Forever, page 23
“Yet that’s what you were sent here to do.” Lydia put her hands forward. “I’m not accusing you of—”
“Oh, you’re right. That is what I came to do—but my focus was the lab. And the difference now is that she plugged up the entrances and tunnels on the mountain. Even if somebody were to blast the hatches—which would create a light show and set off some really big boom-booms—they’re just going to face concrete caps and an excavation job that will take days, if not weeks, to get through.” He pointed to the floor. “She’s centralized the access now, which means fewer entry points to defend. You need a lot of firepower and know-how to get into the lab now, and until I know otherwise, this house is still the safest place for us to be.”
“Are we prisoners here, then?”
“It’s safer that way. At least until we know what’s going on.”
Lydia thought about what Xhex had told her, about how she had to go to the mountain, and found herself standing up in a rush. “Well, I’m not going to live in fear. I’m still going to go out.”
“Lydia, be reasonable—”
“I’m not the target and neither are you.”
“Anybody associated with C.P. Phalen is a target.”
Crossing her arms, she tried to imagine not being able to run free, and the panic choked her so badly she had to pace around the table. As she circled, she stared out into the darkness, picturing the meadow, the forest, remembering the smell of the clean air and the feel of the grass under her feet, her paws.
“I’m going to keep living my life.”
Daniel put down his fork. “Be serious here. You don’t know what this type of killer is capable of.”
“I was out there last night by the car. They went after the guard, not me. I walked right out into the darkness. They don’t want us—”
“That is not a reasonable conclusion. Maybe whoever it was knew they’d gotten spotted and backed off in case defensive reinforcements were called. Which in fact they were. You’ve got to trust me on this. I understand you’re frustrated at the thought of—”
“I’m not like you, Daniel. I think you’re forgetting that.”
Daniel opened his mouth. Closed it.
Going around to her chair, she sat back down. “I have instincts and capabilities that humans don’t, and I’ve never hesitated to use them. I’m already living in terror of your disease, I’m not making space for that kind of fear anywhere else.”
“Lydia.” Except then he stared at his plate. As he pushed his half-eaten seconds away, he cursed. “I’m not going to tell you what to do.”
“Good. Thank you.”
After a moment, he put out a hand, palm up. When she covered it with her own, he cursed. A couple of times.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “You can trust me.”
* * *
Eight p.m. Showtime was early, and the fact that Gus had decided not to wait until midnight was just fine with C.P.
As she took the elevator down to what she thought of as the highway to the lab, she was in a trance. And when she started the long walk to the main access point, she was going against the grain—and causing a stir. Many staff were leaving for the night, and a lot of the lab techs and researchers tripped up as they passed her.
She thought of Daniel as she nodded at them regally, like she was dressed as her usual self.
Battle-ax, huh. At the moment, she was feeling more like a thumbtack.
When she got to the checkpoint, she watched from a vast distance as her hand reached out and put her forefinger on the reader. The steel panel retracted to reveal a bald hallway with one-way mirrors running down the long sides, the bulletproof glass obscuring the security detail that would hit the nerve gas if there was any kind of infiltration.
She thought of Rob again.
She was still thinking of him as the panel ahead of her slid back and she stepped through. Out in the lab proper, there were a whole lot of vacancies at the workstations, but a few stragglers remained hard at work in their white coats and their goggles and their computers. She was struck by an absurd desire to go over and hug them, one by one.
“No more battle-ax,” she murmured.
The clinic area, where Gus was going to treat her, was way down the line, the patient rooms and nuclear medicine equipment set away from the open area as well as the negative pressure labs. Gus’s office was also among this lineup, and she stopped at his door first. After her knock wasn’t answered, she went farther along, rounded the corner, and came to the treatment space she was going to be in.
Looking down at her thick socks, she felt as though she were stepping over a barrier, and once she was on the other side, there would be no returning.
She had rolled so many dice over so many years, and this was her final throw.
“Luck be a lady tonight,” she murmured as she pushed the door wide.
Gus was there, sitting at the built-in desk across from the hospital bed, the glow from the computer monitor casting blue light over the face she had come to rely on when she was feeling at loose ends. As usual, there was a lab report up on the screen, and she dreaded more testing.
Maybe he’d changed his mind about the results from the other facility and reversed his decision about not doing any more scans.
At this point, she was prepared to just consent away any risks and move on with it.
“I’m ready,” she said when he didn’t look over at her. “Hello? Gus. Are we starting or what?”
When he just shook his head at his screen, and then rubbed his eyes, a pit bottomed out in her stomach. In a hollow voice, she demanded, “What’s going on.”
“I need you to take a seat.”
“Okay.”
She started in his direction, but he shook his head. “Over there. Please.”
“Okaaaay.” Rerouting, she went across and sidled up onto the hospital bed. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
As her heart started to pound, she put her hand at the base of her throat and reminded herself that as far as bad news went, she’d maxed out on dire straits. There were no more breaking stories that could be worse than what she had already heard.
“I swear to God, St. Claire,” she snapped, “if you don’t start talking right now, I’m going to put my head through the wall.”
He turned around on his swivel chair and almost met her eyes. “You’re pregnant.”
C.P. blinked. Then shifted herself a little farther back on the mattress. “I’m sorry, what did you say.”
“You are pregnant.”
The words were spoken crisply, with enunciation worthy of an English professor. And yet she still didn’t understand them.
“You’re mistaken.” She shrugged. “I’m infertile.”
“Clearly not.” Gus’s eyes lowered to his hands and he cracked his knuckles one by one. “Needless to say, this changes everything.”
“No, it doesn’t. I’m not pregnant.”
“As part of your work-up at MD Anderson, they tested your urine for a variety of things.”
“The test is wrong.”
“It’s not.”
“It is.”
As they went back and forth, the volley of their syllables rose in both speed and volume—and meanwhile, in the back of her head, a low-level scream started rising in pitch.
“Gus, someone messed up.”
“I seriously doubt it.” Now his eyes locked on hers. “And you have some very critical thinking to do.”
She put both her palms straight out, like she was stopping a speeding car. “After all the chemo I have had, over the course of my life, there is absolutely no way I’m pregnant.” When he just stared at her, she threw her hands up. “What. I’m not. So I don’t know what to… tell you.”
At that moment, she made a connection that chilled her to the bone. And as if Gus had been waiting for that one-plus-one to get to its equal sign, he once again looked away.
Her guard, Rob. Who had been killed last night.
“I’m not pregnant,” she said firmly. “Let’s run the test again.”
There was a sizable pause before Gus got to his feet. “Fine. But while I’m dipping the stick, I suggest you start thinking about what you’re going to do.”
“What do you mean, what-I’m-going-to-do. The test is going to be negative and then we’re going to finish whatever else you need to do so we can get moving.”
“Just so you and I are perfectly clear, I am not administering Vita-12b to a pregnant woman.” His dark eyes were grave. “I am also not advising you to get an abortion. That is none of my business.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. Because I’m—”
“Not pregnant.” He went over to the door. “We’ll see about that.”
TWENTY-NINE
AFTER DANIEL HEADED down to the lab, Lydia went to their bedroom—and lasted about fifteen minutes before she got so antsy, she was ready to pull her own hair out. As she paced around, she kept looking into the bathroom, and every time she saw the shower and their two damp towels hanging together on the rods on the wall, she felt a fresh wave of sorrow come over her.
There was one, and only one, remedy for her agitation.
But she was going to be a little more careful if she was going out. In light of what happened the night before, she didn’t feel right about just slipping out the sliding door. Instead, she went back through the house and then down into the basement, to the tunnel that ran under the parking area to the garage. At the far end, she ascended a short stack of steps and entered the heated interior thanks to a passcode—and promptly decided against taking one of the SUVs to some remote location before she shifted. She’d just get herself followed, right? After all, humans expected people to take vehicles places, and assuming the estate was being watched on its periphery, it would be more dangerous for her to try to leave that way.
Besides, she was going to go out with four-wheel drive of sorts, wasn’t she.
Striding down the lineup of grilles and taillights, she went to the side pedestrian door, entered a code, and propped the weight open about an inch with a rock. After quickly shedding her clothing, she folded the pullover, the jeans, even the socks and underwear, into a neat pile, and set the lot on top of a bag of salt that had been brought in for the coming snowfalls.
Then she closed her eyes.
Her transformation was fast, like her body was a well-oiled machine, and in fewer than a dozen heartbeats, she was down on her paws and whispering out into the grass. As she stared out of different eyes, the landscape of the house and grounds was shaded in a new way, everything dimmer yet sharper, too, like an oil painting’s depiction had been re-rendered with a fine-nibbed, black and white ink pen.
Staying in the lee of the garage, she sent her senses out into the darkness, and when she came up with nothing, she started off, her tail down, her head lowered as well. She wasn’t worried about the guard dogs. The pair of Dobermans knew her in both her incarnations now.
They were no danger to her.
Tonight, the moon was early to rise, and the clouds that drifted over its crescent provided her with a little camouflage as she skulked for the tree line. Once she penetrated the pines and oaks, she started to move with greater alacrity, cantering now, making good time over the distance. As she went along, forest animals got out of her way, even though she presented no threat to the deer or raccoons. She hadn’t been hungry in her human form; she wasn’t hungry in this one, either.
And soon, she was really going at it with the speed.
As she leapt over fallen trunks, and dodged around boulders and stumps, while she tested her strength and endurance, a part of her soul started to sing—and the uncomplicated joy was like a drug to her, the feeling of freedom mixing with the cold night air to intoxicate her, especially as the ground began to rise and her ascent of the mountain’s base steepened.
The harder the going, the faster she went.
She needed the exhaustion that she would find when she reached the summit. She needed the solitude, too.
An hour later, when she finally crested that last rise and trotted around to the clearing that faced the valley, she was panting so heavily that her ribs were like fists around her lungs, squeezing and releasing to pump air. And as she looked up at the heavens above, the clouds decided to part like stage curtains, the full glory of the moonlight piercing down from the sky.
Lifting her head, she began to howl.
And tried to take solace as her nocturnal call… was answered by others of her kind.
She had meant what she’d told Xhex. She already knew that the mountain was her home—
Crack.
At the sound of the stick off to the side, she wheeled around, bared her fangs, and began to growl.
And that was when a male voice spoke to her: “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”
* * *
Blade had known that his wolf would have to come to the mountain. It had been in her grid the night before when she had been up here. And it had remained in her grid when she’d been down at that house. In fact, the intention was perpetual—although after she’d stood in the pines with Xhex, what had been impulse became obsessional to her.
He was going to have to thank his sister for encouraging this.
So yes, he had been certain Lydia Susi was going to be here, and all he’d had to do was wait for her—and he hadn’t been worried that she’d bring Daniel Joseph.
Her memories told Blade that she preferred to come here alone.
This was her solace away from her dying mate, the place where she could breathe and shore up her strength for the sadness and grief she stewed in down below.
Thus, she was before him. And she was magnificent.
“You were told to come find something on the mountain,” he said in a low voice—and he knew she understood him in her wolf form. He could tell by the way she tilted her head. “Therefore, I am here for you.”
He’d deliberately kept his red robes on because he’d anticipated she would ascribe to him a religious connotation—and with the way those glowing lupine eyes stared up at him, he knew she had.
“Your mate is dying. There is nothing you can do. You are in the transition between what is your present and what will soon be your past. You worry what is next, but that is no longer a concern. I have found you. I am here… for you.”
On a lot of levels, he couldn’t believe what was coming out of his mouth, but then he reminded himself that he was just trying to get her to stay with him a little tonight and then come again tomorrow. He needed time to understand this reaction of his, time to figure out—and neutralize—the burning he felt in his veins when he saw her.
“I will never hurt you,” he repeated. Like it was a vow.
And strangely, he meant it.
In response, her nostrils flared, and her twitching jowls relaxed a little, less of her very impressive set of fangs showing. Likewise, the muscles in her thighs stopped spasming. But she didn’t trust him yet, not by a long shot—and he was under no illusions. If she didn’t like something, anything, about him, she was going to be off into the night, possibly never to return.
Either that… or she was going to attack him.
And he would have welcomed that.
For a moment, he had an image from back in his private quarters: his beautiful scorpion, so small, so deadly.
Ah, so that’s what this is, he thought with some relief.
Lydia could kill him. Not easily, because he would fight back to the death against her. But it was impossible for him to respect anyone or anything that was not a threat to him and likewise… he was compelled by anything that presented him with a mortal danger.
“You will come here,” he told her, “and I will be waiting for you. That is all for now. I shall see you on the morrow at this time—and worry not. There is no threat down at the house, not against you. You are safe to come and go.”
He knew she was itching to change form, and it would be entirely pleasing to see her naked—another surprise for him. Except he could not be here for very long. He had to condition her to want to meet him, and therefore, he needed to leave her curious and a little confused.
He would be on her mind.
She would come tomorrow.
And then, one way or another, he could get her out of his system so he could finish his work—and move along to destroy that lab.
After which…
Well, he was going to take a long fucking vacation, he thought just as he was about to dematerialize away—from his wolf and her mountain.
THIRTY
SO YOU HAVE things to think about.”
As Gus spoke, he held up the test in front of C.P. Phalen. Then he put the wand with its two windows and all its lines down on the rolling table next to the hospital bed. Turning away, he was at a loss—but that had to do with so much more than where his physical location was.
He went over and sat on his stool because he didn’t know what else to do. The good news? He’d been a doctor for a very long time, so his role in this bombshell moment was fairly prescribed.
Har, har.
Over on the bed, C.P. took the test by the end you were supposed to hold, and tilted it so she could see those peepholes. When she just stared at the result, he cleared his throat.
“That’s a strong response,” he heard himself say. “But to be more precise, we’ll need a blood test.”
“This can’t be happening.”
“So you weren’t using protection, I’m guessing. Or was there a malfunction?”
He had no clinical reason for going there, and he feared his personal one was making him behave like an ass. But he couldn’t stop himself.
“Of course I didn’t use anything,” C.P. said in a numb way, like she was talking to herself. “I was told I couldn’t have children—why did Anderson not catch this?”
