Wolfen Domination (11 page)

            Erin stared back at him with a mixture of guilt
and trepidation.

            What he might have said or done she was never to
know.  At that moment, he lifted his head, gazing up at the ceiling.  Startled,
she looked up, too.  Moments ticked past and then she, too, heard the sound
that had drawn his attention.

            The thrum of helicopter blades bouncing off of
the trees.

            Rage filled his eyes as he looked down at her
again.  “You
bitch
!  You brought them with you!” he ground out through
gritted teeth.

            Erin felt her jaw go slack with stunned
surprise.  “I didn’t!  You have to believe me, Jesse!  I didn’t know!”

            He leapt off her, sprang from the bed even as he
adjusted his jeans.  Before her horrified gaze, he shifted.  She screamed in
terror at the look he bent upon her, but after hesitating only a moment, he
leapt through the window with a crash of shattering glass and vanished from her
sight.

            Briefly, relief flooded through her, but it was
very brief.  If he was right and it was them, she had to flee.  Her arms landed
on her body so hard the club they made knocked the breath out of her.  It had
taken every ounce of will power she could muster even to move them that much. 
Gritting her teeth, she struggled to work feeling into her arms and finally
managed to sit up.  Her fingers were stiff and uncooperative.

            Doing her best to ignore the approach of the
helicopter as it drew steadily closer, she wiggled her fingers and finally sat
up, leaning to reach for the binding around first one ankle and then the
other.  She was weeping with fear and frustration by the time she managed to
free her ankles.

            They were close.  The sound had become near
deafening.

            She was stark naked, but she didn’t have time to
grab anything even if she could’ve pulled it on with her wrists still bound.

            If she could elude them, she could come back for
something to wear.

            She saw the chopper hovering just above the trees
as she reached the edge of the porch.  Even as she stared up at it, lines
dropped and men began repelling down them like spiders dropping from spun web. 
Leaping off the porch, she glanced around a little frantically.  It was full
daylight, and too late to hope they hadn’t spotted her.

            She suspected it was Jesse they wanted most,
though, and he’d had plenty of time to disappear into the swamp.

            There was no boat at the dock and she certainly
couldn’t swim with her hands still ties and her arms still woefully
uncooperative.  Finally, she dashed around the side of the cabin, searching the
tree line for a path.  Seeing nothing, she ran toward the woods anyway, leaping
over the tall fronds of wild ferns, praying she wouldn’t land on a cotton mouth
or a rattle snake--or a gator.

            She hadn’t made it far into the brush when she
was body slammed.  The breath left her lungs in a painful rush as she landed on
the ground with the man on top of her.

            She screamed, slinging her bound hands at the man
like a bat.  The struggle was a frustratingly short one.  Before she’d managed
to club him more than twice, someone else seized her arms.  The soldier that
had tackled her grabbed her legs.  She kicked at him, managing to free one foot
long enough to really piss him off by kicking him in the face.  He lost his
cool, leaping to his feet and kicking her several times before the guy holding
her arms released his grip on her and shoved him back.  “Stand down, soldier! 
We’re supposed to bring her back.”

            She hadn’t managed to recover the breath he’d
kicked out of her when both men grabbed her and hauled her to her feet, half
carrying her and half dragging her back the way she’d just come.

            She saw Dr. Wagner as soon as they’d rounded the
cabin and crossed the ‘yard’ toward the dock, where the helicopter had settled
low enough to disgorge the bastard onto the cypress planks.  He looked so
pleased with himself, she saw red as fury replaced the sense of defeat that had
swallowed her when they’d captured her and begun dragging her back.

            She caught the soldiers off guard.  Pulling free,
she closed the short distance that separated her from Wagner and slugged him
with her bound fists.  “Where is he, you son of a bitch?  What have you done
with my baby?” she screamed at him, pounding him several more times before the
soldiers caught her and dragged her back.

Chapter Six

            Stunned by her attack, Wagner merely stared at
her blankly for several moments, examining his bloody nose.  “Any sign of the
beast?” he asked finally, transferring his gaze to the guards.

            The soldier holding her right arm shook his
head.  “He heard the chopper.  He’s probably miles from here by now.”

            Wagner looked enraged for several moments.  “You
said the tracker we implanted in her would lead us to him,” he said angrily. 
“What use is the damned tracker if you were going to scare him off with the
chopper?”

            “You
tagged
me?” Erin screamed furiously,
disbelief momentarily distracting her.  She realized then with a sickening
feeling in the pit of her stomach that Jesse had been right.  She
had
led them to him.

            She hadn’t escaped.  They’d let her go so that
she could help them capture him again.

            Bait.  The bastards had used her as bait.

            “I’ll kill you if you’ve hurt my baby,” she
ground out.

            Wagner frowned at her.  Feeling around the pockets
of his lab coat, he produced a syringe.  “You won’t be in any condition to do
anything,” he said almost pleasantly, stepping up to her and stabbing the
needle into her arm.

            Pain lanced through her and she winced, feeling
despair fill her as the drug began to circulate through her.  “Take me to him. 
Please!  He needs me!”

            “He’s in good hands,” Wagner said easily, his
voice beginning to slur in her ears and grow distant as the sedative kicked in
and her knees turned to jelly.  “Take her to the chopper.  This is a bust. 
We’ll have to think of another way to trap a specimen.”

* * * *

            Jesse emerged from the reeds slowly as the
chopper lifted off, struggling against the temptation to leap onto the dock and
hitch a ride on the helicopter’s pontoons.  While he internally debated the
pros and cons of giving in to the urge, the chopper gained altitude and the
moment was lost.

            Frustration surged through him for several
moments, threatening to further disrupt his ability to think.  After a moment,
he tamped it.  Summoning his beast, he loped after the chopper, trailing it
with his keen senses, praying they wouldn’t turn toward sea where he would have
no way of following.

            His prayers were answered.  They followed the
coast line for miles and finally turned inland.  He shadowed them until they
reached the edge of the swamp, watching from the concealment of the trees until
the helicopter was no more than a speck in the sky.

            A sense of purpose filled him as he saw it begin
to descend.

            He had hoped that they would not go far.  He
hadn’t expected that they would, but there had been a risk in allowing them to
leave without him.  He stayed to listen a while, reaching out with his senses
until he could no longer even hear the chopper.

            That didn’t mean it had landed, but the swamps
was where their prey lived.  Knowing that, they wouldn’t have set up shop far
from the source.

            He’d wondered if he was mad to give Erin the
second mark, virtually sealing his own fate.

            He was fiercely glad now that he hadn’t been able
to resist the impulse.  Their tie was stronger.  He could follow her.

            After a time, he melted back into the swamp and
lifted his head to summon the brethren.  Ordinarily, he would not have been
able to contain his impatience to go, but it was different now.  There was more
at stake and he couldn’t risk harm coming to them.

            He would need help to take back what had been
stolen from him--his woman and his son.

* * * *

            It took an effort to throw off the after effects
of the sedative.  Erin’s first awareness was of discomfort, minor aches that
nevertheless discouraged her from coming fully awake.  Memories began to
intrude, however, making it impossible to seek oblivion again.

            She opened her eyes slowly, staring up at the
ceiling for many moments before she allowed her gaze to sweep the room she
found herself in.

            It could’ve been the same room she’d been
imprisoned in for nearly a year.  It had the same institutional look to it,
clean, cold and impersonal.

            The inevitable sense of loss swept over her as
she became fully conscious, aware of the aching tightness of her breasts, and
she placed a hand over her flat stomach.  Joshua was gone.  For weeks now she’d
thought of little beyond finding him.  She’d thought, or at least made herself
hope, in the beginning that they were only running tests on the baby and they
would bring him to her once they’d satisfied their curiosity.

            When one week had dragged into another and then
another, the hope had dwindled and the determination had grown in her to find
her baby and take him back.  She’d refused to allow herself even to think of
the possibility that she might fail, struggling to pump her breasts the best
she could to keep her milk in production so that she could feed her baby when
she had him back.

            She’d been so focused on escaping and rescuing
Joshua, she’d blinded herself to the ease with which she’d finally won her
freedom.

            They’d let her go in hopes of recapturing Jesse--or
another Lycan, anyway.  It was possible they thought he was dead considering
how many times he’d been shot while escaping.

            And she’d led them right to him.

            Before the full implications of that could set
in, she pushed herself upright.

            She saw she was wearing one of the ugly gray
shifts they had provided her with since she’d been imprisoned.  Once she’d
studied the room thoroughly, she was certain she was in the same cell, not just
another one that looked like the one she’d occupied for so long.

            Looking back, she realized her naiveté was almost
pathetically laughable.  Even after they’d drugged her and used her to collect
the specimens from Jesse, she had been screaming the house down when she’d been
brought here and imprisoned, demanding her rights, threatening to sue,
threatening to bring charges against them.

            It wasn’t as if they didn’t
know
they were
romping all over her rights as an American citizen.  Jesse, whatever he was,
had those same rights and that hadn’t deterred them one iota.

            They were the government.  She
had
no
rights unless they gave them to her, unless they upheld them and they weren’t
the least bit worried about consequences.

            She’d been afraid when she’d first come to the
conclusion that they didn’t care about her rights.  That the reason they were
so unconcerned was because they didn’t intend for her to live long enough to
make waves.  It had dawned upon her after a while that that wasn’t necessarily
the case.  She couldn’t prove any of the things that they’d done to her.  Even
if they finally decided to let her go, it was much more likely that she’d find
herself institutionalized for paranoia than that anyone would actually listen
to her.

            The sense of impotence made her blood boil.  She
tamped it.  Raging wasn’t going to get her anywhere.

            Throwing her legs over the side of the cot, she
got up and used the facilities, then washed her face, brushed her teeth to get
rid of the horrible cotton mouth from being drugged, and combed her hair.

            They were watching, she knew.  They were always
watching.

            As if in answer to her thoughts, a panel in the
door slid back and a tray scraped along the floor as one of the guards pushed
food in to her.  She turned at the sound, just in time to see the arm
disappearing again.  The panel slid shut.

            She had little interest in the food, but she
retrieved it anyway, taking a seat on the cot with the tray across her lap.

            As she nibbled at the tasteless food, she
considered her situation.  They’d brought her back and they hadn’t given her
her baby, so it had nothing to do with any anxiety about his health.  She
refused to consider that they might have no reason to be concerned about it
because he was beyond the need for care.  He was alive.  She felt it in her
soul and she didn’t believe that was only because she wanted it to be true. 
She felt certain that she would have sensed it if he was dead.  Maybe she was
lying to herself.  Maybe that was something every mother believed deep down,
that they’d just know because the link was so strong between them and their
child, but she refused to consider that it was only hope.