Werewolf Nights (The Pack Trilogy Book 2) (7 page)

“What do you mean by ‘bad’?” Melina wondered.

“Mercenaries. They sell their services to kill and rob, for starters.”

“You think they’re coming after your pack?” Melina asked.

“Actually, I have no doubt about that.”

“But why? If they’re so large, and your pack has the required 8 members… I don’t get it.”

Raya cleared his throat.

“Well, that’s true about Pack Lupein, my pack. But there’s another consideration. I am the Trans-Alpha: I rule over all of wolfdom. All packs.”

“Didn’t know I was in the presence of royalty,” Melina cracked.

“Which explains why you haven’t kissed my ass at least twice today out of the recommended five,” Raya deadpanned.

“I use Botox to hide lip lines. Sorry, no puckering up,” Melina threw right back.

“That’s it. You’re out. In for half an hour and already out – you may have set a record there.”

“When am I going to remember any of this?” Petra said in a small voice.

She was getting more miserable by the second. These were facts she should know. To make things even worse, this was her mate beside her, evidently. She could tell by his actions, no matter how restrained, that they’d been close. Very close.

When Raya walked by her, his arm would jerk as if he wanted to reach out, but stopped himself. And she often caught those burning eyes watching her with a deep longing. She did feel something, a strange kind of pull. But that was it.

“I don’t know,” Raya interrupted her thoughts. “I need to do some research on memory loss. Never heard of it happening to one of our kind, but perhaps even Itchiko could be of some help.” He paused for a moment. “But there’s absolutely no time for that now. We need to alert all the packs from New York to New Orleans, have them consider evacuating the coast until things cool down and we know what the Rats are after. There’s just such a plan in place, and a location that’s been set up for nearly a century. But we have to get the word out. Let’s get back to Heureuse.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Melina offered.

“No, but as a newborn, you need to be with us. This isn’t the best time for that either.” He glared at Petra.

“I don’t want my babies in danger,” Melina agreed. “I’ll wait here for word. Someone needs to keep an eye on them two anyway,” she motioned at the two vampires.

“We’ll be along shortly,” Joseph spoke up. “We have some catching up to do.”

“Please do come as soon as possible,” Raya told Joseph. “You must have ended up here for a reason. If nothing else, you will be remarkably useful if anything bad does come to pass. Everyone else, load up. We’re off.”

Chapter Eight

Back at Heureuse Manor, Raya told his second in command, Itchiko, to implement the Red Alert plan for all packs along the New York to Louisiana corridor. They were to evacuate to Inconnu within three days, at most.

“What’s Inconnu?” Petra asked.

“Come this way,” Raya said and led her to his office at the back of the large mansion that served as home base for the pack. He walked to his desk, opened a drawer and she heard a click. An entire bookcase swung open several inches.

Behind it was a large, cold room packed with computers, monitors and various other electronics. On the wall was a large Google map which overlaid a normal map of the world.

He touched it and zoomed in on the USA, then the Florida area.

“See the Bahamas? The islands are only about seventy miles from Miami. Back in the early twentieth century, we bought a deserted island that’s a couple of hours by boat from the Bahamas. There’s a tiny village there; they fish for a living. We brought electricity to the island, but they’re not aware of what else we brought. Three rings of security that start a mile out, satellite technology, you name it. Accessible only by boat. Oh, and another nearby island we use for storage.”

He moved his hand on the large screen, and another, smaller island zoomed into view. This one had no trees, no greenery. Truly an arid wasteland. One tap, and the screen filled with nine camera views. Included was an underwater view of three submarines, large enough to carry six people each. Another room held weapons: so many that Petra was in disbelief.

One large room held a jet!

“Where is that plane?” Petra had to ask.

“Underground,” Raya said. “Push a button and the doors open, up it goes.”

“Incredible. You are ready for a war.”

“You’d better believe it. Our texts and emails are out now, telling the packs to get to Harry’s. Harry’s is a place outside Miami, where everyone meets to fly to the Bahamas and then pick up boats to head for Inconnu.”

***

“Boss, the members of our New Orleans packs are going to have major trouble leaving the city,” a girl with glasses said from behind a long, computer-laden table.

Raya frowned.

“I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“Probably not. There’s been an outbreak of some new flu – it’s dropping people in droves. So far it’s only in New Orleans, so the CDC took urgent precautions and put the entire city under quarantine. No one in: no one out.”

“You have got to be kidding. Can they even do that?” Raya asked.

“They already did it,” the girl answered calmly and turned back to her machines.

“Well, that’s just peachy, and just when the damn Rats hit US soil! Itchiko, we need information about those Rats. They have to be behind the killings we heard about on the news. We need to know how many they are, who is in charge and what their goals are.”

The thin Japanese warrior frowned.

“As I recall, as of about a decade ago, Petra still had a friend in the Rats. The name was Elinor something.” He looked at Petra with hope.

She shook her head helplessly.

“Name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“We need her back, goddammit,” Raya snarled with frustration. “We’re at war and too much is happening. We need you to get your memory back and functioning well. Any ideas?”

“There is one possibility,” Itchiko said. “I was waiting for a good time to discuss this. When you guys showed up this morning, I did some fast research on memory loss. It turns out there’s a guy who has made some large steps forward, but his work is unconventional.”

“Can you get him here?” Raya snapped.

“I took the liberty of doing just that, and our one stroke of luck is that he landed forty minutes ago in New Orleans. Just before it was shut down.”

Raya whipped around and faced Itchiko, his entire heart in his eyes. The other man didn’t say a word; none were needed. He simply executed a slight bow.

“What’s unconventional about him?” Raya asked.

Itchiko grinned so slightly that Petra would have never seen it if she hadn’t been watching him closely.

“He uses both unconventional medicines and procedures. He claims brain cells are unlike any other. They don’t reject it if you put strange ones in. That’s not exactly what he does, but close. He injects a patient’s hippocampus with a mixture of stem cells from a fetus’s hippocampus and a grown person’s. The adult is usually a member of Mensa. Doctor Kyger insists that the patient’s IQ rises by a minimum of ten points, as well as getting their memories back.”

Raya frowned.

“I don’t like the sound of that, not even a little bit. The fetal cells are one thing, but cells from some guy with a high IQ? Can we leave that part out?”

“Hell, no,” Petra said with determination. “If there’s a chance my IQ goes up, I want it.”

“This likely hasn’t even been tested,” Raya said, his voice tight. “You’d be taking big chances, and on your damn brain. This isn’t shooting something in your arm. This is your brain, Petra.”

“And a good thing it is, or the procedure wouldn’t work at all!” The retort came as a surprise to them both. Across the room, a small man came toward them. He was only 5”5” and weighed less than Petra did if she had to guess. His dark eyes were smiling behind thick glasses.

“Dr. Kyger, at your service.”

“Hi Doctor, I’m Petra… the one with the lost memory. Do you really think that you can help me?” Petra asked, worried. If this didn’t work, she was screwed and it would hurt the pack in the long run if she couldn’t understand the dynamics.

“I truly believe that I can, my dear. It is true that the procedure works eighty-five percent of the time and rises statistically to ninety-five percent in female patients,” the man said.

“Right. Let’s do it then,” Petra said, drawing in a deep breath. “You need my blood, right?”

“When Mr. Itchiko contacted me yesterday, I took the liberty of checking several hospitals in your area. Found a blood sample, which they overnighted to me. I took it to the lab first thing this morning and built you a little cocktail.”

“God,” Petra gasped. “You mean you’re ready to do this to me right NOW?”

He grinned, showing a set of charming white teeth. ”Yes, if you’re ready, we are.”

“Us?” Raya asked.

Kyger pointed out the door. “Traveling clinic. It’s right out front. It isn’t our own, but it functions well enough.” He walked to the door, opened it. “After you.”

Petra walked out, closely followed by Raya. She exclaimed at the sheer size of the vehicle. It was about as big as two large RVs.

“It has to be this big,” Kyger explained as he opened the back door and ushered them into what looked like a typical examining room, table and all, “if all the work that needs to be done and all the people needed to do that work are to be accommodated. This was kindly donated by the government to the Louisiana Department of Health and Human Services, courtesy of Hurricane Katrina,” Kyger said. “Petra and Raya, meet Jane. She’s been my assistant for years. She was CDC at one point.”

A small, gray-haired woman looked up from her equally small desk.

“Hi, there y’all,” she said in a delightful Georgia drawl. “Doc, we’re ready to go. The cells were done about the time the door shut behind you.”

“I love it when a plan comes together,” Kyger said, rubbing his hands together like a mad scientist. He walked to a small fridge and withdrew a syringe. “Petra, relax on the table, will you? This requires an IV and takes about half an hour.”

Petra hoisted herself onto the table and stretched out, her heart beginning to pound. What would she remember? A bunch of bad stuff she’d not want to recall, maybe. The small, gray woman inserted an IV line into the back of her hand. She lifted her head and looked at Raya, fear in her eyes. “What if afterward, I’m not me anymore?”

“Then we would have lost nothing, Petra. You’re not you right now anyway,” he reminded her.

“I don’t know,” she said.

It was all just too weird to process; injecting something into her that would change her brain. A sudden thought hit. This doctor, Kyger. Did he know he wasn’t treating a human? She tried to catch Raya’s eyes, but he was staring at the gray-haired woman’s monitor and mumbling.

“Relax, Petra. Your heart is racing! This will be over in 30 minutes and hopefully at the end of it, you’ll have your memory back,” Kyger said as he emptied the syringe into her IV.

For a few seconds nothing much happened, though Petra frantically scanned her own brain and her memories constantly for changes. Then she had the strangest of feelings. It was as if someone were politely knocking on her brain’s inner door!

In the next microsecond, there was another presence in her brain. There was no other way to put it. She was no longer alone in her own head.
What the HELL
? She closed her eyes tightly and the dark insides of her closed eyelids became like an eternal movie theatre screen.

With a whoosh of pictures of them, videos of them on vacation and at special events, people they’d talked to, laughter they’d shared, movies they’d watched, places they’d lived; it all came flashing before her eyes – ALL of it was back, and in every memory, or at least the majority of them, she had never been alone. The visions came back to her as a we, a they, a couple’s memories. And then suddenly, she realized why she wasn’t alone and who was there. At the very instant she understood, she let out an incredulous, ecstatic shriek of joy…

“RAYA!”

Chapter Nine

One second Raya was leaning over a computer screen, calculating miles on a map. The next, a presence burst into his brain; a familiar, warm, ecstatic presence calling his name.

Christos, was it true? Could it be? It was certain, she was back in his consciousness; the link was solid. But the woman herself?

He turned slowly, afraid to look at Petra. What if he did and she still regarded him with that polite, blank stare? He didn’t think he could handle it. Not with everything else that was happening.

But then he was facing her, his eyes locked on hers. And there was nothing blank about those eyes. Nothing! On the contrary, they were alive with utter delight and – could it be?

Just then, she screamed his name at the top of her lungs and came up off the hospital table like a woman possessed.