Call of the Wolf (17 page)

Too far for her to make in one dash without taking a bullet in the back, she realized, but there were cars between theirs and the woods. If she dodged behind them...?

Focusing on her senses, she tried to decide if she had a chance in hell of breaking their grip on her. The men weren't just boxing her in now. Each one of them had a bruising hold on her arms.

They'd have to let go, though, to push her into the car—at least one would. They'd be distracted, at least a little.

Horror washed over her in a cold tide as she saw Seth's cruiser pull up less that a car length from the sedan. The doors opened and both Seth and Adrian got out. Abby didn't know whether to feel hopeful or more fearful. They didn't know and she couldn't warn them without precipitating what she'd hoped she could avoid—a shoot-out in the school parking lot.

Seth's face was grim as he moved around the car and headed toward her and the two men. She met his gaze, trying to warm him with hers, shook her head fractionally. He didn't seem to notice even though he'd met her gaze briefly before transferring his attention to the two men.

She couldn't let him just walk right up on the bastards!

Ignoring the gun barrel in her ribs, she jerked on their holds abruptly. “Look out, Seth!” she screamed.

Time slowed. Fully expecting to feel a bullet slam into her, Abby was more dismayed when she felt the pressure disappear, turned her head in time to see that the man who'd held it there had whipped the barrel of the gun in Seth's direction. She screamed again, more terror in her voice than before, jerking wildly at the men to try to spoil his aim. “No! Seth!"

In horror, she watched as the bullet slammed into the center of Seth's chest and sent him reeling back. A second bullet drove Adrian back against the cruiser. She screamed and clawed at the men, kicking at them, trying to bite them when she couldn't get her hands free. Something hard slammed against the side of her head, rattling her brain in her skull, and then semi-darkness swarmed around her, time sped up as she felt herself pitch forward through the now open door of the sedan. The man who'd shoved her in, dove on top of her, knocking the breath from her.

She fought frantically to shove him off of her and get up, her entire focus on Seth and Adrian, her fear for own life completely forgotten as she fought the man. She had to see them! She had to know that her eyes had deceived her. They couldn't be dead! They couldn't be!

The jerking motion of the sedan as it squealed backwards out of the parking space in a tight swerve that still slammed the vehicle into the cars behind them, threw her against the man she was fighting and then into the floor board. She managed to sink her teeth into the hand holding the gun. It went off so close to her head, she thought at first that she'd been hit. The heat seared her cheek. The explosion of sound deafened her.

She screamed, driving her forehead into the man's face, bucking and shoving at him. The lurching path of the car was both help and hindrance to her and her assailant. As the car reeled on two wheels onto the road beyond the parking lot, though, rubber screaming, Thomas managed to lever himself onto the backseat. Grabbing her, he hauled her from the floor, slammed her against the seatback and backhanded her across the face.

Luckily, Abby was already in the act of trying to whip her head around for a glimpse of Seth and Adrian. The blow was glancing, knocking her into the window, but not hard enough to completely stun her.

"Holy fucking shit!” the driver roared abruptly, nearly standing up on the brake and making the car stand on its nose in the process.

Thomas, who'd been in the process of trying to find his gun on the floor, jerked his head up, gaped at whatever it was the other man had seen in front of them and whipped his head around to look back. “Put it in reverse ... fuck!” he finished as he caught sight of what Abby just had.

There was a mob of people—men—converging on them from seemingly every direction. Even as Abby gaped at them, however, they began to ... change before her bulging, unbelieving eyes as the driver gunned the engine, jerked the wheel, and plowed through the men in front of them.

Abby screamed as the car bucked and bodies began slamming into the front of the car. “Stop!” she cried, lurching to her feet and grabbing two fistfuls of the driver's hair, trying to wrench him lose from the steering wheel. The windows burst abruptly—every window in the car seemingly at once.

Abby screamed again, that time in terror as the most horrific looking creatures she'd ever seen that side of a nightmare poured through the gaping openings.

The men screamed.

The driver released his grip on the steering wheel and yanked a gun from his jacket. It was torn from his hand before he could level it.

Actually, his
hand
was torn from his arm before he could level it. Abby stared at the hand blankly as it flew across the seat, the pistol still gripped tightly by the fingers, and then darkness began to envelop her. The screams of the men, of pain and terror, the growls and snarls of the beasts, of absolute fury, faded into the distance. Her body, suddenly too heavy for her to hold herself up, began to slide down into the seat.

The door she was leaning against was abruptly wrenched open. She caught a brief glimpse of Seth's torn and bloodied uniform as she tumbled out, lifted her head to stare at the nightmarish face now protruding from the neck of the shirt, and closed her eyes, reaching for the blanket of darkness and trying to wrap it around her.

She was only partly successful. Complete unawareness eluded her. She felt the arms that caught her and lifted her, felt the hard chest she was cradled against. Seth's scent enveloped her as he held her close, and yet it wasn't Seth. More confusion joined the chaos in her mind.

"Seth?"

"It's alright, Baby,” he uttered in a rumbling growl of a voice that was a strange mixture of the man she knew and something she'd never knew existed.

It was the fear, she told herself, squeezing her eyes more tightly. “You're hurt!"

"I'm alright."

She tightened her grip on him, burrowing her face closer to his hairy neck.

Hairy?

"You were wearing a vest?"

He didn't answer. Instead he crouched, settling her carefully on the ground. She knew it was the ground. She could feel the prickle of grass and other debris through her clothes. When she opened her eyes cautiously, hoping against hope that the image she thought she'd seen would've vanished, her heart leapt into her throat. The creature that was bending over her, examining her for injury, only bore a faint resemblance to the man she'd thought she knew. As she pulled her gaze away, she discovered she was surrounded by them—others just like him, not man, not completely beast. They looked like horrific caricatures of themselves, but she recognized them—Cameron, Adrian, and Jerico.

"Is she alright?” Cameron growled.

"Were you shot, Abby? I can't find a wound."

Abby glanced at Seth when he asked the question, struggling with her memory. “The gun went off when I bit his hand,” she said, finally remembering.

He stroked a misshapen finger tipped with a two-inch claw along her cheek. She tried not shudder, but his eyes sharpened on her face. He studied her a moment and looked away. “I'll feel better if we take her to clinic anyway,” he responded to Cameron's question.

She tried to get up, but he scooped her up again before she could. She tried to resist settling against him, unnerved by the change in him, but discovered she was too dizzy to manage it. “Seth?"

"Later,” he growled.

Seth handed her off to Cameron when they'd reached his cruiser. “I'm not hurt, really,” Abby objected when she'd been settled in Seth's backseat with her head in Cameron's lap.

"Be still,
chère,"
Cameron growled, but she was relieved to see when she glanced sharply at him that he looked as he always had ... except for the fact that his clothes were tattered and bloody. “You aren't one of us. If the doctor says your ok, then we'll figure you're ok ... and not before."

Abby swallowed with an effort, having fixated on only part of the comments. “One of y'all?"

Something flickered in his eyes. “Wolfen,
chère.
We are Wolfen—Seth, me, Adrian ... Jerico."

And at least half the town, she added mentally, remembering how many men had surrounded the car.

"What happened...?"

He shook his head. Almost as if he couldn't resist, he touched the bruises on her face. She stiffened but didn't try to pull away. It didn't seem to matter. He seemed to sense her withdrawal. His lips tightened. “Let's just say you doan have to worry ‘bout those two anymore,” he muttered, grinning wolfishly.

Abby did shudder then. Fragmented images flickered through her mind. The only things she remembered, thankfully, with any clarity, though, was the hand flying across the car and a glimpse of the two men as they disappeared beneath a wave of the half-man, half-beast creatures who'd dragged them from the car.

Despite the fact that she sensed Cameron's withdrawal from her, she shifted closer, burrowing her face against his belly and wrapping her arms around his waist, trying to block the images from her mind. His hand settled in her hair after a moment, almost tentatively. “You are safe,
mon amour
,” he murmured. “Did we not promise, sweety, that no harm would come to you?"

"The bastards hit her!” Adrian growled from the front seat where he sat with Seth. “That's more harm than she should've come to! She had to fight them off herself, god's damn it! They could've killed her!"

Abby shuddered at the reminder, clutching Cameron more tightly.

"Shut up, Adrian!” Cameron snapped. “She's upset enough."

She was upset, but she couldn't seem to focus her mind on anything. Nightmarish images chased each other through her mind, alternating between the horror of seeing Seth and Adrian shot right in front of her, her fear of the men, and the nightmare of finding herself surrounded by creatures that were neither all man nor all beast but something frighteningly both.

How could they do that? How could they have ... changed? She couldn't accept that they had. She kept searching her mind for some explanation for what she'd thought she'd seen.

By the time they'd reached the clinic, though, she realized by far, most of her wrecked emotions were tied directly to the belief, however short lived, that she'd watched Adrian and Seth die. That one terrible scene kept replaying itself over and over in her mind until it was all she could do to maintain even a semblance of control.

It wasn't until Seth reclaimed her and carried her into the clinic that it even dawned on her to worry about what the doctor and the staff might make of the condition of the men. All four of them looked at least as bad as she did, maybe worse. She couldn't tell that any of them seemed hurt, even Seth and Adrian—which boggled her mind—but their clothes were shredded and bloodied.

No one seemed especially alarmed, she discovered. The doctor hurried forward almost as soon as they'd entered his reception. “Bring her into the examining room,” he ordered them, hardly even glancing at the condition of the men.

She was on the point of telling the doctor that both Seth and Adrian had been shot, that they had to be hurt worse than she was, but something stopped her, an unnamed fear that it was something best kept to herself.

None of the men left and, too her surprise, the doctor didn't suggest that they leave. He merely informed them to get back and stay out of his way. “She's in shock,” he muttered when he'd checked her pulse and respiration. “No huge surprise.” He flicked a glance at Seth that was almost accusing.

Seth's lips tightened. “Two thugs grabbed her at the school."

The doctor's brows rose, something flickered in his eyes, as if he was rapidly formulating what had transpired, and then he turned his attention to her again. “What happened?"

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Chapter Twelve

Abby clutched the blanket the nurse had given her, trying to draw warmth from it. “They said they had to remove me,” she said through chattering teeth. “I was worried the children would get hurt ... or some of the teachers. Not at first. I didn't realize they weren't Federal agents until I was in the hall with them—but I couldn't try to fight them there. I was afraid they'd just start shooting. I thought I'd try to get away after we were outside and away from the others."

The doctor flicked a glance at Seth again and patted her sympathetically. “What did they do to you?"

Abby frowned at him in incomprehension for a moment before she realized he was trying to find out where she might be hurt. “Oh.” She thought it over. “I think the one that called himself Agent Thomas hit me with his fist when I was fighting them at the car. I can't really remember. Everything ... it seemed to happen so fast."

The doctor examined her lips and then told her open her mouth.

She stared at him blankly but complied.

"I don't see any loose or broken teeth or cuts,” he said.

Abby felt her cheeks heat. She swallowed a little sickly. “I bit him."

Surprise and then amusement flickered in his eyes. “Not your blood then?” he murmured.

She hadn't realized her mouth was bloody. “Maybe some of it. He backhanded me when he finally got me into the seat. I think I might've bit my tongue."

The doctor examined her forehead. “Is that when you got the knot on your forehead?"

Abby squirmed a little uncomfortably, lifting a hand to examine the knot with her fingers. “I think I got that when I hit him with my head."

The doctor actually grinned at her. Sobering immediately, he held his hand up. “How many fingers?"

"Two?"

"You know what day it is?"

"Friday."

"Anything particular starting to hurt now that you've had a few minutes to calm down?” he asked her, examining her arms and hands, lightly pressing his fingers along her chest, her ribs, and then her abdomen before moving down to check her feet and legs.

Abby dutifully performed an internal examination, but she couldn't find any area that stood out. “I hurt all over,” she said finally, “but I think I'm just a little bruised and battered."

He patted her arm. “I think so, too. Just lie still for a bit."

He nodded at the nurse as he turned and left. With obvious reluctance, Seth and the others followed him. The nurse took her blood pressure again when they'd filed out, patted her arm and moved away to rifle through the cabinets. She returned a few minutes later and took blood and then left the room.

Abby lay staring at the ceiling, struggling against the drowsiness that began to take hold of her as soon as she began to feel a little warmer. The nurse breezed back in just about the time she started to nod off. “Don't go to sleep, sweety!"

Abby jerked. “I don't think I hit my head hard enough to get a concussion. It doesn't really hurt."

"You're probably right, but you need to stay awake. This'll help,” she muttered, taking a syringe and filling it.

"What's that?"

The nurse smirked. “Ordinarily, we'd be giving this to the guy you bit,” she murmured, “but ... antibiotics, just in case."

The sting of the needle did rouse her. The nurse took her blood pressure again, scribbled on the chart, and vanished once more. She drowsed despite the order to stay awake, losing awareness for a handful of minutes as the nurse and doctor took turns—mostly the nurse—flopping the door as they went out or came back in. She didn't have much concept of the passing time until her stomach grumbled. She realized then that it must be somewhere around lunch. It didn't seem possible in some ways. In others, it seemed as if eternity had passed.

Her entire world as she knew it had been turned upside down. As carefully as she tried to avoid thinking about everything that had happened earlier, it hovered like a dark cloud at the back of her mind, threatening to burst through the wall she was frantically trying to build to keep it back.

The doctor finally returned when Abby was contemplating getting off the examination table. “Ready to go?"

"I can leave?"

He nodded. “I told Seth and your other men that they needed to keep a close watch on you, but I think you'll be fine. I'm going to give you a little something to soothe your nerves. It shouldn't knock you out, but it'll probably relax you enough to make you want to sleep. If you still aren't experiencing any symptoms of concussion—nausea or vomiting—it'll be safe enough to take a little nap when you get home."

Seth and her other men, Abby thought blankly?

She merely nodded, though, flinched when he gave her yet another shot, and sat up when he grasped her wrists and tugged her upright.

"Dizzy?"

Abby dropped her hand from her head. “A little,” she admitted reluctantly.

The doctor studied her alertly for a moment. “Now?"

She shook her head. “It passed."

He helped her down from the table and walked her out. She was more than a little surprised to discover that all four men were still waiting, Seth in the waiting room, and Cameron, Adrian, and Jerico pacing outside.

The silence in the car on the ride to her house was far more uncomfortable than it had been the night before. Abby had to suppose that whatever the doctor had injected her with to ‘calm her nerves’ was some seriously potent shit. She didn't feel the least bit threatened or frightened climbing into the car with a bunch of—whatever they were—Wolfen, Cameron had said.

"What's a Wolfen?” she asked Seth curiously as soon as they'd entered her kitchen.

His expression hardened. “I'm Wolfen,” he growled, moving away from her and jerking the door of the refrigerator open.

She stared at his broad back for a moment and then glanced around at Cameron and Adrian as they followed her in. “And Cameron and Adrian are Wolfen?"

Jerico reached the backdoor. “And I'm Wolfen."

Abby blinked at him and then turned to look at Cameron questioningly. “But what
is
a Wolfen? I don't understand that. I really don't. I don't understand anything that happened!” She thought it over. “Ok, so I do understand those guys wanted to blow my head off—the rest I don't understand. How did you do that? Just ... change? Why aren't you hurt?” she asked Adrian. “I saw him shoot you. I know I did."

Her face crumbled abruptly. She turned to look at Seth miserably. “I thought you were dead! I saw him shoot you!"

He released a sound of irritation, slammed the door of the refrigerator, and surged toward her. Abby fell into his arms, hugging him tightly. “I was so ... scared, Seth!” she mumbled brokenly, feeling hot tears ooze between her lashes.

Seth squeezed his eyes tightly shut, struggling against the emotions churning inside him, fighting to tame the beast he held barely in check. He'd known he didn't dare touch her, not when his blood was still surging through him, scalding him, when the images in his mind were still tormenting him. They'd died too fast, he thought grimly. He hadn't vented the rage he'd needed to and it was still boiling inside of him like acid.

In the back of his mind, he knew it was a mistake even when he went to her, but he couldn't ignore her confusion and hurt, the fear he still sensed in her, even knowing a lot of it was him—because of what he was. He couldn't ignore his own need to hold her, to feel her reassuring warmth and the beat of her heart, to
feel
that he hadn't lost her. He felt his control slip as she clung to him, tightened his arms around her crushingly.

She was his, he thought savagely.
His!
And they'd tried to take her from him, would've killed her if she hadn't been a fighter. His fear for her had made him witless and helpless in the face of the threat. They should never have managed to get so far with her, shouldn't have managed to get her in that fucking car. Her danger had magnified ten times over because he'd been so afraid he'd hurt her himself if he attacked the bastards that he'd been frozen in indecision ... too long.

"Not nearly as scared as I was,” he said hoarsely, releasing his bruising grip around her abruptly and capturing her face between his palms. He dipped, brushing his lips lightly over her face, nuzzling her neck, absorbing her scent to assuage the need burning in him. It was like throwing gasoline on fire, though, sent his control skittering out of reach. Tilting his head, he fitted his mouth to hers, sucked hungrily at her lips and then thrust his tongue into her mouth in a simulation of mating with her, tasting her, absorbing her soul deep where he ached for her.

And for a handful of seconds, that was enough, but no more. A red haze clouded his mind, pushed rational thoughts far to the background of his mind. Mine, he thought, suddenly too desperate to claim her to heed the doubts still clamoring in the back of his mind.

In his heart and soul, he knew he was hers and that she belonged to him just as surely.

An avalanche of sensations crashed over Abby, the need for reassurance she hadn't even realized she was seeking giving way instantly to a lava flow of heat that seared her all the way to her core. She kissed him back feverishly, sucking at his tongue frantically as he thrust it into her mouth, wanting to absorb him into herself.

Her head spun with dizziness when he caught her and turned with her, setting her on the counter and shoving her dress up her thighs.

"Seth!"

Seth whipped his head around to look at Cameron when he spoke, narrowing his eyes at his rival. “Stay back!” he snarled, pinning Cameron with his gaze before turning back to Abby and nuzzling his face against her neck, yielding to the urge, the desperate need to mark her in the face of Cameron's challenge. He felt her flinch as he nicked her with the edge of his teeth and sucked at the sting to sooth it. She moaned, dug her fingers into his hair, clutching him tightly as he lifted his head and nipped at her lips. It sent a surge of triumph through him, darkened his mind.

"Mine!” he muttered in a low, warning growl as he caught the scent of rage and lust in the others. He covered her mouth again, drinking her, soaking up her essence.

Still dimly aware of the others, Abby found she didn't care. All that mattered was the feel of Seth's arms around her, the caress of his fingers, the shaking eagerness she felt in him as he caught the edge of her thong and snapped the harrow band at her waist. He stroked a hand upward beneath her dress to squeeze one breast and then down again to brush her cleft, his hands seemingly everywhere at once.

Her heart leapt in her chest as she felt the thick stroke of his cock replace his fingers, nudging her cleft. Eager, she opened her legs wider for him, lifted them, wrapping them around his narrow waist, shifting closer when she felt his flesh connect with her body where she needed him most. He looped one arm around her hips, lifting and pulling her to him, thrusting into her without further preliminary, as if he couldn't wait any longer.

She curled her arms around his shoulders a little frantically when he began jabbing at her channel with his cock, jogging her up and down in counter to his short forays to embed his flesh fully inside of her. She gasped as his hard, thick member battled her channel for supremacy and finally won, sinking so deeply into her she felt her body quake in delight. Awareness narrowed to the deep connection between them. She felt his desperation, felt her own skyrocket. It took no more than a dozen deep, frantic thrusts for either of them before ecstasy exploded around them, rocking them.

Abby groaned as she felt her body convulse, felt shockwaves of the purest pleasure burst outward from her core and ripple through her entire body. Uttering a harsh, grating sound, Seth stiffened. A shudder traveled through him and then Abby felt his cock jerk inside of her, felt the heat as he came, bathing her channel with his semen.

Shivering in the aftermath, feeling a warming sense of gratification and satisfaction that she'd given him pleasure, she clung tightly to him, trying to gather her wits. Even as she loosened her grip on him, began to lean away from him, though, he was wrenched from her so abruptly she nearly fell off the counter.

Blinking in stunned surprise, she stared at Cameron as he grabbed Seth's shoulder, jerking him around and punching him the face in almost the same movement, so hard that Seth flew backwards across the kitchen, scattering the kitchen table and chairs in every direction.

Cameron grabbed her, dragged her off the counter and strode from the kitchen with her.

Thoroughly bemused, she gaped at Seth as he bounded up from the splintered dining table, his features contorted in a mask of fury.

The door of her room as it slammed cut off the view of Seth charging toward them. Before she could even grasp his intent, Cameron threw her to the bed, following her down so quickly that she merely bounced up to meet him. He sank his teeth into the crook between her neck and shoulder as Seth had, sucking at the sting almost before it had fully registered.

The door of her room flew open just as Cameron thrust into her, aided despite the length and thickness of his cock, by the moisture that still bathed her channel from moments before. Seth halted as if he'd hit a wall when he saw Cameron plow deeply into her, arching his back, his face a mask of tortured pleasure. Cameron whipped his head around at the intrusion, however. “Mine!” he snarled through gritted teeth at Seth.