Charming the Beast
Page 8

His teeth were grinding together. “Fine,” Connor gritted out. “But then I’m getting her.”
“Someone sure seems to be getting attached to Chloe.” Eric cocked a brow. “Are you quite certain that intriguing scent you keep mentioning—are you certain it’s not working on you?”
It wasn’t her scent driving him crazy. Well, part of it was her scent. But mostly, it was just her.
So Connor didn’t answer the guy. He followed Eric into the observation room, though, and he stood behind the big window that looked out over the containment area. To those in containment, the window would look like a giant mirror. The prisoners couldn’t see him and Eric because the view just went one way.
Eric leaned forward and pressed a button. Suddenly, the sound-proofing in containment was gone and Connor could hear—
“You should probably thank me,” David Vincent said. He was pacing in his cell. Glaring at Chloe.
Connor really didn’t like that prick.
Chloe sat on the floor of her cell. Her knees were drawn up near her chest and she’d wrapped her arms around her legs. Her head was down. Her shoulders were hunched. She looked defeated. Afraid.
“I mean, who do you think gave your dad all that werewolf blood to use on you? It’s not like werewolves are willing test subjects, but I still made my pack give up those vials…for you.”
“I didn’t want the blood,” Chloe said, her voice soft.
“The hell you didn’t!” David shouted back at her. “You were stuck, caught in between two worlds. You wanted your beast to come out!”
“No.” Chloe’s head lifted. “How any times do I have to tell you? I just wanted to be human again, that was all.”
“I’m human!” David grabbed the bars of his cell. He seemed to yank on them with all of his strength. “Because of that damn djinn friend of yours—Olivia Maddox killed my wolf and she made me human!”
Olivia Maddox. Yes, Connor knew her. And, once upon a time not so long ago, Olivia had been a djinn—a genie. But as they’d all learned, wishes from a djinn were very twisted things. What a person truly wanted, well, he or she didn’t always get.
Not too long ago, David Vincent had been attacking Olivia’s lover, a vampire named Shane. David had been in werewolf form, and Olivia had made one wish…
I wish the beast would be a man.
And just like that, the werewolf inside of David Vincent had died. Only his human part had survived her wish.
Later, Olivia had made another wish…when Chloe’s own father had attacked her, when Senator Donald Quick had been holding his daughter captive with a knife too near Chloe’s heart, Olivia had wished…
I wish you’d let her go.
Chloe’s father had immediately complied. Only, since it was a djinn’s wish—and those wishes could go so very wrong—he’d let Chloe go by killing her. He’d immediately plunged his knife into her heart.
Then, according to the stories Connor had heard, Olivia had wished for Chloe to live.
She had. She’d come back from the dead. He’d arrived in time to see her rising—breathing—and so he’d been there when, moments later, Chloe fired a silver bullet right into her father’s heart and killed him.
“My father’s experiments made me worse,” Chloe said now. “I never shifted fully and I…I felt like I was losing more of my humanity with each day that passed.”
“Like humanity matters.” David’s lips curled in disgust. “He gave you enhancements that you don’t even know about. Lucky bitch. You got the best one right at the end.”
Eric leaned in closer to the mirror. “Now things are finally getting interesting.”
Chloe stood. Connor saw her body tremble a bit. “What enhancements?”
David laughed. “Noticed anything…different…about yourself lately?”
“Other than the fact that I’m not rotting in a grave some place, you mean?”
His laughter faded. “I was supposed to get you.”
Connor spun for the door. “I’m going in there. Now.”
“No!” Eric grabbed his arm. “Just wait, okay? She’s safe. David Vincent can’t hurt her. And this is the first time the guy has actually started talking. Hell, even when we used vamps, they couldn’t break through to him. Probably some kind of damn alpha shit stopping them or maybe some enhancement crap that the senator worked. Either way, no compulsions have worked on the guy.”
Connor didn’t want to wait. He wanted to get Chloe out of there, right then.
But he looked back through that observation window.
“You don’t…get…me,” Chloe said haltingly. “I don’t care what my father promised you.” Her laughter was bitter. “And in case you didn’t notice, he wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy guy, despite what he said in his political commercials. He was probably planning to turn on you as soon as he got what he wanted.”
Fury darkened David’s face.
Chloe glared right back at him. “What are you going to do?” Chloe suddenly demanded, with her fists clenched. “We’re both locked up here! You can’t hurt me! You can’t—”
“You don’t have to worry about me. Your scent doesn’t work on me, not anymore. It’s the others you need to be thinking about…”
Chloe lunged toward the bars. She reached out—as if she’d touch them—but she yanked her hands back before they could make contact. “You know why they like my scent, don’t you?”
“Oh, sweet thing, they like it because your father made them like it. He wanted you to be safe from the big, bad wolves out there. So every time you get afraid, that scent of yours is supposed to call on the beasts. You see, he thought they’d want to protect you. That the scent would mark you as one of us…so the pack would be there to keep harm from ever coming your way.”
Chloe shook her head. “He…wanted to protect me?”
“Remembering that last injection he gave you now, aren’t you? That’s where the new scent comes from. But things didn’t work out the way he planned, did they? Now when you get scared, you smell like prey. Sweet, delicious prey…and that scent of yours drives wolves into a frenzy. They don’t want to protect you. They want to take you. To take and take and take until nothing is left.”
Chloe clamped her hands over her ears, as if she could block out his words.
“Take and take!” David shouted at her. “That’s what they’ll do! I bet that new scent of yours really kicked in once you died. Because I’m sure nothing has ever scared you more than that. And that scent won’t stop, not now that it’s activated. The wolves will catch that scent. They’ll follow it. They’ll find you. They’ll break you and nothing will be left—nothing—”
Yeah, screw going through the proper channels to get into containment. Connor’s beast was clawing at his insides, fighting and demanding that he attack. So he just leapt right for that observation window. Eric’s yell followed him as Connor shot through the glass. It broke, shattered, and rained down as he landed on the floor.
Chloe whirled toward him. There were tear tracks on her face.
And David Vincent—the bastard finally stopped his taunts.
That wasn’t good enough.
Connor stalked toward David’s cell. David smirked at him. “Did her scent pull you in, too? Like a bitch in heat, right? Want to break her, want to—”
Connor’s hand flew through the bars. His fingers wrapped around David’s throat and he yanked the guy forward, slamming David’s head into the silver bars. “You’re the one I want to break,” Connor said softly. “You’re the one I want to kill.”
David was clawing at Connor’s fingers, trying to get free. But David didn’t have a werewolf’s strength any longer, and he was no match for Connor. No match at all.
“I just need to snap your neck,” Connor told him, “and you’re done.” So easy. One. Little. Snap.
“No, Connor.”
Chloe’s voice. Pushing through the rage that surrounded him.
“Don’t kill him. Not like this, please.”
David’s face was starting to turn purple. Connor shoved the guy away. He turned to look at Chloe. She was near the bars of her cell, watching him with wide, desperate eyes. “You’re not like him,” she said softly to Connor. “You don’t have to—”
David was laughing. “You’re right…” He gasped out. “He’s…even worse…”
The sonofabitch. Connor whirled back to him.
David scuttled out of his reach. “You think…I don’t know…about you?” His words heaved out, as if speaking hurt him…probably because Connor had come far too close to crushing the guy’s throat. “Word travels…in packs…know what your father did…know what you did…Purgatory…”
Connor felt a hand curl around his shoulder. He didn’t look to that hand. He knew Eric was there. “Keep your control,” Eric advised him as his hand tightened on Connor’s shoulder.
Control is over-rated.
He wanted to shut David up before the guy said anything else.
Too late.
Because that ass**le David said, “He’s a killer…he’s tortured…lied…destroyed…and you think he’s…gonna…gonna help you? He’s one…drawn to take…”
“Vincent is being transferred to another facility tomorrow,” Eric promised Connor. “You won’t ever see him again.”
“I’d better not. If I do, he’s dead.” A simple truth, and Connor saw David shudder under the face of that threat. “Now let her out, Eric. Let her out!”
Eric pulled away from him. Connor watched as he went to the control board and typed in the passcode that would open the door to Chloe’s cell. When she walked out, her steps seemed extra cautious, as if she were afraid of touching the silver.
“It burned her earlier,” Eric said quietly. “So I guess her…sensitivity…to silver is back.”
Chloe quickly came to Connor’s side. “If that’s back, what else will return?” Her face showed her worry. “I don’t want to get stuck again. I don’t want to be like that ever again.”
He hated her fear. And her scent—damn David Vincent, but the guy had been right. Her scent pulled at him just as it did any other werewolf.
Only now that he’d had her blood, Connor found that he wanted her even more than before.
“Take me to the doctor,” Chloe said. “To Holly. Let her run those tests of hers.”
Wait, she was volunteering for tests?
“I don’t want to go back…I can’t live that way.” Her lips trembled. “I won’t. So get Holly to run her tests. Get her to help me. Please.”
The desperate plea in her voice pierced through him. Connor looked at Eric, more than ready to trade, lie, threaten—do anything to get Chloe what she needed.
But Eric nodded. “Holly has been waiting for you.”
And Connor realized that Eric had played Chloe like a pro. Exposing her to the silver, putting her with David…Eric had wanted Chloe to be afraid, to feel that the only people who could help her were the Para Agents.
Chloe had fallen right into Eric’s trap, and, well, that just pissed Connor off.
I don’t want him playing her. I don’t want anyone hurting her. Not Chloe.
Because…she mattered too much to him.
***
She was poked. She was prodded. She was burned with silver.
But Chloe kept her lips clamped shut. She didn’t cry out. She just let Dr. Holly Jacobs run every test that the woman wanted.
Her father had known about Holly. A woman who was supposed to be an expert on paranormal genetics. The senator had even tried to recruit Holly to help him in his research, but Holly had been firmly allied with the Para Unit.
Chloe wondered why Holly was so loyal to them.
Holly glanced up at Chloe, and the doctor’s warm brown eyes were worried. “The sensitivity to silver has definitely returned.”
Chloe almost smiled. “Yes, I noticed that, too.” It was rather hard to miss the whole burning bit.
“A week ago, you had no silver sensitivity.”
And she’d thought that she’d been free of her curse.
“Have you felt the urge to change? Your claws? Your teeth? Have you—”
“No changes, not even close.” She rolled her shoulders. She was wearing a paper gown, one that she’d donned for her exam. “Not that my changes were ever anything spectacular, anyway. Getting stuck as a half-woman, half-wolf, well, that’s more the thing of nightmares.”
Sympathy flashed on Holly’s face. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. “We need to monitor your changes. You have the DNA that should make you a candidate for the transformation, but something is—it’s inhibiting you. I can’t figure out what it is.” She frowned down at Chloe’s file. “Your dad injected you with so many different serums, I don’t know if your own genetics are inhibiting the change or if it’s something—”
“That he did to me?”
Grimly, Holly nodded.
“I just don’t want to be a monster,” Chloe whispered.
Silence.
She looked up and saw that Holly had a guarded expression on her face. “Well…” Holly finally said, her voice considering, “there are lots of different monsters in this world. And those monsters aren’t all vampires and werewolves. Humans can be pretty screwed-up, too.”