The Lonely Wolf (16 page)

“Quintilius—” Caelum’s face was withdrawn, his posture slouched. He had been more than an hour alone with Camelia, and he looked worse for the wear.

When the warlock paused a moment too long, Quintilius’s heart froze in his heart. “Don’t spare me.”

Caelum gave him a small smile. “I’ve given her last rites and helped her wolf calm down.” He opened his arms to the side. “Now, she must fight and convince the Great Wolf she wants to live.”

Peter patted Caelum’s arm. “Thank you.”

“Yes, thank you,” Quintilius hurried to say. “It means a lot to me.”

“No need to thank me. I’ve had the pleasure to meet Camelia, and I would’ve come even if Ophelia hadn’t called me.” Caelum swayed and reached out to steady himself against a column.

“I’ll grab a coffee for you.” Peter turned on his heels and strode away, followed by Ophelia.

“Tell me she’s going to make it.” Quintilius knew the warlock was exhausted and needed to recharge his energy, but he needed reassurance even if none could be given.

Caelum bit his lower lip, then shook his head. “Her aura is frail, alpha.”

“What about her wolf?” Placing a hand over Caelum’s arm, Quintilius steered him toward the adjacent room where there was a couch.

“Her wolf is stronger than she is, but she hasn’t run in so long, she doesn’t remember what it feels to be alive anymore. She will abide Camelia’s decision.” Caelum lowered himself to the cushion.

Quintilius swore under his breath.

“Camelia has been practicing her healing art, and that has saved her body from the vampire’s attack, but there’s something else, a malevolent force at work inside her.” Caelum leaned his head on the backrest.

“What kind of force?” Quintilius asked.

“I can’t say, but I’ve lent her strength to battle against it.” Caelum let out a long breath, then closed his eyes

“Let him rest,” Ludwig said from the doorway.

“I can’t lose her.” Quintilius left the warlock alone and exited the room.

“You won’t.” The angel regarded him with his beautiful, sad eyes that saw inside his soul. “She knows she’d kill you too.”

“Have we been so wrapped up in our story that we didn’t see how many people we hurt in the process?” More and more lately, Quintilius had asked himself that question. “Did love make us conceited?”

“I don’t know. But I love you still, and I can’t change it.” Surprising Quintilius with the sudden action, Ludwig grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him close. “So I’ll change all the rest.”

The angel’s mouth descended upon Quintilius’s before he could do anything to stop him.

“I don’t care if the whole of Rome is watching us,” Ludwig said to his ear after the stolen kiss.

“Ludwig—”

“I’m done with all the hypocrisy. If loving you makes me less of an angel, so be it. I never liked being one in the first place.” Still holding his arm, Ludwig lowered his forehead to Quintilius’s. “I’m tired of hiding.”

Peter and Ophelia walked in on them, and out of habit, Quintilius stepped away from the angel. If the two had thought their closeness strange, it didn’t show on their faces.

“We brought some for you as well.” Peter offered him a fuming Styrofoam cup. “It’s hospital coffee, but better than nothing.”

“And fresh croissants had just arrived from the bakery. So at least those are good.” Ophelia showed them the tray with assorted breakfast pastries.

Taking the cup from Peter, Quintilius shook his head at Ophelia. “Thank you, but I’m not hungry.”

“You should eat something.” The worry in Ludwig’s voice was hard to miss, but yet again, neither Peter nor Ophelia reacted to the angel’s overly familiar behavior toward Quintilius.

“Yes, please, just have this one. It’s small.” Ophelia picked one of the croissants for him. “Please?”

The ICU’s door opened, and the doctor who had admitted Camelia came out. His eyes searched among the small crowd and lit in recognition when he found Quintilius.

“Mr. Quintilius—”

Leaving the cup in Ludwig’s hand, he was at the doctor’s side a blink of an eye later. “How is she?”

“We did everything we could. In her condition, it’s hard to make predictions. Had she been able to shift, I would’ve said she would recuperate in a few months. But given her inability to free her wolf, we’ll have to wait and see. Medicine can only do so much.” Sporting the same dark circles under his eyes as everyone else working in the ICU, the doctor hugged himself. “I’m glad you called the warlock. He’s well known here. His empathy and strong knowledge of aural magik have saved more than one patient we thought had no hope of survival. Sometimes, what needs to be cured is the soul more than the body.” His gaze went to the door. “In the meantime, we’ve run a full battery of tests and we are waiting for the results. I’ll keep you informed.”

“I need to see her,” Quintilius said.

The paramedics had let him in the ambulance with her, but at the hospital, Camelia had been taken directly to ICU, and Quintilius’s last image of her was one he wanted to forget.

“It’s not possible now.” The doctor passed a hand over his stubble. “But I promise, I’ll let you know as soon as she’s stable enough to visit.”

With a murmured thanks, Quintilius let the doctor go and motioned for Ludwig to come closer. During his conversation with the doctor, the angel had stayed a step behind, but Quintilius had felt his warmth.

“Is there anything I can do?” Ludwig asked.

“Can you take a day off?” The unfairness of his request wasn’t lost on Quintilius. After proclaiming he didn’t want to see Ludwig, at the first occasion, he denied his own words. But he was in pain and needed his angel by his side.

“For you? Of course.” Ludwig took his hand in his.

“Then stay with me.”

****

The first light of dawn illuminated Jasmine’s curves, making her look like a sculpture.

“Sand dunes.” Lupo slowly traced the contour of her hipbone.

They had spent almost two days at Reserve, making love, never tiring, foregoing the pangs of hunger to fulfill their desire to know each other at every possible level.

“Hmm?” Half-asleep, Jasmine frowned.

“Your curves make me think of the Sahara desert, beautiful and wild, like you.”

She smiled with her eyes closed and murmured, “You’re pretty too.”

A cold breeze caressed her naked body and she shivered, goosebumps covering her skin all over. Lupo spooned her, covering as much of her as he could and hugging her tight against him. When she stopped shaking, he loosened his hold to let his hands wander up and down, caressing and teasing her.

They hadn’t slept a lot, maybe a few minutes of dozing. Lupo knew the sensible thing would be to let her nap, and to rest himself, but Jasmine was soft and welcoming, and sleep eluded him.

“It might be your scent, your Purist genes, the fact that your luscious body matches mine like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but whatever it is, I simply can’t have enough of you, my sweet, lethal panther.” He adjusted her to accommodate him and tilted her chin to kiss her soundly.

Her moans drowned out the chirping and the river, and he was lost in her, his mind and body one with Jasmine once again.

From a distance, a foreign noise intruded upon their privacy. At first, Lupo was too far gone to pay any attention to the droning sound. But his wolf was on alert and nudged Lupo’s consciousness.

I’m busy,
he said to his wolf with a mental push to get lost.

Danger,
his wolf snarled back, then stamped his feet on the ground. The fur on his back rose, and his fangs came out.

In the middle of a scorching kiss, Lupo stopped and listened, then swore.

Jasmine pushed at Lupo’s chest. “What is it?”

“We’ve got visitors.” He sat, then stood and brought her up with him. Looking around, he found her chiton crumpled on the ground and handed it to her. “Get dressed. We’re leaving.” His tunic was flat on the grass where she had been lying, he picked it up and donned it in one hurried move. The fabric was warm from her body, and it smelled like her. Concentrating was going to be hard, but he didn’t have a choice, so he dumped a mental ice bucket on his hot thoughts—he recalled an unfortunate memory of the one time he caught the orphanage rector in her underwear—and grabbed Jasmine’s hand.

“Really?” Jasmine asked.

“It works every time.” Running up the slope, he directed her toward the fence instead of the gate. “Do you think you can leapfrog it?”

“I’m a panther.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He squeezed her hand and let her go only when they were in front of the fence. “Now.”

They cleared the barrier at the same time and landed a few centimeters apart on the other side. From there, they reached the car at full speed.

Once in the beamer, she finally asked, “Who do you think they are?” pointing her chin toward the wake of dust made by a car fast approaching.

Their pursuers were eating the dirt road bordering Reserve, the same Lupo had used, but in the opposite direction he had arrived from.

“Too early to say, besides the fact that they are clearly after us.” Several scenarios played in his mind, and he realized that, for the first time in his life, he had someone else to keep safe. Partly scared by this new responsibility, but highly motivated by it, he turned the car around, then floored the accelerator and burned out of the glade.

The beamer’s engine roared, and its tires left deep trenches on the soft soil as Lupo drove on the dirt road. He pushed the BMW to its limits, changing gears as fast as he could, trying to outdrive the vehicle behind them, which he now could see was a police car.

“Mortals.” Lupo smashed his hand against the steering wheel. “I should’ve known the car had some kind of tracking system.” He cursed and hit the accelerator again, but the beamer was already at its fastest.

As soon as they left the limits of the forest and entered the asphalted thoroughfare, a road sign indicated they were entering municipal territory. The moment the police car passed the sign, its siren went on.

“They will soon call for backup. Hold on.” Pushing on the brake and steering right, he swerved to enter a narrow street that lead toward thick woods and coasted a rugged cliff.

The police car made the same maneuver and followed, forcing Lupo to speed and turn again, until the tires skidded over the uneven ground, raising rocks that were hurled behind. Several pelted the police car’s front window, slowing it, but despite the moment of reprieve, the police were soon behind the beamer in hot pursuit. The siren’s jarring sound hurt Lupo’s sensitive ears, but he kept forging ahead, navigating the now narrowing road that he could see would become a goat trail a few curves ahead.

Lupo cleared the first bend, the beamer beautifully drifted along the curve until it swerved when hitting the straight, making him tighten his grip on the steering wheel. His eyes never left the road, and he forced himself not to think of the jump into the abyss they would make if he made a mistake.

Bend after bend, he pushed the BMW a few meters ahead of the police car. A long series of curves put his reflexes to the test, and yet he never lost his focus.

Until one of the tires got entangled in a tree root he saw too late. The beamer flew to the right, and he couldn’t straighten its mad dash toward the edge. In an attempt to protect Jasmine, he pushed her back to the seat with his right arm.

It all happened in the blink of an eye. One moment the BMW was on the road, the next it was airborne, and Jasmine was screaming.

The car overturned several times as it hit the rock wall, and Jasmine was thrown against the window that broke on impact. Her seatbelt rose to her throat, strangling her. One arm pinned between the seat and the door, Lupo tried to loosen her seatbelt with the other, but the car kept spinning. Black dots danced before his eyelids.

The last thing Lupo heard before blacking out was his mate screaming for help.

“Sure. Let me make a few phone calls first.” Reluctantly, Ludwig let go of Quintilius and walked outside of the hospital where he could use his phone.

His preoccupation with Quintilius’s personal life had set back his vampire murders investigation, but he hadn’t completely forgotten about his job. In fact, while he was otherwise engaged at Castel Gandolfo, a few of his contacts had answered his queries with possible suspect names. Once home, he had finally discovered the emails waiting for him on his laptop. He had read them a full day later, but the leads seemed promising.

Skirting the smokers grouped a few meters from the hospital entrance, he walked all the way around the corner and down the ramp to have some privacy. Turning on his cell phone—a spare he kept in his apartment—he saw that there was the dreaded call from Azahel, which he promptly deleted, but also three missed calls from the Immortal Council, and the extension belonged to the Enforcer’s office. He was about to call them, when, halfway through the ramp, a call arrived. The name Dana Tazen appeared on the screen. He was an elf, and one of Ludwig’s longtime informants. Although of a flamboyant nature, Dana had never given him bad information.

“Ludwig Barnes,” he answered, leaning against the wall. Absentmindedly, he watched ambulances drive by the end of the ramp where the entrance to the ER was located.

“It’s me, Dana. I heard you’re fishing for sewer rats.” The elf sounded skittish.

“Hi, Dana. How many times have I told you to stop talking in code?” Ludwig pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t tired—he had never felt physical fatigue since being created—but he was mentally exhausted. “Are you high?”

“Of course not.” Dana’s voice was definitely one octave too high. “I have good information for you. Are you buying?”

“It depends if it’s pertinent to my current investigation or not.”

Amidst a din of sirens, an enforcer car and two ambulances entered the courtyard downstairs.

“Vampires are offing themselves,” Dana said.

“Do you have any proof of that?” Ludwig had entertained himself with that scenario before. Vampires were a devious race and capable of anything.

“How much is that proof worth to you?”

“Show me concrete evidence of what you’re saying, and I’ll pay for your rehab.” One eye on the frenetic activity taking place a few meters below, Ludwig sighed. He and Dana had played this game before, so many times that he wondered when the elf would finally give in and say yes to his offer.

“I don’t need no rehab. I’m no druggie.” Not this time.

“Dana—” Ludwig’s attention was diverted when he saw the first patient being wheeled toward the ER. A still form, all covered in black, lay on the stretcher. It took him a moment to realize he was looking at a Purist woman.

“I said I don’t need rehab, ‘cause I’m clean.”

“If you say so—”

Another stretcher was unloaded from the second ambulance. A Purist woman lay on that one too, and she was so big and tall, her muscular legs dangled outside. Her wrists were shackled together. An enforcer had ridden with her and stayed by her side. The big Purist woman seemed very agitated, making it difficult for the nurses to hold the stretcher that buckled and swayed under her weight.

“Archangel, are you with me?”

“Dana, give me something and we’ll talk.” Ludwig hung up and hurried down to the courtyard. Something didn’t add up with the whole scene.

Then the big woman cursed a long string of obscenities, and Ludwig realized she was a man from the deep voice.

“What’s going on here?” Ludwig asked the enforcer, an immortal he had worked with on a few occasions.

Meanwhile, the nurses placed the stretcher over a wheeled lift system.

“Archangel.” Relief on his face, the enforcer bowed slightly. “I’m glad you arrived.” He scratched his chin, giving the black figure—who had gone still—a brief glance. “This guy asked for you specifically, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed, since a Purist woman was involved. We’ve already called the liaison to deal with the family, of course.”

Once the stretcher was safely strapped on its wheels, one of the nurses said, “Sorry to interrupt, but we need to take the patient inside—”

Ludwig raised one hand to stop the nurse. “Just a moment. He isn’t going to die any time soon, don’t worry.” Thanks to one of his many powers, he had scanned the man for internal bleeding or ruptured organs and had found none. At his words, the nurse relaxed, and he addressed the immortal. “I don’t know what you are talking about.” Ludwig reached down for the veil covering the man’s face.

The moment he pulled up the fabric and enough of the man’s features were revealed, Ludwig couldn’t help but shake his head in disbelief.

Staring back at him from the stretcher, Lupo Solis murmured, “Archangel.”

“I’m confused. Didn’t you receive a call from the office?” the enforcer asked, looking from Ludwig to Lupo and back again.

Ludwig nodded. “Several calls, in fact, but I wasn’t reachable. Bring me up to speed.”

“This guy was in an accident and went off-road while being chased by a police car. After exiting the stolen car he had just wrecked, he knocked out the two policemen and used their phone to call us. He said he was a wanted person and that you were looking for him, and that he would surrender himself if we flew to his location and saved the girl who was with him. We didn’t expect to find a Purist—” The enforcer let out a long suffered breath and stared down at Lupo. “Why this idiot would kidnap a Purist woman is beyond me. He risks the death penalty, according to her tribe’s law.”

“We’ll see what we can do to solve this mess. You can go now. I’ll take it from here.” Ludwig made a sign to Lupo, who had stirred, to keep quiet. “Free him.”

“Are you sure?” The officer’s eyes roamed up and down the big werewolf clad in the black garment, then looked up at Ludwig with a puzzled expression.

“I can control a cub, don’t you worry.”

The enforcer blanched. “Of course, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay. Just remove his shackles.” Ludwig pointed his chin toward Lupo.

The enforcer made a fast job at freeing Lupo’s hands from the silver manacles that had left angry marks on his wrists.

To the nurses who kept looking at him but didn’t dare interrupt, Ludwig said, “Let’s go.” Then he turned to the immortal. “Send me your report by the end of the day, thanks.”

“Will do.” The enforcer saluted Ludwig, then walked back to the car where his colleague was waiting, and after a brief exchange of words, they left.

“What did you do?” Following the stretcher, Ludwig asked Lupo as the nurses wheeled him inside the hospital.

“Pretty much what the enforcer said.” Lupo grimaced when the stretcher bumped against a wall. “Would you be careful?”

One of the nurses raised his hand in apology.

“Care to elaborate?” Ludwig asked Lupo.

“Not really, but it’s not like I have an option here.” Despite his bravado, the werewolf’s shaky voice and clenched teeth betrayed he was in a lot of pain.

“Archangel, are you coming in?” one of the nurses asked when they stopped before a door.

“Yes, I am.” He let them enter the room, and since the space was small, he waited outside while the nurses transferred Lupo to the bed, checked his vitals, and hooked him to two saline bags before leaving them alone.

Knowing that a doctor would come in soon, Ludwig walked to Lupo’s side and asked, “So?”

“I screwed up and put my mate in danger.” Lupo tried to rearrange his large body on the bed that, even though was twice the size of the stretcher, was still too narrow for his frame. “I need to know she’s okay.”

“Let me help you.” With one arm around Lupo’s shoulders and the other on his elbow, Ludwig hoisted the werewolf up. “I’ll ask about the girl, and I’ll let you know.”

Lupo slumped down on the pillow. “Thanks.”

“Did you kidnap her?”

“Yes and no.”

To Ludwig’s death stare, Lupo added, “At the moment, I didn’t give her lots of choice in the matter, but she was willing.”

“That’s what you’re going to say to her parents?”

Lupo chuckled, then choked on a yelp.

“What’s so funny?”

“Jasmine asked me the same thing.” The sounds from outside seeped in through a small rectangular window by the ceiling, and Lupo’s expression sobered and darkened. His eyes shone with unshed tears. “If something happens to her…”

“She’s a panther. She’s young and strong, and as soon as she’s able to shift, she’ll heal completely.”

Lupo shook his head slowly and said, “The car rolled along the escarpment. We were spinning, and it felt like being inside a dryer full of nails. I’m used to a good beating, but that was something else. And it wasn’t just me. I had my mate to think about. Things went flying around the car. I think the glovebox opened, and I don’t know what was inside, but something hit her head—” Lupo’s eyes became unfocused. “Jasmine screamed and screamed, and I tried to reach her, but I couldn’t. Then the car hit the ground and skidded to a halt. There was dust everywhere. I coughed, but she didn’t. She was silent. I immediately tore the seatbelt out of the way, and I went for hers.” Lupo blinked. “When I saw her like that, blood seeping through her tunic, her chest barely moving, her head tilted at that impossible angle. I touched her, and she didn’t respond. She looked —” His chest rose then, and he gulped. “For a moment, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I…” He choked on the last word. “I saw the policeman approaching to help us, and I acted.”

Sensing the cub needed to vent, Ludwig let him talk without interrupting him.

“One punch to the temple was enough to knock the first policeman unconscious, then I sent the other to sleep as well. I searched the second policeman for a cell phone, and when I found it, I called 999. She was too broken inside to make it. I didn’t have a choice. I don’t care if you send me to Regina Coeli, but I need to know she’s going to be okay.”

At the thought of those two kids’ unfair fate, a sense of protectiveness toward Lupo filled Ludwig, surprising him. “I understand.”

After a brief moment of silence, Lupo asked, “Are they already here, her parents?”

“I don’t know, but your father is.”

“What’s he doing here?” The young werewolf’s demeanor changed. He became alert and his wolf growled.

“A coincidence.” Ludwig pondered about what to do next, then said, “I’ll inform him you are here.”

“What if I don’t want to see him?” Hurt showing on his face, Lupo turned toward the wall.

“Then you won’t see him, but he must know what happened to you.”

A knock on the door announced the arrival of the doctor, who asked Ludwig to wait outside as he visited the patient. He heard Lupo immediately enquire about the Purist girl, but the doctor answered that only family could be notified about her health.

Instead of waiting, Ludwig decided to track down whomever was treating the girl and exercise his archangel’s influence to get some information. Then he would go upstairs and talk to Quintilius, because even without his supervision, he trusted that the boy wasn’t going to run anywhere without his mate.

****

In the last thirty minutes, neither doctor nor nurse had come out of the ICU to give Quintilius an update. He had retired to the waiting room, where Caelum was being fussed over by Ophelia, and Peter kept himself out of the way. When Ludwig appeared at the door, Quintilius worried. He knew by heart every nuance of the angel’s expressions, and at the moment, Ludwig’s narrowed eyes and the harsh set of his jaw meant he had bad news.

From the entry, Ludwig tilted his head toward the hallway and said, “May I talk to you, in private?”

With a heavy heart, Quintilius told Ophelia he would step out for a bit and joined Ludwig outside.

After a moment of silence, Ludwig steadied his stance, pushed his hands into his jeans’ rear pockets, and said, “Your son is here.”

It took a moment for Quintilius to process Ludwig’s words. When he did, a new form of fear invaded him. “Lupo’s here, at the hospital. Why?”

“He was in an accident—”

“Is he… okay?”

“Yes, he’s fine. A little battered, but he’ll be up in no time. I didn’t detect anything major.”

“I want to see him.”

“I thought so.”

“But?”

“You might have to wait.”

“He doesn’t want to see me.”

“He’s young and hurt.”

“What happened to him?”

Ludwig briefly summarized for Quintilius what Lupo had told him. “I just talked to the surgeon who’s about to operate on Jasmine. She was badly injured, and it’s a miracle her spine didn’t break all the way through. Her head is attached to her body by not even a millimeter of bone. If she makes it, it’s only because Lupo called the enforcers. We can only hope for the best.”

Head reeling with the amount of information he had just assimilated, Quintilius said, “What about her family? Have they been informed?”

Nodding, Ludwig massaged his temple. “Samuel has been called to talk to the family. If you give me permission, I can have a heart-to-heart with the fallen beforehand and explain the situation.”

If there was something Quintilius hated, it was asking for favors, and yet he immediately said, “Yes, please. As the appointed liaison, he can make them see reason. Lupo and the girl are already mated, I suppose?” He hadn’t even met his son yet, and he had to pacify irate in-laws already.

“Yes, you can smell her scent all over him. He didn’t waste any time.” Ludwig scoffed, but his words were soft and had a hint of longing, as if he were talking of someone dear to him.

Quintilius had noticed once before that the angel seemed to have taken a liking to Lupo, and he knew Ludwig’s keen sense of observation was never wrong. The boy had made an impression, and Quintilius couldn’t wait any longer to meet his son. “I want to see him.”

“Let’s go downstairs, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”

The angel smiled at him, one of his smiles that were private and meant only for the two of them. “No worries.”

But Quintilius knew that what Ludwig was doing for him wasn’t a small thing.

They walked in silence, their arms close, their fingers almost hooking, and as the backs of their hands touched in furtive brushes, Ludwig’s strong presence comforted Quintilius. Sometimes, when melancholia hit, he wondered if he had fallen in love with the angel because he was so much bigger than him. Always the biggest and the strongest, Quintilius liked to be small for once.