms with it. No hurry.”

Nice that he felt that way, but Alex wasn’t quite so cavalier. He heaved himself up. “Dr. McFoucher, you’re with me.” He checked the Beretta and filled the magazine with silver rounds, making sure he had one in the chamber, before sliding it into his waistband under his shirt. “Everyone else, stay put.”

“Ostheim is a piece of work, Alex,” Ben said. “Don’t let your guard down around him.”

“Oh, I know.” Alex trusted Ostheim about as far as he could throw his house, and he didn’t have a whole lot of hope that he’d be able to cure Idna, but he had to make a good-faith effort.

Otherwise, what did that make him?

O O O

McFoucher shivered from an icy chill at the thought of facing her old boss in her new capacity, but Jarrett hadn’t left her much choice in the matter. He climbed into the Bentley beside her, crossed his arms over his chest, and promptly fell asleep, after telling his driver to wake him when they were ten minutes out.

She took the opportunity to review the protocol again. The stem cells and their nanotech delivery system had been the breakthrough, repairing muscle and nerve tissue on a molecular level and buying them valuable time. Idna didn’t have stem cells, and McFoucher wasn’t sure they had time to culture some in any case. As far gone as Ben had been, Idna was probably worse, since even more time had passed.

Before she knew it, Harris was telling Jarrett that they were nearly there, and he was sitting up and scrubbing his hand through his uncombed hair and pouring himself a shot of scotch, neat.

“Is that a good idea?” she asked, staring. She’d heard about his capacity for alcohol, but seeing it demonstrated first hand was something else.

“Best one I can think of. I need to be fortified with something so I can deal with that bastard without ripping his arm off and beating him to death with it.” He swallowed it with a couple of what she assumed were painkillers but might have been anything. “You got this thing figured out?”

She pursed her lips. “I get to shoot a massive dose of adrenaline right into her heart after you hit her with the paddles. Or before, if she’s still flatlined. I don’t think it’ll work, honestly.”

“Honestly? I don’t either. Let’s hope she surprises us both.” He shrugged. “Or not. I can’t say I’m too happy with her right now, what with the fact that she was willing to kill Ben so she could be healed. Whatever happens, they’ll leave me alone after this.”

“You hope.”

“They’d better.”

She’d never thought of Alex Jarrett as being scary, but his current expression would have sent small children screaming into the night.

He added, “I can only be pushed so far, and just because I haven’t pushed back yet after all this doesn’t mean I won’t.”

They entered the Jarrett Biologicals campus and parked in the deep shade on the north side of the twelve-story lab building, where Ostheim’s limo awaited them. Ostheim pulled Idna out and cradled her in his arms as they stopped behind him. She was unconscious. She looked dead, but, hey, vampire, and she wasn’t dust and bones, so McFoucher guessed they still had hope.

“Inside,” Jarrett said, and they trailed behind him like obedient ducklings.

McFoucher let Ostheim go in front of her, because she didn’t really want to turn her back on him, although he hadn’t reacted to her presence with anything more than a lifted eyebrow.

Jarrett led them through a labyrinth of hallways, stopping in one room for a dose of stem cells, and into a surgical suite. The few people they met took in his single-minded aspect and gave them a wide berth.

Ostheim laid Idna tenderly on the bed, but Jarrett didn’t stand on ceremony. He tore her blouse open, scattering buttons, and placed heart monitor electrodes, while Ostheim stood back and stewed.

“Have you been drinking, Jarrett?” her old boss rumbled.

“When have I not?” her new one shot back.

“Point. This will work?”

“I already told you I’m not making any promises, Ostheim. Look, full disclosure, okay, so you know exactly what’s going on.” Jarrett ticked the points off on his fingers. “One, she’s farther gone than Ben was. Two, I had Ben’s own stem cells, and donor cells didn’t work well on my bunnies. Scratch that, they didn’t work at all. Three, she started as a vampire, and added the lycanthropy via nanotech after years of being one. Ben was exactly the opposite, and he didn’t have years, he had days, and he wasn’t sick nearly as long as she’s been. Four—”

He glanced at the flat heart monitor. “She doesn’t have a heartbeat at all, and Ben had a couple per minute. More after I hit him with his own stem cells. Starting a heart that’s not going is way harder than jumping one that is.” He crossed his arms. “You sure you want to go through with this?”

“She’ll die if you don’t.” Ostheim clenched his fist. “I don’t like coming to you like this, Jarrett.”

“Not too fond of you myself, Ostheim. Yea or nay?”

Ostheim closed his eyes and took a step back. “Do it.”

Jarrett got the nanotech and stem cell combo shot ready, but paused. “She doesn’t have a needle phobia I need to know about, does she? I’ve already dealt with one de-vamped stressed-out werewolf today and don’t care for a repeat of the experience.”

“She’s fine with needles.”

“Had to ask.” He injected Idna with the cocktail and set the syringe down.

“Now what?”

“That needs about a half hour to start working.”

McFoucher wasn’t sure they had a half hour; Idna looked worse than she’d ever seen her. “What happens if we don’t wait that long?” she asked.

“The cells don’t have enough time to start regenerating and the process fails before it starts.”

“Patience is not my strong suit, Jarrett.” Ostheim was obviously having a hard time standing still.

“Mine either.” Jarrett crossed his arms. “But if you like I can hurry it up and she can die that much faster. Just say the word.”

“No. No …”

It was the longest thirty minutes McFoucher had ever endured. She’d gotten used to the easy back and forth banter in Jarrett’s basement, but by the time they were ready for the next step, the two men were snapping at each other so hard that she wondered if Jarrett himself might sprout hair and fangs, or draw the gun, which Ostheim had noticed and snarked about—and she was ready to smack them both.

Jarrett readied the paddles, nodding at McFoucher to strip the paper off the adrenaline shot. He took a deep breath. “Stand back, Ostheim. Clear!”

The machine whined, he pressed the paddles to Idna’s chest, then waited for the machine to charge. Her back arched as the voltage hit her.

Nothing. The heart monitor stayed flat.

Jarrett swore and did it again. Still nothing. Now Ostheim was swearing. Jarrett increased the voltage and tried once more. “Shit,” Jarrett said. “Hit her now, Dr. McFoucher.”

She plunged the needle between Idna’s ribs and administered the shot. The heart monitor let out a few weak beeps and settled into a slow, unsteady rhythm. Too slow, too unsteady, and Jarrett shocked her again. The pace of Idna’s heartbeat picked up momentarily before settling back to the same slow rate, although it evened out and the monitor stopped screeching.

Jarrett lifted her lip, noted her fangs, and stood back and shook his head.

“Well?
Well
?” Ostheim demanded.

“I don’t know, Hans. I just … I don’t know.” Jarrett leaned on the wall, and McFoucher realized just how tired he was. “I think we’re lucky it’s this good. I’ve done what I can. Take her home, keep her warm, and watch her.” He heaved himself upright. “Let’s go, Dr. McFoucher. We have another patient waiting.”

They let Ostheim pull the electrodes off Idna’s chest and twitch her blouse closed, and they trailed behind him as he carried her out to his limo. “Thank you, Jarrett,” Ostheim said awkwardly.

“No promises.” Jarrett climbed into the Bentley and was asleep before his butt hit the seat.

McFoucher wanted to ask him what he thought Idna’s chances were, but she was afraid she already knew. She sat across from him and brooded all the way back to the mansion, because even with Alex’s Full Disclosure Speech, she wasn’t sure that Ostheim would easily forgive a failure.

O O O

“Mr. Clarke, I know he’s cancelled the meeting four times now, but we really do have an emergency this week and—” Megan was attempting desperately to regain control of the conversation, and failing. The man on the other end of her phone line wouldn’t be swayed. Alex had pulled this shit too often before, and now it was biting him on the ass. Had it actually served him right this time, she wouldn’t have been so agitated.

“Miss Graham, I realize it’s your job to protect him from the consequences of his mistakes, but we’ve been put off long enough, and I really must insist that we schedule a teleconference for tomorrow so he can get a handle on this thing. This morning was the last straw for a lot of people.” Clarke was angry, and he would have had a right to be if her boss hadn’t been dealing with all this stuff. But they’d managed to keep it out of the press, so from the board’s viewpoint, this was just Alex being Alex and slacking off his responsibilities again. “It would be even better if we could schedule a face-to-face meeting.”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question.” She stood firm on that. “He can’t possibly fly to the East Coast on such short notice. However, I think this latest crisis has just about been averted, and he told me to schedule something. So tomorrow is as good as any other day. I’ll find out when he actually wants to do it and call you back.”

“All right.” Clarke’s tone turned gentle. “I know he’s a handful, Miss Graham, and I sympathize. But board meetings are important, too.”

Not to him
, she refrained from saying. “I know,” is what actually came out of her mouth. “But the situation here is very … fluid, right now. Just when we think the crisis is over, it actually gets worse.”

“What
is
the crisis?”

“I’m not really at liberty to discuss that without clearing it with Mr. Jarrett first.”

“Just tell me he hasn’t gotten drunk and hurt himself doing something stupid again, please.”

That was easy enough. “He hasn’t gotten drunk and hurt himself doing something stupid, Mr. Clarke. He’s been working, very hard, in fact. You have no idea.”

“Something good, I hope? Something we can maybe turn a profit on?”

She cringed. “Not so much, I don’t think. But it’s personally important to him and might have future applications.” She hoped that bone would be enough to halt that line of inquiry.

“Tomorrow, Miss Graham. Don’t let him put us off again.”

She sighed. “I’ll see what I can do and let you know.” They said their goodbyes, and she ended the call. “Because pushing Alex to do something he thinks is a monumental waste of time always goes so well,” she said to the room at large.

Her phone went off again, and she was surprised to see Harris’s number on her screen. She picked up. “What’s he done now?” she asked him resignedly.

“Fallen dead asleep in the back of the car,” the driver said.

“I’ll send Chambliss down. Hold tight.” She hung up and hit the intercom. “Chambliss, could you go to the garage and get Mr. Jarrett into bed, please?”

“Passed out in the back of the limo again?”

“Yep. Although this time it’s probably from overwork and undersleep rather than too much alcohol, although that may be a factor.” Knowing Alex, it was. “You know the routine.”

“Yes, miss.”

Dr. McFoucher walked in and collapsed into an office chair. “That was fun.”

“How’d it go?” Megan asked.

“It … went. We left her with a heartbeat. Whether that’ll cure what ails her or she’ll be able to sustain it is anyone’s guess.”

“Well, here’s hoping. If she gets better, then Ostheim will leave us alone, right?”

“I’d think so. But if she doesn’t …” Dr. McFoucher left the thought unfinished, and Megan winced, finishing the sentence in various ways to herself, none of them good.

O O O

Ostheim laid Idna gently on their bed, covered her with three or four blankets, and sat on top of them beside her.

As he smoothed her hair away from her face, her eyes blinked open, and she smiled up at him. “Oh, Hans.”

“How are you feeling, my dear?” Strong, he had to be strong for her.

“Tired, and cold.” A tiny line appeared between her eyebrows. “How did I obtain a heartbeat?”

“I took you to see Jarrett. The other procedure transmitted what you had to the Lockwood boy. Jarrett apparently found a way to cure it.”

“I don’t … feel very cured.” She squeezed his hand, and her grip was weak, so weak. “Are you sure he didn’t just make me sicker to get you out of his hair for a while?”

Fear clawed his windpipe closed, and Ostheim choked a couple of times before he got the words out. “Jarrett considers himself to be one of the ‘good guys.’ I don’t think he’d do that, at least not on purpose.”

“I hope your faith in his nature is justified.” Idna closed her eyes. “I love you. You know that, right?”

“I know,” he whispered. “I love you, too.”

But she’d fallen asleep before he’d said it, and he hoped he wasn’t too late. He slid under the covers and pulled her to him, trying to transmit his own heat and strength to her failing body.

Her words haunted him. Would Jarrett have done that? Really? Why,
why
had he trusted the man? Because he had nowhere else to go. His own people had failed, and turning to an enemy had been preferable to just helplessly watching Idna die. But what if that enemy had acted as enemies invariably did? Jarrett’s body language and scent had radiated nervous strain, which Hans had interpreted as fear that the procedure wouldn’t work.