What the fuck was wrong with her?

As the unconscious wolf slumped on the truck floor pan in front of her, Toni drew a shaky breath. The movement reminded her of the syringe in her hand, and her fingers clamped around it as a drop of pinkish fluid fell from the sharp point. It splashed on the metal beneath her knees in what seemed like slow motion to her altered senses. With a curse she threw the syringe. The small tube shattered and then released an acrid stench of silver that made Toni’s lip curl into a snarl. Fuck. She’d never get used to using that stuff.

Jerkily, her gaze returned to the man sprawled out on the cold metal. At least this time he hadn’t had convulsions. Movements stiff, she climbed out of his lap and backed up. But she didn’t take her eyes off him, alertness humming through every cell in her body like a chain reaction. As if, despite the silver-laced sedative she’d just pumped into him, he might jump up at any moment and bite her.

Or kiss her.

Her hand shook when she lifted it to her lips. Lips which tingled from his kisses and her cheeks prickled from the rough caress of his whiskers. Fuck. He hadn’t just kissed her. She’d kissed him back, all but crawling into his pants to assuage the heat that rolled through her veins. A heat that only now had banked to a dull roar, her skin feeling too tight and itchy to contain the need within.

Her breathing shaky, she tore her gaze from him. Just the sight of his lean, hard body was enough to send all sorts of unnatural thoughts cascading through her head. Like what would have happened if they hadn’t arrived at the base, if they’d had a little bit longer. What that thick, long cock she’d felt pressed against her belly would have felt like as it slid to fill her completely.

A tiny whimper of denial escaped her lips and she pressed cool hands to her burning cheeks. Fucking hell. Was that a blush? An actual blush to go along with the first reaction she’d had to a man, any man, since her accident. Despite her mortification she couldn’t help the snort of amusement. Reaction? That was such a bland word for what had happened. Reaction didn’t cover the fact that she’d almost gone up in flames and begged him to fuck her. There and then, on the floor of the truck.

“Yeah, we got separated from the rest tracking down one of the lycans.”

Wilson’s voice filtered through from outside the truck, a little muffled as he spoke to whoever was on the gate. Toni tilted her head to try and make out the response but it was too faint behind the bulletproof glass installed in the gatehouse. Unbidden, the corner of her lip curled in derision.

Fitzgerald had beefed up security on base, which was just plain dumb. The Project was so secret that only those in the higher echelons were aware of its true purpose, and she had no doubt that any recording or data was set to self-destruct in true Hollywood style once viewed by the recipient. As far as anyone else was concerned, the base was just a supply depot in the middle of nowhere, guarding nothing more exciting than a bunch of toilet rolls and some canned beef. Either those toilet rolls were freaking gold-plated or the machine gun towers and patrols gave the game away.

 “Yeah, tell me about it…” Wilson sighed. “I’m starving. We’d have been in hours ago but we got stuck on a dirt road and ended up digging one of these fuckers out. Keep telling ‘em heavy wheels like this are no good for the area but will they fucking listen?”

She cocked her head to listen. A lie about the reason for their delay. Interesting. Why would he lie and cover her ass? Comradeship…with a blood? She shook her head. Wilson was a good soldier but she knew better than to get attached. The last human she’d gotten attached to, or even had more than a passing conversation with, she’d just burned in an orange bag on the side of the road.

“Whoa, seriously? What…all of them? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Surprise rang in Wilson’s voice. What were they talking about? Keeping an eye on the unconscious lycan, Toni edged forward to try and catch more of the conversation. Her boot scuffed against metal as she moved. She leaned one shoulder against the bulkhead just behind the driver’s door. The body and the cab were riveted, but like most military kits, the truck had been made by the lowest bidder for the contract so there was a slight gap. She pressed her ear to it.

“Yeah, the bastards stole a couple of vehicles and took out most of the teams that went after them. We lost most of them and the two gunships.”

She stilled, a frown creasing up her brow. No, that wasn’t possible. The Project had fielded a massive amount of firepower to deal with the lycan threat. Way too much in her opinion, but Fitz was the overkill king. There was no way eight men…

No, she corrected herself as her gaze cut to the man lying in front of her. There was no way seven men could decimate the forces sent after them. Not unless they were adding some Chuck Norris and Rambo DNA into the lycan mix these days.

Wilson whistled. “Fuuuuuck me. How many made it back?”

“Not many…and most of the survivors are in the infirmary. The place is rammed. So if you got any walking wounded, I’d get your section medics to deal with them until things calm down.”

“Yeah, sure thing. We just got some cuts and scrapes. Nothing serious though. So…you going to let us through or you want to flirt with me some more? We’re carrying a live lycan and I know the boss lady’ll want him in a cage before the bastard can wake up.”

“What the…” The guard’s tone sharpened at the mention of a lycan. A second later the gate buzzed, and Toni’s enhanced hearing picked up the whir of the motors as it started to lift. “Why didn’t you say something, man? I’d have let you straight through.”

Wilson chuckled. “What, and deprive you of the pleasure of my charming company?”

“Dickwad.”

“Asswipe.”

“Fucktard…now get through. Beer after shift?”

“You bet your ass. It’s your round.”

A clunk rolled through the metal frame as Wilson put the truck into gear and it lurched into motion. Toni leaned her head back for a second, watching out the open back of the truck as the guard waved the others through after them. But when Wilson turned left just after the gatehouse, the rest of the convoy turned right, peeling off toward the motor pool.

She took a deep breath, and then another. At least she had a couple of minutes before they rolled up to the labs to get herself together. The truck leaned and wove over the damaged road surfaces around the outside edges of the camp before reaching the loading area behind the labs. Fitz’s camp upgrade had ended with the defenses and the main areas. The roads were still shit, puckered with holes, and half the barracks were falling down. The barracks didn’t bother her—they were used to house the lycans anyway—but it would have been nice to be able to drive around the base without feeling like her spine was being jack-hammered into her skull.

Not long now, though.

She swept a glance over her prisoner again. Darcy. What an odd name for a guy these days. She could only assume that his parents didn’t like him, had a sense of humor, or wanted to toughen him up in the schoolyard by giving him a feminine-sounding name. Possibly all three.

The truck slowed and pulled to a stop. Hearing the handbrake come on, Toni moved to the back to start undoing the tailgate. Idly, she listened to the sound of Wilson’s footsteps as he headed into the lab to grab some medics and a trolley. Preferably one with bad-ass straps on it, because when Foster woke up, he was not going to be a happy bunny.

The last latch gave and the tailgate swung down to smack into the bumper mounts. A metallic clang rang through the air, the blow reverberating through the vehicle. She shot a glance at Foster, just in case he’d regained consciousness. He’d seemed out of it, but she’d made that mistake too many times already today. He lay still, sprawled across cold metal like a rag-doll. Only the rise and fall of his chest and the warm, vital, wild scent filling the small cabin assured her he was still alive.

Corpses smelled different to her, even ones where the heart had just stopped beating. It wasn’t just a smell, it was a feeling—as though the dead part within her could recognize its own kind. Guilt clawed at her chest, trying to get a purchase. It would be easier for him if he was dead. At least he’d be beyond whatever Fitzgerald and the Project could do to him. Beyond forcing him to betray the men in his squad, because she had no doubt that he would talk. They would make him talk, make him spill every last secret he had just so the pain would stop.

Bile rose but she fought it down and ignored the guilt. Guilt was for humans and she wasn’t human. It was survival of the fittest, dog eat dog. That’s what evolution was all about, wasn’t it? Only the strongest survived to pass on their genes until the whole race was propagated by those individuals fittest or ruthless enough to make it. The fact that she couldn’t have children didn’t enter into it. Another pang twisted her heart, but again she ignored it. She wasn’t human, so why should she subscribe to the human model of reproduction? Perhaps her children wouldn’t be cute and wear diapers.

Gritting her teeth, Toni clamped down on that train of thought, crawling over to the lycan to start bundling him toward the back of the truck. A door slammed nearby and the sound of wheels rattling over asphalt reached her ears.

“I’m telling you, man. Janie from the office swears that’s what it was.”

“Yeah, yeah. And last week she swore she saw Elvis in Walmart.”

“She did. It was a freaking impersonator, a good one. I told you that, remember? For fuck’s sake, Charlie, it would help if you’d actually listen when I’m talking to you.”

Toni tilted her head as the voices, and the trolley, approached. It had a damaged wheel, a click-click-click that would drive her mad until it was either fixed or she ripped it off. Scent reached her next. Both were male, easy enough to work out from the voices, but confirmed by the smells that reached her delicate nostrils.

The first had showered recently and wore a clean shirt. The dual scents of a woodsy, citrus shower gel and laundry powder assaulted her senses, almost hiding the sharper scent of an anti-dandruff shampoo. He’d showered and changed his clothes recently—perhaps just on duty and getting into his day. Tough shit. His first job of the day was to lump around a sweaty, blood-covered lycan. She doubted the laundry-shower freshness was going to win out against that.

She turned her attention to the second speaker, dragging in a deep breath and rolling it over her tongue. The second guy had been on duty for a while, no doubt on an overlapping or double shift to the first. The aroma of lunch and numerous cigarette breaks clung to him like a shroud and under it, not one but two perfumes. One was expensive and luxurious, but already fading. From kissing his wife this morning perhaps? The second was newer, and a cheaper brand. The sort of perfume a younger woman would pick up at a superstore. His mistress? Perhaps the Janie they’d mentioned earlier?

Her lip curled back in disgust. She’d never understood why people felt the need to cheat on their partners. If they didn’t want to be in the relationship in the first place, why be there? Why not leave and be with someone who made them happy? Someone they didn’t feel the need to cheat on? Perhaps it was the excitement, the danger element? Anger rolled lazily through her. Any guy who cheated on her had better like the danger element, because she’d rip his freaking heart out and make him eat it.

“Yeah, well,” the second speaker huffed. “I would if you didn’t talk utter shit most of the time. She says this friend of hers saw a hybrid? Ha! Read my lips. There’s no such thing. They don’t fucking exist. You’ve seen the data, James. We’ve never seen even a hint of a viable cross infection, you know that.”

They’d reached the back of the truck now, shoving the trolley into place with another clang of metal. She cast it a cursory look. Plastic sheet over the hard mattress, heavy duty steel with reinforced restraints. Once they got the lycan onto it, he wasn’t getting loose any time soon. Neither had noticed her where she was half crouched in the darkness at the back of the truck, so she cleared her throat. Both men jumped, their faces draining of color when they recognized her and fear in their eyes before they tried to hide it. She knew the words from the manual, had read them herself way back when. Never show fear. Animals who sense fear attack.

She didn’t attack. Instead she smiled. It didn’t appear to ease their discomfort. Pity.

“I’d listen to…” She tilted her head to read the second man’s name-badge. “Doctor Blevins, if I were you, James. hybrids don’t exist. I should know. I’ve been here long enough…”

She slid her hands under Foster’s side and started to half-roll, half-slide him toward the back of the truck. Sure, she could have lifted him bodily and dumped him on the trolley without much trouble, but it was never good to give away too much of what she could do to the scientists. Better that they thought she was weaker than she was, just in case. Never knew when she might need that element of surprise.

“They’re just an urban myth…” She grunted with effort as she pushed Foster to the edge. Lanky-ass piece of shit. He might have looked lean but he was packed with muscle and damned heavy. “A cautionary tale.”

James laughed, the sound nervous, and looked from her to Blevins and back again.

“Cautionary tale about what?”

She moved without warning, leaping over the prone form of the werewolf and the trolley to land the other side. The swift move took both men by surprise, Blevins a shade quicker to react than his colleague. He backed up as she got right into James’ face, her extended claws tickling over the young man’s Adam’s apple. For a moment dark temptation filled her. Just one little scratch, a tiny nick, and the virus would enter his system. Turn him.

No, not turn him. Any cut would kill him, thanks to the shit they made the techs and admin staff take on a daily basis.

“That.” She smiled again, keeping the expression small and tight. Then she retracted her claws and stepped back. Her manner was not pleasant. Not happy. Just…there.

“Don’t turn your back, James. Never get complacent,” she warned in a low voice. “Don’t ever forget that we’re not human. Not anymore.”

He blanched, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. He backpedaled frantically, almost falling over his own feet. Both men eyed her like she was the second coming of Genghis Khan and scuttled around her to secure the lycan. Toni stepped to the side, watching them load him onto the trolley and tighten the straps.

“That was cruel,” Wilson said beside her. “Funny as fuck, but cruel.”

She shrugged. “They’ve got to learn. Better they learn from me than a rabid wolf who really will rip their heads off and shit down their necks.”

She turned her head and shot a glance at the shorter soldier as Blevins and his pale colleague pushed the unconscious Foster toward the labs. She steeled herself not to look, even though she wanted to. She’d done her part. What happened to him now was none of her business.

“You get that back to the motor pool,” she ordered, straightening her uniform and grimacing. Grubby and bloodstained. Perfect. She’d piss the boss off just by being there. He hated anyone not in perfect uniform. “Then hit the racks, and I’ll go and deal with Fitzgerald.”

 

 

A debrief was in full swing by the time Toni slipped through the door and took a seat at the back. The room was the same as many the world over—drab walls and ceiling, populated by rows of plastic chairs and battered tables. Floor and baseboards were wipeable, but bore the scars and scuff marks of many sets of boots. If rooms could talk, she had no doubt that this one would tell many tales.

Today, though, it was just half full. Men sat scattered among the tables, new faces mixed in with the ones she was expecting. She knew most of the squad commanders on base but some were missing, replaced by corporals who looked ill at ease to be shoved into the limelight of Fitzgerald’s ire. She didn’t blame them. If she had a choice she wouldn’t be here either.

She slid a glance around the room. They were all injured—either that or field dressings over combats had just become the new fashion and no one had seen fit to tell her. The scent of blood and death hung in the room so thick she wanted to roll in it like a cat in catnip.

“You mean to tell me that one squad did all this? Took you all out?”

The demand came from the front of the room. The colonel sat slouched in his chair like some kind of sulky teenager as he click-click-clicked his pen against the table. The flush on his skin was a good indicator of his mood. From the color, red deepening into purple, an explosion of epic proportions wasn’t far off. God, she hoped so—one less asshole in the world to deal with—but not until he’d given her the cure he’d promised.

“W-well, not all of us,” a soldier near the front of the room stammered, holding a field book and trying to flip the pages with his left hand in an awkward motion.

His right arm was bandaged up close to his body, the white dressing already starting to darken with blood. Toni’s mood took a nose dive. Half these men should be in the infirmary, not forced in here to perform like monkeys for a jumped-up fucktard like Fitzgerald.

“We’ve recovered all personal weaponry, and the two stolen vehicles. Both are in the motor pool for repair now. The g…” The man paused for a second, his dry swallow like the rasp of sandpaper in the silent room before he forged on at breakneck speed. It was as if he were trying to get the words out before he was interrupted or his nerve failed him. “The gunships are a total loss and we lost seventy percent of the personnel we sent out. Of the remainder, we have twenty men in critical condition. Infirmary isn’t sure that they’ll survive the night and most of the rest are walking wounded.”

All eyes turned to Fitzgerald. He nodded, his expression thoughtful as the speed of the pen slowed. Toni held her breath. Those were some huge losses and casualties. Perhaps this would be the catalyst to kick Fitz’s humanity into gear. Surely no man could be that hardhearted? Could be unmoved when told so many of his men had lost their lives?

“So, I send the cream of our forces out…for what? So you can get your asses kicked by a bunch of fucking animals?

Hope died a swift death.

The colonel surged to his feet, thickset body straining the buttons on his pressed and clean uniform. No blood and sweat for him. She doubted he’d even had so much as a fucking paper cut, sitting in his pretty office or armored car while good men and women went to their deaths.

“Got your fucking asses kicked good and proper. Loss of equipment… Do you idiots have any idea how much it costs to train you? Feed you? And for fucking what? So you can make a goddamn fool of me when you get out in the field?” he ranted, his voice rising and skin flushing deeper with each sentence. “I sent you out to put eight dogs down. Now you tell me that fucking Fido and his pals handed it to you?”

He shook his head, pausing his tirade to run his hands through his short hair. The room went still, the soldiers caught like rabbits in a headlight. No one dared move, or breathe, in case they brought down the colonel’s ire on themselves. Toni didn’t blame them. Half looked dead on their feet, the other half bled into heavy dressings. This wasn’t fair to them in any way, shape or form.

Fitzgerald dropped his hands. “At least tell me some of the bodies can be used for the RA program.”

The sergeant who’d given the loss report flinched looked away and refused to meet the colonel’s eyes. “No, sir. The techs say they’re all too damaged.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Fitzgerald lost it, slamming his hand into the nearest table, his yell reverberating off the walls. “That at least would have recovered some of the losses of this clusterfuck. Who do you think is going to pay for those fucking gunships? Yeah, that’s right…my fucking budget. Next year you’ll be guarding the mutts with pointy sticks. How’d you like that, huh?”

He stalked between the tables, bellowing into the faces of the soldiers still sitting down and she realized that she’d never hated anyone so much. Finally he reached her. Perhaps some instinct of self-preservation warned him that the likely reaction to yelling in her face was decapitation because he stopped, straightened, and looked at her with a sneer.

“I suppose you’re just as useless as the rest of this lot. Should have known never to send a woman to do a man’s job. I knew should have sent McCoy…this never would have happened then.”

She lifted an eyebrow, no longer caring it counted as minor insubordination. At least his attention was on her now, giving the rest of the room a reprieve.

“No, sir, perhaps not. But I also doubt that you’d have one of Alpha-Three locked down nice and tight in the LY labs.”

“What?” Surprise flashed across his features, and then he smiled. Just for a second. Pity he was such a dickhead. Without the stick up his ass and the “the world owes me” attitude, he might not be that bad looking. After a couple of drinks of course. Then he ruined the moment, casting a glance to the room over his shoulder. “The rest of you, dismissed. That means fuck off. Now.”

He turned back to her and leaned forward, resting his steepled fingertips on the table. “You brought one in? Who? Harper?”

She shook her head. “Nope, couldn’t get him. He was too deep in with the rest.”

There it was—the warning pout as Fitzgerald’s expression darkened. Crap, the room wasn’t clear yet. She had to get his attention back before he started to beat on a man who should be lying in bed recovering, not walking around playing soldier to appease this jerk-off. Opening her mouth, she forced the words out past her guilt, as though naming the man she’d brought in was somehow worse than locking him down with silver and delivering him here.

“We got his second instead. Foster.”