Wolfen Domination (15 page)

            Erin didn’t even look at the table. “I’m not one
of your patients,” she ground out.

            “We need to do a scan to find the transmitter.”

            Erin turned from the vet and glared at Jesse when
he spoke.  “Maybe so, but I’m not lying on an animal gurney.  The floor’s
probably cleaner.”

            The female vet turned with some sort of
electronic device in her hands.  “Put her on the table and strap her down.”

            Jesse’s face tightened as his gave flickered from
Erin to the other woman.  “That won’t be necessary, Juliette.  She’s offered to
cooperate.”

            Anger washed over Juliette’s face.  “Do you want
me to take care of this or not, Jesse?”

            “Just locate the damned thing--or give me the
scanner and I will.”

            “You going to extract it, too?”

            Jesse glared at her.  After a moment, she moved
toward Erin, flipped a switch on the scanning device and moved it slowly down
Erin’s body, studying the gauge on it.  When she’d reached Erin’s feet, she
stood up and gave her a cold stare eye to eye for a moment.  “Turn around.”

            Erin didn’t particularly want to give the woman
her back.  After a pregnant moment, she turned, though.

            The woman found the device in her hip.  Figured!

            The needle she stabbed into Erin’s hip to deaden
the area made her knees buckle.  She had to grip the examination table she was
leaning against to keep from falling on the floor.  Right up until the woman
sliced into her flesh and began digging for the implant, Erin thought it might
almost have hurt less to have the procedure without the medicine to numb
sensation.

            When she gasped, Jesse stepped around the table
opposite her and grasped her arms.  She wasn’t certain whether it was to
support her--morally and physically--or if he thought she might try to lay the
woman out, but it was good for her that he did.  It kept her from passing out
and crumpling to the floor.

            If she’d been in any condition to do so, she
would
have knocked the woman out.

            By the time Juliette had finally dug the
electronic implant out, closed the incision with a couple of stitches, and
plastered a bandage over it, Erin was beginning to wonder if she would puke or
pass out first.  She was relieved when she did neither, but she was only saved from
the latter by the fact that Jesse gathered her against him when the woman was
done with her, holding her tightly to prevent her from falling.

            “Fucking bitch,” she managed to mutter when he’d
half carried her to a chair and helped her to sit.  “You can be damned sure I
won’t be recommending you to anybody I know.”

            It occurred to Erin belatedly that she wasn’t
really in any better position to defend herself now than she had been when the
woman had been torturing her with her scalpel.  She hadn’t said anything at the
time because she wouldn’t have put it past the bitch to ‘accidently’ cut an
artery if there was one handy for cutting, but she was as weak as water, dizzy
and nauseated.  If the woman felt like stalking across the room and slapping
her head off she wouldn’t be able to stop her.

            Thankfully, she decided to pretend she hadn’t
heard Erin’s comments.  When she’d finished wiping up the blood and dropping
her instruments in the sink, she left the room and went down the hall.

            Erin supposed to torture the poor, wounded men.

            Lucky for them they had someone with some medical
knowledge and access to medicine on their side!

            As the dizziness finally subsided, it dawned on
Erin that they’d been completely prepared to remove the tracking device from
her.  That not only meant that Jesse had gone with the intention of rescuing,
or recapturing, her.  It also meant that he knew about the device or at least
suspected.

            Was that why he wasn’t being as nasty as he had
been before?  Had some doubt shaken his conviction that she was a totally cold,
insensitive, traitorous bitch?

            Without asking, there was no way to be certain
and she didn’t really feel up to a verbal battle at the moment if she’d guessed
wrong.  Besides, she wanted her baby.  From what Jesse had said, she knew he
meant to go after Joshua and she wasn’t going to do anything to rock the boat
until she had her baby back.

            Erin was half drowsing in the chair where she’d
been left when the sound of footsteps coming in her direction roused her.  With
an effort, she lifted her head and focused her eyes.  Jesse filled the doorway
on the opposite side of the room.  He studied her for several moments in
silence but before she could wonder what thoughts were running through his
mind, he moved toward her.

            “We’re moving,” he said, his voice brusque.

            Nodding, Erin got to her feet with an effort. 
Jessie caught her when she swayed on her feet, half supporting her as he
escorted her from the examination room.  The building that housed the veterinary
clinic was strangely quiet as they moved along the hallway.  Even the dogs had
ceased to bark.

            They set up another alarm as she and Jesse neared
the kennel, however.

            Confused when no one joined them, Erin glanced at
Jesse questioningly several times, but she didn’t ask him what had become of
the others and he didn’t volunteer the information.  Outside, she discovered the
Hummer had disappeared.  In its place was a dark late model sedan.

            “A cliché,” Erin murmured with a touch of
amusement as Jesse opened the passenger door and pushed her inside.

            When he’d settled beside her in the driver’s
seat, she studied him for several moments in the dim pre-dawn light.  “What
happened to the others?”

            He glanced at her, but he didn’t answer as he
turned the key in the ignition and started the car.  Frowning, mentally
shrugging it off since she wasn’t actually that interested anyway, Erin focused
on fastening her seatbelt.

            “They’ve been removed to a safe house for
recovery,” Jesse said as they left the parking lot and turned onto the dark
nearly deserted street in front of the building.

            Erin’s brows rose.  Everyone, including Juliette
apparently, had gone to the safe house while she was ‘resting’ in the room
where the bitch had removed her tracking device?  It was hard to avoid the
implications of that, that she was the least important participant if she’d
been the last to be moved to safety.  “Are we going there, too?”

            “No.”

            So what was she, bait? She thought angrily? 
Again?  He was using her to lead the pursuit away from the others?  “Did Dr.
Wagner have a devisc on him, too?”

            “Yes.”

            “Did, but he doesn’t now?” Erin persevered.

            “They won’t know that for a while.”

            Erin digested that for several moments, studying
the cityscape outside the car windows and absently trying to place her
location.  “For a while?” she echoed.  “You didn’t destroy it?”

            Instead of answering this time, he shrugged.

            “You’re playing a seriously stupid game with some
very bad people,” Erin snapped, more scared than angry.

            His lips tightened.  “But then, being a dumb
animal, I cain’t help myself.”

            Erin gaped at him.  A chaotic wash of emotions
went through her--frustration, hopelessness, anger and most difficult to deal
with, empathy.  She could see his point, unfortunately.  In her own way, she’d
been just as guilty as the others in treating him as less than human, not to
the extent he seemed to believe, but she
had
considered the Lycans little
more than beasts.  They
were
beasts when they shifted, controlled more
by their instincts than their instincts were under their control, but Jesse at
least had a gentler side when he had mastery of his beast, and he was
intelligent--and quite devastatingly appealing both in personality and physical
appearance.

            As frustrated and frightened as she’d been about
everything that had happened, she couldn’t avoid that knowledge.

            Truth be told, believing what he believed about
her, he had every reason to behave horribly toward her, to hurt her, or at
least want to.  He very obviously hadn’t wanted to hurt her or he would have.

            Something else occurred to her as they drove,
Jesse moving steadily and with purpose through the city, as if he was very
familiar with it and had a specific destination in mind.  The Lycans obviously
moved among them.  Even with everything she’d discovered about Jesse, she’d had
a deep rooted prejudice about his kind.  She supposed, in the back of her mind,
and not too distantly, she’d thought they eked out an existence hidden away in
the swamps.

            Juliette was one of them, she realized with
sudden insight, and practiced veterinary medicine right under the noses of
humans coming and going every day with no clue of what walked among them.  No
doubt they all did.

            They had money behind them--a lot of money.

            Unless they went around stealing tremendously
expensive vehicles and electronic equipment, and somehow she didn’t believe
that.

            “What were they doin’ when I arrived?”

            Erin looked at him blankly.

            He frowned, but more, she thought, because he
didn’t want to be forced to make an issue of his interest than because she
didn’t answer at once.  “In the lab,” he added tightly.

            Enlightenment dawned.  She repressed a shudder
with an effort.

            She thought she’d repressed it.

            “They were about to impregnate me with a little
Jesse.”

            His head whipped toward her so fast she wouldn’t
have been surprised if he’d gotten whiplash from it.  “An extremely repugnant
thought for you, I see,” he said dryly.

            Erin flushed, but she grew angry, as well.  “Was
I supposed to be thrilled only because it was yours?  I’d like to see how
fucking excited you’d be about being strapped to a table and having some
asshole shove a syringe full of sperm into you!”

            Several different emotions flickered across his
face in rapid succession, too swiftly for her to grasp them all. “I’d just as
soon no’ have sperm shoved into any of my orifices,” he said wryly.

            He hesitated, obviously struggling with the urge
to say more, and she knew suddenly that he wanted to ask her if the clinical
aspect was the only reason she’d been repulsed.  He repressed the impulse and a
flicker of amusement replaced her anger.  “You know what I meant,” she added a
little testily.  “If it had been you, instead of me….”

            His whole mood shifted abruptly.  “I know exactly
what you mean.”

            Erin sighed.  For just a moment they’d almost had
a conversation that wasn’t completely antagonistic and then she’d just had to
resurrect the past!

            A sense of hopeless frustration filled her with
the realization that their past was always going to hang between them like an
impenetrable wall of anger.  Even if she could master the knack of thinking
hard, and examining what she said before she said it, which she thought it was
doubtful, she would have to worry that anything she said would touch off a
memory better left buried.

            After a moment it occurred to her to wonder why
it mattered.

            It
did
matter.  She could lie to herself
all she wanted to, but it mattered a lot, and not just because she needed his
help to find the baby.

            She couldn’t undo what had been done to Jesse,
but she didn’t deserve his hate for her part in it.  She’d been just as much a
pawn as he had been, and she had neither consciously tried to hurt him, nor
been indifferent to his suffering.  It just plain wasn’t fair to be tarred with
the same brush as those who had deliberately, and with malice, or at least an
absence of conscience, trapped, imprisoned and tortured him.

            Her feelings were more even than a sense of
injustice, though, and regret for having been involved, she realized abruptly.

            Like it or not, a bond had been forged between
her and Jesse.  She might not have chosen it if she’d had the choice, but it
existed now regardless and she yearned to see that side of him that he had only
teased her with, the passionate lover and intriguing companion.

Chapter Eight

            Despite the nagging pain in her hip from having
the tracking device removed, weariness invaded Erin after a time and she
dozed.  When she woke, roused by the slowing of the car, she saw that Jesse was
turning onto a narrow dirt track that led through a thick tangle of
vegetation.  It seemed obvious from the encroaching brush and the high grasses
that grew down the center of the track like a Mohawk hair cut that this track
wasn’t used often.  In spite of that, or maybe because it was used so seldom,
the road was fairly smooth.