Prisoner (Werewolf Marines) (2 page)

The Navy hospital corpsmen ran up. Half of
them started examining Roy, while the others, to DJ’s confusion,
started prodding at
him
.

“Where are you hit?” one of them
demanded.

“I scraped my leg. And I cut my arm. But it’s
not serious, don’t bother with me.”

A corpsman wiped a pad over DJ’s bare chest.
When the gauze immediately turned red, DJ realized what the problem
was.

“It’s his blood,” DJ explained. “I carried
him out of the helo.”

The corpsman glanced at DJ, then at Roy, who
looked bigger than ever sprawled out on the ground. “You’re
strong.”

“I’m a fucking Marine,” DJ said, exasperated
at himself for distracting the man when Roy was bleeding to death.
“Just get him out of here, will you?”

To his relief, they were already loading Roy
on to a stretcher.

DJ went with them, answering questions while
leaving out the critical “I’m secretly a super-strong werewolf and
I bit my buddy to give him werewolf healing powers” part: “Maybe a
surface-to-air missile, but I’m really not sure;” “Yes, we were the
only survivors;” “No, no one’s fired on us here;” “No, we landed
okay, he was wounded when the helo was hit;” “Oh, right, I forgot
about his shoulder— yeah, that was from the crash, a piece of
jagged metal wrapped around it;” “No, actually, he was conscious up
until about fifteen minutes ago.”

That last one got him some surprised stares,
which to his relief seemed to distract them from the bite wounds on
Roy’s shoulder.

As he approached the helo, DJ let himself
believe that everything would be all right. Roy would never do
another tour of duty, but probably that was just as well. DJ would
finish out his, and then he’d have to decide whether or not to
re-enlist.

He was leaning toward not. More and more,
he’d gotten tempted by the idea of spending time with his pack, of
performing in clubs, of hunting in the mountains and the desert, of
riding his Harley, and of doing it all without ever having to worry
about getting blown up or shot or stress-injured, or having his
friends get blown up or shot or stress-injured.

Maybe then he could meet a girl for more than
a one-night stand. Being a Marine was a double-edged sword: he
never had trouble finding a woman for a weekend fling, but he never
found anyone he could take home and introduce to his family,
either. Werewolf women sure as hell didn’t want a man who was never
around, civilian women mostly didn’t either, and military women
were never around themselves.

DJ thought about the kind of woman he’d want.
After this fucking horrible deployment, what he wanted most was
someone relaxing. Someone sweet and gentle and accepting and
calm.

Maybe a nurse or a doctor or a physical
therapist: a caretaking type, but one who’d seen enough herself
that his war stories wouldn’t shock her and revealing that he was a
werewolf, if she wasn’t one herself, wouldn’t send her running for
the hills. His family would approve of a medical professional, and
considering how much DJ had done to make them tear their fur out,
it would be nice if he could do
something
they wouldn’t
hate.

She should be playful, too. Social.
Energetic, or he’d drive her nuts. Uninhibited. They’d get off work
and meet at a club, and he’d DJ and she’d dance, and then they’d go
home together and have wild sex all night.

As he scrambled into the helo, he pictured
the life he’d have when he got back home. He’d find a job in
private security or law enforcement, he’d get to see his pack all
the time, he and Roy could hang out all the time too since Roy
would be in his pack, Roy would get better, DJ’s pack would finally
approve of what he was doing with his life, and DJ would find that
gentle, sweet, playful, sexy, pack-acceptable woman of his
dreams.

That pleasant daydream lasted exactly as long
as it took for the helo to take off and for Roy to start gasping
like he was choking to death.

The hospital corpsmen shoved DJ aside so they
could cluster even closer around Roy.

“Tension pneumothorax,” one of the corpsmen
said. “Give me the fourteen-gauge needle.”

As the corpsman drove the huge needle into
his chest, Roy’s eyes opened.

“It’s all right,” DJ called out, but he could
see that Roy was in no condition to hear or understand. He started
struggling wildly, but was pinned by the straps around the
stretcher.

Roy abruptly stopped fighting, his
blood-smeared face taut with rage and fear. All his muscles tensed
at once.

Oh, shit,
DJ thought.

The air shimmered over the stretcher, and a
huge white wolf lay where Roy had been, panting and bloody,
glistening fangs bared.

DJ threw himself forward, trying to block the
view, yelling, “Change back, change back!”

He opened himself to the pack sense and
slapped his hand down on Roy’s haunch, sending,
calm, safety,
friends, pack.

The air shimmered again, and the wolf was
gone. And just in time, too: Roy’s gray eyes looked into DJ’s,
confused and frightened, and then he passed out again.

The corpsmen were as still as if they were
caught in a freeze-frame.

“What the
fuck
is going on back
there?” yelled the pilot.

That seemed to set everyone in motion
again.

“He’s not breathing!” a corpsman called.

DJ could do nothing but watch, paralyzed with
fear, as the corpsman shoved a tube down Roy’s throat and attached
it to some machine.

It wasn’t until he saw Roy’s chest rising and
falling with mechanical regularity that he realized that even if
Roy survived, he’d be royally fucked if he was revealed as a
werewolf. DJ had to do something to distract the corpsmen so
memorably that by the time they even recalled the wolf, they’d
decide that they’d been so tired and stressed and sleep-deprived
that they’d imagined it.

DJ was so tired and stressed and
sleep-deprived himself that the only thing that came to mind was
faking a combat stress reaction. He’d seen enough of those to do a
convincing one. Unfortunately, they mostly weren’t that dramatic.
No one would notice if he talked too much or stared into space or
got jumpy or became depressed or—

“Did you see—” one of the corpsmen began.

—or got extremely angry for no good
reason.

“What the fuck is wrong with you
motherfucking assholes?” DJ yelled at the top of his lungs.

That got the attention of the corpsmen.

“Cool it,” one of them said. “We’re doing the
best we can for your buddy.”

“Fuck your fucking best!” DJ shouted. He
banged his fist on the floor, careful not to dent the metal. “It
took you fucking hours to get here! My buddy could’ve fucking died!
Fuck you all! Who needs terrorists when we’ve got dumb fucks like
you? Fuck—”

A sharp pain stung his arm. He glanced over,
and caught a corpsman withdrawing an empty syringe.

I guess I overdid it,
DJ thought.
Sorry, Roy. I hope I didn’t fuck things up for you
again.

“What was that?” He already felt dizzy.

“Just a mild sedative,” the corpsman replied
warily.

“Mild, my ass,” said DJ, right before
everything went black.

Chapter Two: Echo

My Life Protects My Sister

Echo walked silently through the icy forest,
toward the home of the man she’d been sent to kill.

It was a moonless night, and a thick layer of
clouds hid the stars. Echo could see only the dim outlines of trees
and, when she looked into the infrared, the red glow of a squirrel
or owl’s body heat. Ever since she’d parked off-road and started
walking, flurries of snow had alternated with stinging sprays of
hail, big as bullets.

Echo idly wondered if tonight would be the
night she’d go down in a hail of actual bullets. She hadn’t
bothered to go to the dead drop and pick up her body armor, but
wore the same clothes she’d arrived in: rock climbing shoes of thin
leather so she could feel the ground almost as well as if she’d
gone barefoot, an old pair of black jeans she could kick in, and a
black tank top.

She’d gotten a few curious glances when she’d
gotten off the plane, and when she’d used her cover ID to rent a
car, the man behind the counter had said, “It’s fifteen degrees
below zero, honey. You might want to put on some layers before you
go outside.”

Echo, caught between impulse (“You don’t say,
sugar-bunch,
I hadn’t noticed
,
”) and training (laugh,
nod, say, “Me and my thermal everything are hitting the bathroom
before I collect the car, don’t worry,”) had said nothing, but
stared at him until he’d lowered his gaze and pushed her the
keys.

As she came to the barbed wire-topped walls
of her target’s compound, snow swirling around her, she reminded
herself to be cautious. Even the tiniest mistake could cost Echo
her life.

And that would be bad
, she reminded
herself.
If I die, it will break Charlie’s heart. If I die,
they’ll have no reason to keep Charlie alive.

“So long as Charlie lives, I have to live,”
she said aloud, the fierce wind whipping the sound away. “My life
protects my sister. I protect my sister with my life.”

Maybe she’d said those words too often. They
felt less compelling every time.

Echo made herself picture Charlie. Her
sister, her twin, the other half of her soul— if Echo had a soul,
which she doubted. Probably Charlie had gotten it all.

She thought of Charlie swimming in the heated
pool, her fragile body at ease, supported by the water. Charlie in
the cafeteria, stealthily tossing Skittles high into the air so no
one could figure out where they were falling from. Charlie curled
up in an armchair, happily reading a paperback whose cover showed a
heaving-bosomed woman in a clinch with a billionaire or Viking or
Navy SEAL. Once, to Echo’s amusement, the cover had featured a
time-traveling billionaire Viking Navy SEAL, wearing a three-piece
suit, a horned helmet, and dog tags.

Charlie in a hospital bed with a needle in
her arm and a tube down her throat, holding up a scrap of paper
lettered shakily,
DON’T WORRY. I’LL BE OUT SOON.

“So long as Charlie lives…” Echo whispered
again.

Once Echo was certain that she wouldn’t
carelessly throw her life away, she made her move.

Echo took a pair of gloves from her pocket
and put them on, then launched herself at the wall. Her powerful
muscles sent her high into the air. For a split second, she enjoyed
her own strength and the sense of flight. Then her fingers caught
rough concrete, her soles braced against the wall, and she used her
momentum to flip herself up and over the barbed wire.

Despite her promise to herself, she hadn’t
checked for guards. But nothing stirred as she landed lightly
inside the compound. As the dossier had said, her target lived
alone. The windows of his house were dark.

Echo inspected the house. Sure enough, it was
booby-trapped. But she was supposed to make her target’s death look
like a misfired burglary or a revenge killing, not a stealthy
assassination, so she didn’t bother dismantling the traps. Instead,
she pulled a large rock out of the frozen ground and threw it
through the nearest window.

Glass shattered, and a small explosion lit
the night. Echo dove through the smoking hole in the wall, landed
in a darkened living room, and leaped to the top of a bookcase. She
settled down in the narrow gap between the bookcase and the
ceiling, waiting.

Semi-automatic fire raked the living room,
first at waist level, then low to catch anyone who had dropped to
the floor. Pages fluttered down from shredded books.

Echo’s heart sped up until it reached its
ideal rate, then continued to rise. She controlled it back to the
ideal. She controlled her breathing, too, and ensured that her
palms didn’t sweat. Her body worked perfectly, giving her the exact
amount of adrenaline release needed to maximize her for action and
not a drop more.

The shooting stopped. The target stepped
cautiously into the living room. Before he had a chance to glance
up, Echo dropped from her perch.

He reacted quickly, but nowhere near quickly
enough. He was still swinging his weapon in the direction where she
had been when she sprang behind him, got her forearm around his
throat, and snapped his neck.

Other than the tactile sensation of warm
flesh compressing and hard bones cracking, Echo felt nothing. She
let the corpse fall to the floor, trying to recall how long it had
been since she’d experienced emotion when she killed. Two years?
Three?

She couldn’t remember. But it was good that
she’d reached that point. Once she’d felt all kinds of things, so
intensely that they’d nearly ripped her apart. But that had been
years ago. Now, even when she was off-duty, she felt little. With
any luck, one day she’d feel nothing at all.

Except love for Charlie,
she amended.
She had to keep that. It was the only reason her handlers had to
put so much effort into keeping Charlie alive. But Echo could lose
every other feeling, as far as she was concerned. Feelings brought
nothing but pain. Echo would be glad to be rid of them.

All the same, when she examined the
less-shredded books, she was relieved to see that her target really
was a white supremacist terrorist. Or, at least, he owned a lot of
books that talked about exterminating “mud people” and “Jewish
vermin.”

Sometimes Echo suspected that her targets
weren’t the terrorists or criminals the dossiers claimed them to
be, but merely people whom her handlers had decided were a threat
to their secret projects. She didn’t like to think that she might
be murdering some journalist or crusading civilian whose only crime
was getting too close to the truth.