Marked Clan #2 - Red (12 page)

“I won’t ask how you know that.”

He held up his hands. “Occupational hazard. I’ve done my fair share of slicing in the name of science.”

His phone beeped, and he looked at it like a nagging spouse. “Damn it. Time’s up. I’m back on rounds. Sorry we couldn’t have more time.”

I put the tumblers in the sink and washed my hands. “Oh yeah, quality time talking about carving people up. That’s my kind of a date. Or are we counting the wolf chase too?”

He came up behind me and slipped his hand over my waist. I felt him warm and firm against my back, and couldn’t help but lean back a little. “Why Doctor, I thought you said you had to be back on rounds? What
will
all those patients do if you get sidetracked examining little old me?”

He leaned in and nuzzled my neck. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

I thought it was just a line, but he actually pulled away and dragged me with him. “Wait, what? You
actually
want to show me something?”

He nodded. “I think you’ll want to see it.”

“Whatever gets you going, Doc. But you owe me a good examination soon.”

Justin drove me to one of the side entrances to the hospital. It didn’t have a handle on the outside, so someone had propped it open with an empty lab cart. From the sea of cigarette butts I figured this was where the staff took their breaks.

“If anyone asks, you’re a pre-med looking for some extra credit,” he said as he led me inside.

“Ooh, Doc, got a coed fantasy do we? Should I be wearing a sorority shirt and twirling my hair?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, but didn’t respond. I filed his reaction away for later. I’m pretty sure I had a college shirt in my closet somewhere for a rainy day.

The hospital must have been designed by a goddamned goblin for all the twisty passages and random turns we took. Finally, Justin pushed through a set of stainless steel doors into the morgue. Neat rows of metal storage units lined the walls, each one chilling a ripe human. I tried not to think about it too much. Yes, I fight wolves. I see lots of dead bodies, but they’re all still pretty much warm when I leave them. Pardon me if cold human meat on a slab kind of weirds me out.

Justin looked around one last time to make sure we were alone and pulled open one of the shelves. The man’s face was uncovered. Justin pulled the sheet down to his waist.

“I’ve seen a few gang tattoos in my time, but this one is new to me. Doesn’t look like the kind of mark the Hispanic gangs around here use.”

That’s because it was Celtic. My uncle could have done the work with this eyes closed. Of course, Connor’s medium of choice wasn’t blood. Rather than a tattoo, it looked like a brand. The skin was almost glossy like it had been burned. The traditional Celtic cross wound around in precise concentric lines, surrounding a rune. I didn’t know the meaning of it offhand, but I knew I’d seen it in Poppa’s book. This man was a wolf.

“Can you turn him on his side?” I asked. “I need to see his back.”

Justin nodded and pulled the body over. Sure enough, the same six-rune pattern was on the man’s back. Why the one on the front? It looked much newer than the others.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked.

“I saw that this guy was picked up near where I parked the other night. Is he one of the ones that attacked us?”

“Probably. The tattoos are a dead giveaway. Come around here.”

I motioned him over to my side and pointed out the runes. “They’re always the same number but the actual patterns are unique to the clan that made the first of them. This one wasn’t done by my direct bloodline, but definitely by someone in the clan.”

Justin laid the body back down. “What about that one?”

“No idea. Most of the ones I’ve seen only had the back. Never the front. It’s similar, but looks a lot rougher.”

“I’d say the wound is about six months old,” he said.

“Cut that estimate down a bit,” I said. “They heal in a blink of an eye. He could have been cut last week.”

“But silver, and your blood, kills them?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” I said. “You can lop off their heads too, but they don’t like to let you in that close unless they think you’re going to fuck them. Why are you so fascinated by this?”

He shook his head. “I’m convinced there’s a scientific reason for what I saw. There has to be. I’m not a superstitious person, PJ.”

“Yeah, Doc,” I said, “I didn’t used to be either.”

I caught myself chewing on my cross as I said it. I spat it out and turned away from the dead wolf. “Was this the only reason you wanted to see me? To learn more about a new science project?”

I heard the body being slid back into its locker, and then Justin’s warm arms wrapped around me. “Well, not the
only
reason. Did I tell you I also have a ‘redhead in a lab coat’ fantasy?”

Perfect fucking scenery for a romantic interlude, Doc—a glorified meat locker. I pulled him out of the morgue. Once we were in the hallway, I took his face in my hands and kissed him. “Okay. Where were we?”

He nodded down the hall. “You look a bit shaken, PJ. Perhaps I should examine you further.”

We kissed and he felt so warm against me. His hands ran up and down my back, pulling me in close to the front of his scrubs. Fuck, was I really going to do this here?

His mouth moved down to a spot on my neck just below my right earlobe. He kissed it, and I gave him a breathy whisper. “I hope you don’t have anything pressing to do for the next hour, because I really need to take some dictation.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“I really should know better than to have unprotected sex with strange women,” Justin said, as he got dressed. He had to cross my bedroom several times. I’m not gentle when disrobing someone. “I deal with blood-borne diseases all the time. STDs especially.”

He’d managed to keep me out of his pants long enough to come back to my apartment. His supervisor caught him on the way out, but I made up something about being a relative of one of his patients. He might have bought it, maybe. At that point, I didn’t really care.

“That’s why you’re so interested in the wolves,” I said. I hadn’t bothered to get dressed yet. No need for a girl to rush the afterglow. “You think it’s some kind of disease?”

He looked around like he was missing something. I followed his gaze to his keys, which had landed on the lampshade and cocked it askew. He plucked them off and looked at me.

“Why not? The Black Plague was considered a curse before we understood the nature of infections. Who’s to say there isn’t some genetic or pathogenic cause for this?”

I shook my head. “You’re saying the transformations, the mysterious tattoos, they’re all part of some sickness? Come on, Doc. Really?”

He leaned in and kissed me before he left. “Keep an open mind. I have so far.”

Once he was gone, I showered and did my best to make myself presentable to the outside world. Connor preferred if I joined the land of the living once in a while, and a little time behind the register would keep my mind off of wolf packs, diseases, and (perhaps the most disturbing) a budding relationship with a decent man.

I stood there in my Celtic Knot shirt and watched the afternoon clients give way to evening. We had one drunken guy we had to turn away, a happy couple looking for wedding bands on their fingers, and only one biker. He wanted a portrait of his infant daughter on his shoulder blade. The man in the suit came in around ten, just about the time I was ready to call it a night.

Connor was busy in the private room, so I walked onto the floor to greet him. He was very tall, well over six feet, and built like a wrestler. Scars ran up his neck like he’d been burned and had skin grafts. I tried not to stare.

“Evening. What can we do for you?”

He spoke with a rumbling voice that sounded like he’d smoked most of his life. I backed toward the counter when I finally saw his eyes. They were amber. He cracked a smile and showed me teeth much too large for a human face.

“I’m looking for something in a tattoo,” he said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a dagger very similar to the one Slate gave me. “I took the liberty of bringing my own tools.”

I felt the counter ram into my back and rang the little bell next to the register. Nothing happened. Where was Connor? No clit piercing was that important.

“Oh, don’t worry,” the man said. “We’re not to be disturbed. I’ve made sure of that.”

I whipped myself around the counter and reached for the gun Connor kept there. It wasn’t silver, but a headshot would disorient him enough to get to my pens upstairs. Maybe.

“Someone call for help?” a woman’s voice said. I looked over and saw Connor’s latest client, naked from the waist down and holding the grown man like a rag doll. It was Laurie Loveless, from the derby bout. How the hell did I let her past me? Was I that distracted?

“What did you do to him, bitch?” I screamed at her.

“He’s still alive,” the man said. He didn’t advance any more, just stood there with his arms crossed, tapping the dagger against his shoulder. “We don’t like to kill if we don’t have to. But that’s not really a problem for you, is it PJ?”

I pulled out the gun and fired. It should have been pretty much point blank—he was only a few feet away—but by the time the second bullet left the barrel he was behind me, pulling my shoulder out of its socket. I dropped the gun.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Donald Patterson,” he said. His English was just a little bit too unaccented, which made me think he had worked to lose it. Why?

“Tired of losing your pups, Donald?” I asked. I tried to see if Connor was hurt. The woman held him by the neck, but I didn’t see any bruising. Nothing was bent at an odd angle. He looked like he’d just passed out—or been smothered. I held my breath as I watched for his. Eventually I saw his chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” my captor said. He prodded me toward the front of the store with excruciating twists of my arm. He knew just the threshold before it popped out of the socket, and he was riding the line expertly.

“Lauren, if you please? My hands are full.”

The woman held the door for us and we stepped out into the night. We weren’t alone. A ring of people surrounded the front of the store, blocking off everything but an old, black Monte Carlo. Donald posed me in front of the group and spoke to them.

“
That
is how you do a simple pickup, you imbeciles. How the
fuck
could you have screwed it up so badly? She’s practically a goddamned teenager! Now somebody show some initiative and open it up!”

The trunk to the car popped, and I decided to hell with my shoulder. I turned so it finally dislocated, and my vision went bright with pain. I didn’t have any other weapons, so I bit down on my tongue and spat the blood at Donald’s face.

He apparently didn’t expect it, so he didn’t dodge this time. I tried to run back into the store and the woman socked me in the jaw hard enough to drop me to the sidewalk.

She pinned me down and one of the others bound my hands and feet. Before they slipped on a hood, Donald took my head in his hands. They scraped like concrete.

“Oh, you have some spirit, little pup, but you’re not the first of your kind I’ve dealt with. You’re not nearly ready to take me on. There’s too much confusion in your eyes. You’ll understand all this better soon enough. Just do us a favor—don’t bleed too much.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

I rode in darkness, struggling against my bonds the whole way. My wrists became slick with blood from where the ropes had rubbed my skin raw. Whoever drove must have taken lessons from Slate. Several times the car’s back wheels launched into the air and slammed me down against the floor.

As soon as they stopped, I heard muffled voices. The trunk opened, and something pricked me in the neck. Things were already black, but I went out just the same. I woke up facedown, my cheek pressed against a cold metal surface. I tried to pick up my head, but I was strapped down. From what little I could see, it looked like a mortician’s table.

A spotlight flipped on overhead, surrounding me with a halo of harsh yellow light. Donald stepped out from the shadows, holding the dagger he had in the shop. He wore a black robe now.

He spoke quietly, almost in prayer. I didn’t recognize the words, but I knew the language. Poppa had tried to teach me Gaelic many times, but I just didn’t have the knack for it. Now I wished very much I’d just sat the hell down and tried harder.

“Mother tongue of the Gaels,” Donald said finally. His usual careful speech, hiding his accent, stood in stark contrast to what he’d just said. “Still the best one for this kind of magic.”

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked. It came out more desperate than I meant. He answered by slipping the dagger down the neck of my shirt and pulling down sharply. He hit my bra strap on the way, and soon the chill from the room crawled over my whole back.

“Nothing your family hasn’t done for generations. We are breaking some new ground here though. I don’t believe it’s ever been done
to
you. I hope the spells are correct. Wouldn’t want you to die on me just yet.”

Yet? Jesus, PJ, why the hell didn’t you keep Poppa’s gun on you in the shop? Did you just think no one would bother attacking you there? You got comfortable, that’s what it was. Too fucking comfortable. Poppa wouldn’t have made that mistake. He nearly shot Dree on the spot the second he recognized her tattoos.

The first sting of the dagger ripped me out of my own head and back into the here and now. Donald continued reciting his prayer in Gaelic. I felt every stroke, every slit of the blade digging into my back. I’ve been cut before, but these were like nothing I’d ever felt. They burned as though the blade was white-hot. I lost track of how long he cut me.

“That’s one,” he said, punctuating it with a deeper stab below my shoulder blade. My vision went blinding white, and then I found myself in a forest.

I’m hallucinating from the pain. That must be it. But why can I feel the grass under my hands? The wind on my back? Why the
fuck
am I naked?