Page 44 of Wolf Bane (Marked #3)

I checked his vitals one more time and looked over to find Justin bent over one of the legal pads, frowning deeply as he wrote in frantic doctor-scrawl.

Eliza had gone quiet, at least no longer shouting and whining.

She was still moving, though, pressing against the metal door, scuffling inside.

Looking for a way out. Guilt nibbled at my edges, but I couldn’t let it consume me.

Not yet anyway. We had to survive first, we had to stop the Wolf Bane project before it got worse.

“I’m gonna see if I can find a phone or something. There’s no way they’re just cut off up here.”

Justin glanced up, looking slightly less scared but still not quite right.

“Tyler said they had some sort of homemade Farraday thing rigged up. In the room where they first brought us, it was lined with wires.” He gestured vaguely, implying a grid shape.

“They took me away from him after a little bit, but they did pat me down. A lot.” He winced.

“Eliza said she had to make sure I wasn’t tagged. ”

“Ah…” I glanced at the nearest desktop. “And these aren’t connected to anything outside?”

“Not as far as I can tell. They said it was all internal when she brought me over. Said I was just here to be their… their lab monkey,” he gritted out. “Because I’m useless and a waste of brilliance.”

“Wow.” I breathed out. “What a bitch.”

Justin startled, choking on a laugh before just collapsing forward to bury his face in his hands, laugh-sobbing.

“Oh my God, but is she wrong? I was normal once, you know. Like just a regular person. But now I’m a fucking mess of fucked up biology that’s not even my own, and my brain is just fucking soup, and?—”

“Justin.” I moved to crouch down in front of him, forcing him to be aware of me. “When we get out and get home, which we will , I want you to talk to Gina Perrin. She might be able to help, okay?”

He pressed his lips into a thin line, biting back a petulant no before finally melting a little and nodding, eyes closed against the overwhelm. “Fine. Just. Let’s not die first and we’ll see.”

“That’s all I ask.”

Justin pushed away, resuming his notetaking, and I hurried back to the cubicle-office, tearing into the rest of the file cabinets and storage cupboards, looking for anything helpful.

“These people have a real hard-on for blood work,” I announced, finding yet another drawer full of phlebotomy supplies. “Christ.”

“That’s because they’re using blood products to make their serums,” Justin called back. “Everything so far indicates the original serums were made using Garrow and a few other donors’ blood, and then they started farming it off of y’all. There’s something though…”

He was quiet for long enough to make me stick my head out of the office again.

“I don’t know what some of these things are. It’s definitely nothing we covered in med school and nothing I’ve come across in research. But it’s definitely not a naturally occurring compound. Not in humans anyway,” he added with a small, wry huff.

Eliza kicked the metal door. “No,” I said. “You had your chance.”

“I can tell you how to call out,” she offered, sounding as if she had her face pressed close to the door. “We’re not some island here. We’re not cut off.”

Justin and I exchanged long, suspicious looks. “No,” I finally said. “No. You don’t get to make nice now.”

She laughed, broken and wild. “You think he’ll let you live?

You think he was ever going to let you live?

I would’ve, Doctor Babin. I would’ve made sure you didn’t end up like the others.

I don’t have the stomach for this like Daniel or Garrow.

I know it’s necessary but…” She trailed off on a hiccough.

“It’s not,” I said, moving closer to the door.

A heavy table stacked with equipment stood between us—even if Eliza had a sudden burst of strength, she wasn’t getting out on her own.

It made me feel marginally safer but still wary, knowing someone so cavalier about death, about causing death, was just a few feet away.

“Killing off the ones who don’t fit your paradigm doesn’t strengthen the rest of the group. ”

“Remove the weak and the strong will prosper,” she whispered loudly, then banged her hand on the door so hard it made my ears ring.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered, backing away. Eliza was quiet again, save for the rasp of her breath in the cupboard. “Are you okay, Justin?” I asked quietly.

Justin stared at the door for a long few moments then visibly shook himself. “Not even a little.”

* * *

Tyler returned a short while later, shouting out for us to open the door as he approached.

“We’re definitely not alone,” he said, pointing to the bag.

“There are two wings off this central one. This is the only part that looks like a clinic or hospital. The other two wings are a residence of some kind. Maybe an old dorm or something, some shitty SRO apartments but real old.” He held out a crumpled wad of paper. “Here. There’s this.”

It was a six-month-old newspaper, one of those thin small-town ones that’s mostly snippets about the local high school football team or classified ads selling hay and fill dirt. “ Bitter Root Texas Metro Chronicle ,” I read aloud. “More Chronicle than Metro, it looks like.”

“Suburb—using the term loosely—of Fort Worth,” Tyler said.

“Dad brought us here a few times when we were real little.” He looked around the lab, searching with his gaze for something he didn’t find.

“Not here. I don’t think… not here. Somewhere in the town, though.

I was… God, four? Five?” He frowned. “I remember Bitter Root’s clan.

It was real small; distant cousins on my mom’s side. ”

He shook himself, too dog-like for my liking, and turned his attention outward again.

“There’re weres in the east wing of the complex.

Looks like a living set up. One room’s done up like a barracks for at least six people.

The south wing is empty but looks like it was offices most recently.

Maybe classrooms or something. Lots of trashed whiteboards and those overhead projector things. ”

“Eyes on any others?”

Tyler shook his head. “I could smell them, though. Recent. They either left just ahead of me, or they’ve been there so long the stink is heavy.

And good news is, the way to an exit is clear.

Main doors are too out in the open, but I found an old emergency exit on the south wing.

Leads out to a parking area with no cars. ”

“So they either hid the cars, or they’re moving on foot everywhere.”

Another nod. “We don’t tire as fast as humans. A were wanting to stay on the run can literally stay on the run for easily twice, three times as long as non-were.”

“You’re gonna be lucky if Justin and I can go on foot as long as a regular human,” I pointed out. “And I’m not leaving Robards.”

“We have to,” Tyler said shortly. “We can send someone back for him.”

“They’ll kill him. His own daughter will kill him.”

Eliza scoffed, startling me. I’d honestly thought she’d fallen asleep in there or just dissociated for a minute. Her bark of annoyance made us all jump. “If he dies, it’s due to weakness. Not me.”

“Oh my God, I wish I’d gagged her,” Tyler muttered. “We’re not leaving you here. And unless you’re cool carrying him, he has to stay. For now.”

“I’m not abandoning my patient.” I pushed past Tyler and made my way back to Robards’ bedside. “He wouldn’t make it out of the house anyway. He’s… he’s not well.”

“Landry.” Justin came to stand beside me, tenuous and pale. “What are you going to do if we leave you here? You can’t help him.”

“You don’t know…” I trailed off, closing my eyes for a moment. “It’s my fault he’s like this. If I’d stopped Garrow a year ago. Hell, years ago. If I’d paid more attention when I was younger. If?—”

“If Garrow had choked on a fucking grape when he was three and did us all a favor,” Tyler ground out. “Justin, what do you have?”

“Uh. I have, um, some notes about the serum they used specifically with Landry and Mal because they were using it as the basis for the Wolf Bane. I don’t know what they were doing to it, but they were basically turning it into a time bomb, targeting some specific cellular complex of the part-humans.

” He shrugged helplessly. “I need more information if you want more answers.”

Somewhere, deep in the building, something heavy clanged and reverberated.

“Door,” Tyler muttered. “Shit. Daniel’s out.”

Hurriedly, Tyler and I shoved the table back against the doors. “Justin,” he ordered, “get over here. Put your weight against it.”

Justin and I leaned hard on the table just moments before a snarling weight hit the other side of the door. Daniel was a wolf again. Or maybe still.

“I’m in here!” Eliza screamed. “I’m in here! Help me, Daniel! They’re going to destroy everything!”

“Fuck my life,” I muttered, bracing against the floor. “Justin, you good?”

“Not even a little.” He was breathing heavy, eyes wild. “Lan, I think… I think it might happen again. I can’t… Fuck.” His eyes rolled back as a wet popping sound crackled up from his body. Thrashing, he fell to the floor, fighting against the change that was threatening to overtake him.

God, is that what I look like when it happens?

Justin didn’t change the way I did—his hands remained hands, his jaw, his legs, his posture mostly human.

But his body looked broken, wrong. Sweat poured from his skin, the stench of fear and animal panic swamping the lab as he burbled, something inside him crushing out the human parts of him, choking his voice into feral growls and gurgles.

I dropped to my knees, the table jolting away from the door with Daniel’s next hit. “Justin. Justin, listen to me. Breathe, okay? Big, slow breaths. Like this!” I demonstrated, though my own breath was audibly shaking.

“Landry! What the fuck, man?” Tyler shouted. “Fuck!”

“Justin, just listen to me, okay? Breathe. Your body is trying to protect you. It’s trying to make you the biggest, scariest thing in the room. That’s what the were part of us does. Don’t fight it. Just breathe, okay?”

“Physician, heal thyself,” Tyler muttered, joining me on the floor.

He’d taken off the apron—good lord—and fashioned it into a pouch using the ties.

“Hard drives,” he explained at my glance.

“I’ll sort it out when we’re gone. Hopefully.

There’s a good chance they’re toast now.

I didn’t have time to get ‘em out safely. Justin. Hey, Justin, I’m gonna pick you up, okay? ”

Justin panic-whined, trying to get away as Tyler scooped him up. “Don’t fight me,” Tyler ordered, infusing his voice with something that sent a spike of yes sir straight down my spine. I’d heard Ethan do that a few times with other weres, when he had his clan leader hat on, but never Tyler.

He wore the authority well, even if it was just over Justin in that moment. Because part of Justin recognized that tone too and just went limp. Daniel’s snarls had company now, at least one other wolf outside the door, both of them hurling themselves into it. “Will that work on them, too?”

“No fucking idea.” He nodded towards the other end of the room, where narrow windows overlooked the outcropping of the roof below. “It’s about ten feet down. Then another den from there unless we can get to the far end. It slants over a garden bed, if I have the map in my head right.”

The door clattered, bowing inward around the lock. Eliza’s shrill scream of excitement joined the fray. “Fuck. Go first. I have to try to get Mr. Robards. I can’t leave him.”

Tyler’s eyes flashed in annoyance, but he gave me a single curt nod before racing to the windows.

I hurried to Robards’ bedside and, forcing myself to go slow enough not to cause damage, removed the saline drip from the back of his hand.

Then the leads to his monitors from his chest and neck.

Finally, the pulse-ox monitor from his finger.

The read-outs on the monitors shrilled and flatlined without input, but I didn’t have time to shut them off.

I gently scooped up Mr. Robards; he was barely more than a skeleton, I realized.

Lighter than I expected, light enough to make me stumble back when the heaviness I’d braced for didn’t materialize.

“It’ll hurt,” Tyler said over the din, “but you can do it, Landry. If you can manage to shift even partially?—”

“Go. Go!”

Tyler gave me one more backwards look then climbed out the now open window with a panting, whining Justin over his shoulder.

The door scraped across the linoleum behind me. Out of time, I realized. With a speed I hadn’t been sure I’d possessed, I crossed to the window with my patient in my arms. Below, Tyler was already running in light feet towards the far end, on my right. He didn’t look back.

Gingerly, my entire body hot and electric in fear, I straddled the windowsill, bracing Robards against my chest. “Sorry,” I muttered. “This is gonna suck for you too.”

The snarls fell quiet behind me.

Definitely out of time.

Heavy hands grabbed my shoulders as I slipped out of the window, yanking me back with a wrench, sending me and Robards both tumbling to the floor. Robards made a soft, breathless sound as he hit. He didn’t move. I rolled to my knees, pain thrumming with my pulse as I pushed to my feet.

But it wasn’t Daniel in front of me.

“Hello, Landry. It’s been a long time. You’ve gotten older.”