Chapter 14

“Any progress yet?” Megan Dorsey asked as she and Lana stepped out the main doors of the clinic into the cool night air.

Lana had been hoping for a few moments alone, but the moment the petite, dark-haired werewolf spotted her heading for the exit, she fell into step beside her. Then again, Lana had promised Max she wouldn’t go outside by herself. Besides Megan, she had the added protection of Jayna and the other werewolves, who were patrolling the perimeter of the property. While Lana couldn’t see any of them, she could smell them moving around among the trees.

“Quite a bit, actually,” Lana said. “We’ve been working all day on several different approaches to developing an antidote, and Dr. Saunders finally thinks we may have something that could work.”

Megan stopped to look at her, excitement evident on her face. “Is the doctor giving it to Zane now?”

Lana ran her hand through her hair. She wished it were that simple. “We can’t try it yet. Not until we do some additional testing to make sure there aren’t any unintended side effects of the antidote that’s worse than the poison itself.”

Megan’s brow furrowed. “Does Zane have time for that?”

“Probably not. But what choice do we have?” Lana wrapped her arms around her middle with a sigh. “If we give him an untested drug, we’re as likely to kill him as save him. Especially in his weakened state.”

Megan didn’t say anything to that, and they both stood there quietly, staring off into the darkness beyond the clinic. Lana used the quiet moment to take a few deep breaths, trying to get herself to relax. She didn’t know why, but she’d been feeling twitchy for the past hour, and it had nothing to do with the pressure to find an antidote for Zane. She wished she could call Max and talk to him, but she didn’t want to bother him. She had called her mother a few times to check on her dad, though. The doctors were still keeping her father in a coma, but he was stable. That was something at least.

“So, what will you do next?” Megan asked after a few minutes. “With Zane, I mean.”

“We’ll work on the chemical analyses throughout the night,” Lana said, though she didn’t know how they were going to compress all the normal drug-testing protocols she’d learned in school into the shortest possible time. “Then we’ll start running computer simulations of cellular interactions in the morning. Even with every computer in the building working on it, that could take a while. On top of that, we’ll need to find a few werewolves willing to serve as volunteers for low-dosage trials to make sure we haven’t missed anything.”

“I’ll do it,” Megan said without hesitation.

Lana blinked, a little taken aback at Megan’s willingness to face a risk she probably didn’t even understand.

“Megan, this could be dangerous,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t cause an immediate reaction, there could be long-term effects we don’t know anything about. Even Dr. Saunders—who’s studied werewolves for a long time—can’t tell us what these kinds of drugs will do a few years down the road.”

Megan nodded. “I know that, but I’ll still do it. And there are a lot of other werewolves who will volunteer along with me. Everyone in Dallas knows what’s at stake here when it comes to finding an antidote to this poison and helping Zane. We need a way to protect ourselves from this new weapon, and we need to keep the SWAT Pack strong. They’re the only thing standing between us and the hunters.”

Lana couldn’t argue with that. “Okay. I’ll tell Dr. Saunders that we’ll have no problem coming up with volunteers. Now it’s just a matter of whether Zane can survive until then.” She sighed. “Speaking of which, I’d better get back inside.”

She turned toward the door only to jump as the sound of a roaring engine echoed in the night. Heart pounding, Lana spun around in time to see two big, gray SUVs jump the curb and speed straight at her and Megan.

Lana’s werewolf instincts immediately took over and she leaped to the side to get out of the way. Megan slammed into her at the same time, sending her flying. She hit the ground hard, rolling a few times to avoid the vehicle sliding to a squealing stop on the sidewalk a few feet away.

She scrambled to her feet, her instincts screaming at her to run. But then she froze. Megan lay on the ground near the front bumper of the vehicle, unmoving. Megan had been hit when she’d shoved her out of the way.

No…

Heedless of the vehicle and the people in it, Lana hurried over to Megan, dropping to her knees. She sagged with relief as Megan groaned. She was hurt, but she was alive.

“Come on,” Lana whispered urgently, helping Megan up even as the petite werewolf started getting to her feet.

She’d barely gotten Megan to her knees before she heard the thud of heavy boots behind her. The men’s scents hit her at nearly the same time, making her whole body go rigid. Fangs and claws extended, Lana straightened and spun around, shielding Megan.

She found herself face-to-face with Boyd and the other man who’d been at the Galleria Mall. Three other men were just now getting out of the second SUV, and they were all carrying the same automatic rifles as before.

“Damn,” Boyd laughed, an arrogant smile spreading across his face as the man raised his weapon and pointed it at Lana. “I thought this would be a lot more difficult. But I’m not complaining, especially since it looks like I’m going to get two of you freaks for the price of one.”

“She’s not a werewolf,” Lana lied. If they thought Megan wasn’t a werewolf, there might be a small chance they wouldn’t hurt her. “You can let her go.”

“Isn’t that sweet?” Seth sneered. Even though she hadn’t seen his face last night in the alley, Lana recognized his voice. “The freak is trying to protect her friend—like we’d give a shit if she’s a werewolf or not. She’s with you, so that makes her as bad as you.”

Lana tensed. She’d never been in a fight and didn’t know the first thing about throwing punches, but she had the feeling her inner wolf would help with that. She doubted charging the men would do any good, but she wasn’t going down without a fight. Hopefully she’d be able to take at least one of them with her and make it easier for Max and his pack later.

Thinking of Max made her heart seize. The knowledge of how much her death would hurt him was more painful than the idea of the hunters killing her.

She fixed an image of Max’s face in her mind, then transferred her weight onto one leg, getting ready to attack. She would have liked to take out Boyd, but something told her he’d be expecting that. Instead, she’d go for the guy on the far right. He was the smallest of all the men, and if she jumped on him fast, her unexpected move might keep the other hunters from killing her too quickly. Maybe then, Megan could get away.

Boyd must have read her mind because he moved a step closer and adjusted the aim of his weapon, his face completely emotionless, like he was simply stepping on a bug.

Lana growled, about to pounce, but suddenly gunfire erupted around her. She instinctively dropped to the ground, covering Megan with her body. A split second later, one of the hunters fell to the ground, blood pooling around him. The SUVs didn’t fare so well, either. Glass shattered and metal shrieked in protest as bullets hit them. One tire blew out with a loud pop, then another.

Boyd and the other hunters returned fire, facing out into the darkness. That was when Lana realized what was happening. Jayna and her pack were the ones shooting the hunters. Lana hadn’t even realized Megan’s friends were carrying weapons, much less automatic rifles.

The hunters were shooting in every direction at once, occasional muzzle flashes in the darkness the only thing giving away the other werewolves’ locations. Lana’s first instinct was to attack Boyd, but that wouldn’t gain her much of anything—except vengeance. So instead, she took advantage of the distraction and dug her fingers into the collar of Megan’s jacket and started dragging her toward the shadows along the side of the clinic. Even though Megan was delirious with pain, she must have realized what Lana was up to, because she started kicking weakly with her right leg, trying to push herself across the ground.

They made it less than ten feet before someone grabbed Lana by the hair and savagely jerked her back. She tried to spin around and claw at whoever was holding her but stopped cold when she felt the hot barrel of a weapon against the back of her neck.

“Get inside!” Boyd yelled, using Lana as a human shield as he dragged her backward toward the shattered glass doors of the clinic.

Lana prayed they’d leave Megan, but one of the other hunters hoisted her up, bringing her with them. Another grabbed their injured companion and brought him, too.

Lana wasn’t surprised when the shooting from the darkness immediately ceased. Jayna and the other werewolves weren’t trained SWAT officers. They weren’t going to risk hitting her and Megan.

Moments later, they were inside the clinic, the hunters fanning out and gathering up Lacey, Triana, Saunders, and the other doctors and nurses, pushing everyone against the wall to one side of the main hallway. Dr. Saunders immediately dropped to a knee to check on Megan. She was still conscious but pale.

“Her leg is broken,” Dr. Saunders whispered to Lana. “Her hip, too, I think.”

“Hey!” Seth shouted from inside the lab where Zane was resting. “That werewolf we shot at the cop’s house is in here. He’s full of tubes and wires, and covered with cooling blankets. I think he’s in cryogenic suspension.” Seth poked his head out the door. “Should I kill him?”

Lana’s stomach plummeted, sure Boyd would give Seth the okay, but then another voice sounded from the far end of the building. “There’re more of those damn freaks outside this door. I can’t see them, so I can’t tell how many, but I can see the glow of their fucking eyes.”

“Keep an eye on them. If they come out of the trees, shoot them,” Boyd ordered, then looked at Seth. “Don’t do anything with the werewolf Popsicle. We might need him for something.”

“Hey, Boyd. Jesse is bleeding pretty good over here.”

Lana turned to see one of the hunters down on one knee beside his injured buddy. The guy had gotten shot in the shoulder, and while it was bleeding profusely, unfortunately, it didn’t look bad enough to kill him.

“Hey, you—lab coat boy,” Boyd grunted, bending down to prod Dr. Saunders in the back with the barrel of his weapon. “Get over there and look at Jesse—now.”

Dr. Saunders didn’t take his gaze off Megan. “I’ll take a look at him as soon as I’m done here.”

Eyes narrowing, Boyd put the barrel of his gun to Megan’s head, eliciting a weak growl from the small werewolf. “How about I put a bullet through her head, then you won’t have to bother with the freak at all?”

Dr. Saunders looked up, anger clear on his face. He was about to do something stupid—Lana just knew it.

“Take care of Jesse,” Lana whispered. “I’ll look after Megan.”

Dr. Saunders continued to glower at Boyd for a moment, but then nodded at her before standing up to move over to look at the injured hunter.

“Smart girl,” Boyd said to her, giving her that emotionless grin of his. “I’d hate to have to kill you before it was time. Not that you have a lot of that left anyway.”

Lana tried not to flinch at the blatant threat. Instead, she glared up at him. That only seemed to piss him off, and she thought for a moment he might hit her—or worse.

But then she heard a quiet buzzing sound, and Boyd turned away, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket. He looked at the number on the screen, then moved a little farther down the hallway for privacy. Like that mattered. She could still hear him just fine.

“What the hell happened?” a harsh male voice demanded on the other end of the line. “I gave you the address of the clinic where the injured SWAT officer is being treated—the same place I told you the female werewolf would probably be—just like you asked. The plan was for you to slip in and kill them both, then get out of there. Now 9-1-1 calls are coming in about a major shoot-out and a possible hostage situation. How did you screw this up so badly?”

Boyd’s face twisted. “How did I screw it up? Maybe you should have mentioned they had werewolves on the perimeter guarding the place. I doubt they’re stupid enough to try to come in here while we have their friends as hostages, but you need to do something to help get us out of this damn place.”

The man let out a short laugh. “I don’t think so. You getting trapped in there is not my problem.”

“It will be your problem if they arrest us and I start talking,” Boyd warned.

“I don’t think there’s very much chance of that. Something tells me SWAT isn’t going to be too interested in arresting you when they show up. They’re more likely going to kill you on sight, considering you injured a member of their pack. If you want to get out of there, you’re going to have to shoot your way out.”

“We’ve got no problem with that,” Boyd said coldly. “We’ve already confirmed our new ammunition will put these things down with a single shot. But it’d help to know exactly how many we’re dealing with.”

“I have no clue,” the man said. “But you should probably assume you’ll be dealing with the entire SWAT team full of those monsters.”

Boyd didn’t say anything for a while. “A whole SWAT team full of freaks, huh? That’s like music to my ears, since it means there’s more of them to kill.”

* * *

“This is a revolver,” Max told Kari, showing her how the snub-nose .38 worked. “There’s no safety on it of any kind, so if you squeeze the trigger hard enough, it will fire. But there are only six bullets in it, which means you’ll have to make them count.”

Max tried to talk slowly as he showed the beta werewolf how to open the cylinder and reload the weapon. Staying calm was tough at the moment, since everything around him was barely controlled chaos.

A good portion of the SWAT Pack was at the compound now, loading up and getting ready to head for the research clinic any minute. Gage was putting all his eggs in one basket, taking everyone with him and gambling that all the hunters were going to be there when they arrived, instead of some of them attacking the compound. But before they left, they were handing out weapons to any werewolf who felt they could safely use them. Max knew it was insane, but they didn’t have a choice. Once he and his pack mates left, the compound would be unguarded except for a ragtag collection of werewolves who barely knew each other. There were women and children here. They couldn’t leave them defenseless.

Max’s hand trembled as he demonstrated how to load the revolver again. He was so worried about Lana he could barely think straight. Somewhere on the compound, he knew Remy and Alex weren’t doing much better. The hunters had all three of their mates, and no one had a clue what they were going to do with them. Lana could be writhing in pain on the floor of the clinic right now from one of the hunters’ poison bullets.

The thought made him almost hyperventilate.

“I’ve got this,” Kari said, reaching out to put a gentle hand on his arm. “Go save that girlfriend of yours.”

Max nodded gratefully. He was more than ready to get the hell out of there. It had only been five minutes since Jayna had called from the clinic, but it seemed like a frigging lifetime. He and his teammates normally rolled out of the gate within sixty seconds of getting a call, but with the need to arm and instruct the werewolves staying behind, it was taking a hell of a lot longer.

He was about to bail but then noticed Kari was no longer looking at him. Instead, she was gazing at someone behind him. He frowned as he picked up Coletti’s scent. He turned to see the IA detective standing there with a baffled look on his face.

“What are you doing here?” Max asked. “Are Mrs. Wallace and her kids okay?”

The man continued to look around for a moment, at everything from the SWAT cops obviously loading up for a major operation to all the civilians running around the compound like their hair was on fire.

“They’re fine,” Coletti said, finally looking at him. “Well, as fine as they can be after what went down tonight. I was coming over to tell you they’re settled in again over at the Safe Campus, but I guess you’re a little busy right now.”

“A little,” Max said. “So maybe we can talk later?”

Coletti took a quick step back as Brooks rushed past, carrying two big, wire-bound crates of ammunition for the team’s M4 carbines. In them were over six thousand rounds of ammunition. The detective’s eyes widened in surprise.

“What’s going on?” Coletti asked in what could only be defined as a suspicious voice. “I heard over the radio there was a minor hostage situation at a clinic over near the medical center, but dispatch wasn’t calling for more than a couple cruisers to establish a perimeter.”

Max opened his mouth, not sure what the hell he was going to say, praying it would be convincing, whatever it was. He didn’t have to find out because Coletti chose that particular moment to notice Kari standing there with a .38 revolver in her hands.

“What are you doing here?” Coletti asked. “And why are you carrying a weapon? Where the hell did you even get that?”

Max expected the beta to freeze up, but instead, Kari calmly slipped the small weapon into her coat pocket and looked at Coletti.

“Vince, there’s a lot going on that you don’t understand,” she said. “But I’m carrying this weapon to help protect the people at the compound…and myself.”

Coletti frowned. “From whom?”

Shit. They so didn’t need this right now.

“We really don’t have time to explain everything,” Max said. “It’s complicated and you probably wouldn’t believe most of it. You’re going to have to trust us.”

Max made to step around him, but Coletti put a hand on his chest. Max let out a low growl, the tips of his fangs brushing his tongue. Since the situation at the Wallace house tonight, he’d felt more in control of his inner wolf than he ever had in his life. His fangs weren’t out because he was losing it. They were out because he was too worried about his mate to play nice anymore. At least they weren’t hanging over his lower lip yet. Gage would go nuclear if that happened. But Max took a perverse sense of pleasure in seeing Coletti take a step backward.

“My team and I have hostages to rescue,” Max said. “Your only options are staying to help protect Kari and the rest of the people left at the compound, or getting cuffed and shoved in the trunk of your own car until it’s all over with. Your call.”

Coletti looked like he was going to go for option three—fighting—but Kari reached out and took the detective’s hands in hers, tugging him away from Max with a strength that obviously caught the man off guard.

“Vince, this isn’t something I can explain in five seconds, but I swear it’s all being done for the right reasons.” She looked up at him imploringly. “You don’t need to trust Max, but I need you to trust me. Let Max and his teammates go. The time they’re wasting could mean people dying.”

It looked for a moment like Coletti might argue. There was a part of Max that wished the IA detective would. He really needed to vent some stress right then, and taking his anger out on Coletti would work just fine.

But then Coletti nodded. “Okay, we’ll play this your way, Max. But after this is over, you’re going to tell me everything.”

Max snorted. “You say that now. But after I’ve told you how the world really works, I’m guessing you’re going to wish you’d never asked.”

* * *

“Maybe we should wheel that half-dead werewolf out here and use him to block the door,” Seth said casually as he wheeled an empty gurney out of the OR and positioned it with the others already blocking the exit.

From where she sat on the floor, Lana’s heart tightened in her chest. She’d been worried the hunters would harm Zane the moment they found his comatose body. Frankly, she was surprised they hadn’t disconnected the cryo-equipment already.

Boyd considered Seth’s suggestion for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah. We don’t have enough extension cords to keep him plugged in, and I don’t want to smell rotting werewolf when he starts to thaw out.”

Seth and the other hunters laughed, as if that was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Lana bit back a growl—and her tongue. If she said something to piss off the hunters, they might take it out on Megan, Triana, Lacey, or Dr. Saunders.

The five of them were sitting against the wall across from the OR. At the far end of the hall, the cool evening air came in through the shattered windows of the front doors. The flashing lights of the police cars in the parking lot danced on the walls around them.

Seth threw a glance in Lana’s direction as he walked past, eyeing her with an expression that made Lana’s skin crawl. It was like he was fantasizing about how much he was going to enjoy killing her—or worse. She had no doubt that if she and the others didn’t currently have value as hostages, they would already be dead.

“That man is a psychopath,” Saunders muttered under his breath to her. “He wants you dead, and he wants to be the one to kill you. When the shooting starts, make sure you know where he is. He’ll be coming for you.”

All Lana could do was nod. As far as she was concerned, all of the hunters were unhinged. The men had spent the past thirty minutes barricading the doors and windows of the clinic, talking about how many werewolves each of them was going to kill when SWAT got here. They were even making bets about it. The notion they might not make it out of here never seemed to enter their minds, even though none of them had mentioned a getaway plan beyond shooting their way out of the building.

“Who’s Boyd talking to now?” Triana asked softly.

Lana glanced over at the leader of the crazy men. He was standing over by the OR, his cell phone to his ear again. She was getting better at shutting out other noises and picking up only the sounds she wanted to hear and was able to immediately latch on to Boyd’s voice, as well as the lower, gruffer voice of the man on the other end of the phone.

“It’s that same older guy he was talking to a little while ago,” Lana said, focusing to pick up exactly what the man on the phone was saying. “Boyd’s still trying to convince him to send help.”

While Seth and the other hunters had been busy talking trash, Boyd had been calling people. After speaking to the first man who’d somehow known Lana and Zane were at the clinic, Boyd had turned his attention to getting some backup in here. The half-dozen calls he’d made were to people Lana guessed were other hunters. It terrified her to think there were that many of them out there, but she was thrilled when none of them had been willing to ride to the rescue after finding out Boyd and his crew were surrounded by the police.

That’s when Boyd had called the older guy. While she couldn’t be sure, Lana got the feeling from the respectful way Boyd spoke to him that the guy was his boss.

“I’m telling you, we’ve struck the mother lode here in Dallas,” Boyd said. “I can’t believe you don’t want to take down an entire SWAT team full of these werewolves. I thought a major hit on a full pack was what you’ve been looking for all along. We can finally teach these freaks a lesson.”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been looking for,” the man on the other end of the line agreed. “And I would have been thrilled if you had come to me with this information several days ago, before you alerted this pack to our existence and splashed your faces all over the internet. Not to mention got trapped at some damn clinic.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Boyd ground his jaw, as if he hated having to apologize. “But our source in the DPD didn’t give us any indication there’d be any other werewolves here besides the female we were after and the injured cop. If I had known this was a major research clinic full of doctors and nurses guarded by werewolves, we would have come in with a different plan.”

“Uh-huh,” the older man scoffed.

“Look, I’m not making excuses,” Boyd snapped. “I can only work with the intel I have at hand.”

“I’m not interested in any of that. I want to hear about the clinic. What kind of research are they doing there?”

Boyd must have realized that he’d just stumbled over something the old man actually cared about because he grinned. “It’s a frigging werewolf hospital. They have the cop we shot with wolfsbane ammo in some kind of cryo-suspension. He should have died yesterday, but they’re keeping him going. They have doctors and nurses and loads of special equipment.”

“I don’t care about the equipment,” the man said. “I’m interested in the doctors and nurses and what they know.”

Boyd’s smile broadened, as if realizing he had the old man where he wanted him. “I was thinking they could help us advance our weapons program. With the proper motivation, of course.”

There was silence on the other end of the line as if the man was considering that. “Could you get those doctors out of there if you had assistance?”

Lana’s heart plummeted. She didn’t like where this was going.

“Hell yeah,” Boyd said, that arrogant tone coming back into his voice. “If that assistance gets here soon.”

“I can have people there in an hour. Can you come up with a way to delay this SWAT team of werewolves for that long?”

Boyd shot Lana a look of pure malice. “Oh, I think I can come up with a way to discourage them from coming in for a while.”

While she didn’t have werewolf hearing, Triana must have realized something bad was going to go down because she cursed and leaned in toward Lana slightly. “I have no idea what they’re talking about, but the way he looked at you can’t be good.”

“It’s not,” Lana agreed softly, watching as Boyd put his cell phone back in the pocket of his jacket.

Heart racing, she turned to look at the broken windows in the doors. “Max, if you or any of your teammates out there can hear me, you need to get in here now,” she whispered. “Something really bad is about to happen.”

Lana strained her ears, hoping Max or one of his teammates would whisper something in return, but Boyd interrupted.

“Hey, werewolf girl,” he said as he came toward her. “Come here. I have something special planned for you.”

Crap.

“Max,” she whispered hoarsely. “Hurry!”