In her panic and concentration on the scene below, she forgot to watch where she was putting her hands and feet. Her fingers closed around what she expected to be smooth steel, only to find the brittle sharp, cookie-like crumble of rusted metal.
Fuck! She grabbed again as she started to fall, driving her hand through the rust to get a firm grip. The broken metal flaked away, dropping like a faint snowfall of brown. The edge lacerated her palm, pain slicing through her hand, but she held on. It was that or find out that unlike Dumbo, she couldn’t fly for shit.
Blood welled, the scent thick in the air and she watched three black drops fall. Thicker and heavier than dust, they didn’t hang like a cloud below the lamps. Harmless. Unnoticed. Toni bit her lip, holding her breath. The drops raced toward the small group below. If they hit the Lycan, she didn’t know what would happen.
They couldn’t cross-infect each other—not as far as she knew—but if the blood hit the Lycan or the trolley, even the most intellectually-challenged guard was going to wonder where it had come from. Time crawled by, the black drops falling in slow motion. Each step the trio took seemed to stretch out longer and longer, seconds becoming minutes until…
The three men passed underneath, the drops splashing down the last guard’s uniform and soaking into the black-on-black fabric.
Toni sagged against her perch in relief when the trio and their captive stepped into the lift. Of all the stupid things to do…she should have been more careful. She couldn’t get caught in here. Not without knowing what the f**k was going on.
The elevator door closed with a ping and the light above it started to move. Going down. A frown on her brow, Toni surveyed the hangar. No cameras on this side and no other guards. If any of the occupants in the cages had seen her, they didn’t give a shit, be that because of drugs or other reasons. Unfurling herself from the strut, she dropped past the lights to land in a crouch in front of the lift, her injured hand cradled to her chest. Already she could feel the flesh deep inside the wound knitting together, so it would stop bleeding soon. Not freaking fast enough. Being stealthy did not include leaving bloody fingerprints everywhere.
She rose to her feet and considered the doors in front of her. The elevator door and the one next to it. Stairs. She shouldn’t go in there, but curiosity rode her harder than an admin officer with an axe to grind over paperwork. She had to know what the f**k was going on here.
Without hesitation, she pushed open the door and descended into hell.
Chapter Nine
“Right. There they go. Two vehicles from the main gate. One taking the north road and one the south. Usual patrol route by the looks of it.” Jack lowered the binoculars and turned to the small group behind him.
Only five of the pack, six with their newest member, Lilly, were present. Sanders, crouched next to Nic, flicked a glance around. Most eyes were on Jack, each face grim and determined. He crouched down and used a small stick to point at areas on the mud and stone map he’d built of the surrounding area.
“We’ll take the one on the south patrol. They always head out over this section first, to the furthest point here.” Another jab of the stick into the dirt. “They’ll head on up along here.” Sanders watched the end of the stick trail along a finger-drawn line in the dirt that indicated a road. “This is our point here. Just after the turn.”
Jack looked up. “Nic, you’ll be the bait. Usual drill. Richards, you and Sanders take the far side of the road. Palmer, you’re with me on the near side.”
“And what about me? Where am I?” Lilly butted in, eagerness shining in her eyes as she leaned against her mate.
Jack turned his head to smile at her. “Back here, baby. This is a full on ambush. If we’re unlucky, they’ll manage to get off a shot or two. Live rounds. I won’t risk you getting hurt.”
Oh boy, this is going to be interesting.
The rest of the pack found something else to pay attention to. Nic studied her fingernails while Sanders snapped a small twig into even smaller pieces. He had no clue what Palmer and Richards decided on and didn’t want to risk looking up in case he got dragged into the argument.
“You have got to be kidding me?” Lilly’s voice was calm. Dangerously calm. “You won’t risk me being hurt? After the night of the living dead back at the hospital? I can take care of myself.”
Palmer sniggered. “Yeah, boss. Just give Killer an axe—she’ll deal with this ambush no problem.”
Sanders had to work hard to wipe the smile off his own lips, a task made easier when Jack glared around the group. Although Lilly had handled herself well in her first encounter with a Reanimate, Jack wouldn’t risk his precious mate. Not now he’d found her.
“In fact, I think we shou—”
“Stow it, Palmer.” The warning rumble didn’t come from Jack, but from the big man hunkered down next to Palmer. Ignoring the twinge in the middle of his chest, Sanders forced himself to look at the guy.
Tall, broad and with the ripped build of a Greek god, Sergeant Leon Richards was Sanders’s idea of perfection. Blond hair fell in a cascade, but rather than looking messy, the locks seemed to have arranged themselves in artful disarray to highlight the width of his shoulders. He looked so good that the pack had taken to calling him Hollywood. Even in a pair of ripped board-shorts and with a fading bruise across his ribcage, he looked like he’d stepped from the centerfold of a magazine. Sanders knew what kind of centerfold he’d like to see Richards star in.
Palmer threw a glance sideways and curled his lip, opening his mouth to add another wise-crack. The big sergeant didn’t give him chance. Instead, he wrapped an arm around the smaller wolf’s throat and stopped his talking with a headlock.
The grace and speed Richards moved with, combined with that body, was like eye-crack. Sanders couldn’t look away. One little clue—that’s all he wanted. Fuck no, not all he wanted. He wanted Richards to see him the same way he saw Richards. To have that big, heavily-muscled body at his mercy as he explored it with lips and tongue…
As though sensing Sanders’s gaze on him, Richards looked up and Sanders was caught. There was a flicker of something in the intense blue, something that sent heat through Sanders’s body like a lightning bolt. Before he could work it out, Richards looked away, grinning and scrubbing Palmer’s short-cropped hair until the smaller man yelped and tried to wriggle free.
“If you two are done with your male bonding,” Jack snapped. “Perhaps we can get back to this—”
The sound of running footsteps brought the alpha up short, and all wolves went on alert. A low growl trickled from Nic’s throat. A second later, the last two members of the pack, Blake and Thom, crashed through the undergrowth, almost trampled over Nic and Sanders, then stood with their hands on their knees, panting. It was obvious they’d run long and hard to get back.
Jack looked from Thom to Blake, and then back at Thom. Bent over with his hands on his thighs, he waved at the rest of them that he was fine but that didn’t stop the rest of the pack from staring at him. Firstly, it was strange to see the uber-fit wolf out of breath and secondly, he didn’t usually make squeaking sounds when he breathed.
“Do I even want to know?” Jack asked Blake, Thom’s battle buddy.
Blake grinned, unholy amusement showing on his face. “Long story short. Kid. Ball. Fido here couldn’t resist the chase. Got a little carried away. Hit a fence and swallowed the f**ker. Now he squeaks. You’ll piss yourself when you hear him laugh.”
Jack shook his head, a long suffering expression flitting across his features for a moment. Sanders didn’t blame him. If there was shit to get into, it was a safe bet Thom would find it and not just fall, but take a running jump into it and roll around like a horse in a mud-bath.
“Right.” Jack said. “You and Squeaker get your asses over here. This is what we’re going to do…”
What the hell had that look meant?
An hour later, Sanders hunkered down in the sparse undergrowth next to Richards and tried to keep his mind on the job. A feat which was proving to be damn near impossible. He slid a sideways glance at the bigger man. With his hair tucked behind his ears, Richards looked intent and professional as he watched the road. Golden stubble covered his jaw. Sanders itched to touch, to crowd in and graze his teeth along the roughened skin, then kiss away the slight sting. This close, Leon’s scent wrapped around him, as wild as the forest but with deep smoky notes Sanders had noticed were unique to the bigger wolf.
He had to look away, swallowing hard and trying to tamp down his body’s reaction, willing the semi-erection away by sheer force of will. It was no secret that Sanders liked men and although he’d never admitted his feelings for Leon in so many words, the pack had to have figured it out by now. But the last thing he needed was for Leon to scent his arousal. That could cause issues he didn’t want to deal with, the least of which the possibility that Leon might decide to beat the ever-loving crap out of him.
Or would he? Sanders couldn’t resist another glance to the side and caught Leon looking at him again. His heart leaped. Had Nic being right? Should he say something before it was too late? You don’t ask, you don’t get, right?
“T minus thirty seconds,” Leon murmured. Opposite them, Nic slid out of cover. “Ready to fur up?”
Was he f**king ever! Sanders closed his eyes, using the heat racing through his veins to power the change. Instead of throwing the door inside himself wide to let his wolf free, though, he opened it a crack and channeled the power into his hands. They’d been practicing this, trying to master the part-change with varying degrees of success.
Bones popped and cracked as flesh slid and reformed. Soft fleshy sounds filled the air around them, almost lost under the engine of the approaching jeep. Concentrating, Sanders latched onto the differences in his hands, struggling for a second to hold the form. Fur wanted to spread, race over his skin and consume his body. Shit, he was losing it. Gritting his teeth, he tried to keep the changed form in place but like catching the edge of the soap in the bath—the form kept slipping away from him.
Help, when it came, was from an unexpected quarter. A hard hand landed on his shoulder, complete with long talons and a punishing grip. He jumped and looked up into deep blue eyes filled with encouragement.
“C’mon, Joe. You can do it.”
A shiver slid through Sanders at his name on Leon’s lips in the rough, gravelly voice which haunted his dreams. With a nod, he tried again, using the burst of heat from Leon’s touch to focus the feral energy trying to take over. With an ease he’d never experienced before, he gained control and limited the change to his hands. His eyes widening, he looked down, then up at Leon, who grinned. Sexual energy, not anger. Who knew?
“There you go, kid. Knew you could do it. Now, game face on. We’re up.”
Leon let go of his shoulder and moved forward to the edge of cover as the truck rumbled around the corner. Awareness hung in the air. The pack waited for the human crew in the vehicle to see the woman lying across the road. At least, Sanders hoped like hell they noticed her. She could survive a hit from a truck—hell, the shit the virus had done to them, a Lycan could probably take a direct hit from a plane—but it would hurt like fuck.