Work, as we called it now, continued and took up as much energy as the triplets. Amar called the day after the skype thing, apologising for not being able to tell me, and had to leave pretty fast. Apparently he wasn't really allowed to speak of it to anyone now, not even to his own daughter, and even Elena was being kept out of the loop.
I tried to help on the ground floor by cleaning, helping keep them calm, but it seemed to be a task with no end. The first two mutts were shoved out the door the moment they were awake, only to return and offer help, not sure what else to do with themselves. We hadn't anticipated this. Now, without their usual 'werewolf superpowers', they suddenly had no clue what to do with themselves, having relied on it to keep safe and keep alive. It was almost like they needed a re-education. Mutts moved around, stole, murdered here and there, and usually the pack kept out of it as long as they weren't causing a problem or standing out too much. But we needed the help and they seemed to need a secure place. My association with the factory, of torture, pain, fucked up werewolves who had delusional ideas about power... and theirs, a place of safety, security, healing... it was such an odd contrast.
We contacted Elena about it. She informed them, via a speaker phone, that they would only be welcome to remain as long as we were there and that overnight they'd be locked out. They'd have to sleep in tents outside, remain till sun up, and be responsible for their own changes at night. If they killed a human while sleeping here, if they killed anyone on the property, if they caused problems, they would be dealt with and she made it clear she didn't mean a fine. They agreed, looking relieved, almost looking grateful. I suppose I understood in some way. Their entire world that they'd known had been turned upside down, they were suddenly 'human' most of the time, and for the first time the pack was offering help. Very limited help, but help. And we did need the extra help.
Paige and Lucas had to leave again after that, though, taking Ana back to New York.
Clay kept me updated, more or less, on what was going on with the triplets and Kate. Elena entrusted him to handling it, which showed how she felt about it, because Clay and delicate situations... not his strength. He was all for intimidation and hostility. As far as I was concerned this was perfect when it came to people trying to touch my girls or Kate.
Savannah barely left the ground floor now. Adam, clearly her lover, was sick. Beyond sick. The trouble was, we had no idea how to treat someone who was so in tune with flames, we weren't sure. She was using her own magic to keep him cool but no one was sure how cool to keep him. And when he got delusional, started to move around, he wasn't calm like Antonio. He was dangerous. We had to move him down into the dreaded basement, where the old scientific lab had been, just to make sure that he didn't harm anyone.
Antonio was worse too now, much worse, and I sat with him day and night, sleeping beside him, his breathing much too fast, skin much too pale, Vi having to rely now on more than just air conditioning to keep him from going too far. She got medication from Amar, some kind of medicine that helped, and was on the phone to him day or night when Antonio crossed a line that I didn't see. To me, he looked bad all the time, and even when he was delusional, even when he tried to get up or change, he just couldn't do it.
Nick was on the phone to me twice a day then, half the time getting me to put the phone to Antonio's ear, trying to calm him down as we held him down. While he had his bad moments, often one of the mutts downstairs had one at a similar time had problems. Four of us and all of them.
In some ways this was a good thing. We had the 'bitch in heat' scent and the mutts loved that. Cassandra and Aaron didn't respond to that, they didn't respond to anything, their own version of the fever bizarre compared to the werewolves and Adam. They just lay there like corpses. Beautiful corpses. They didn't drink, they didn't eat, and they didn't notice us.
Adam's reaction, by comparasion, was frightening. He went from calm guy to crazy pyromaniac half-demon as the fever got worse and worse. Savannah almost always could calm him down but when he set the factory on fire, we set up a hose nearby and got some fire extinguishers.
When we started to get irritable and argue, hunger getting too strong, we suddenly remembered why. We had to change. While Savannah kept watch, the three of us had to go out and change. We'd delayed it too long and even without the usual sense of 'needing to change', I knew that we'd change if we didn't do something. Food wasn't covering the problem anymore. Unfortunately, the wolf side of us didn't know that we were needed, it just knew that we'd neglected that side of ourselves too long.
The place we chose was far out in the desert, the stars overhead, the classic desert scene. Cacti here and there, dead bushes, sand and dirt- very beautiful. Very alien. The three of us split up to change, leaving the clothing in the car to protect it from scorpions or snakes or whatever else was out here. This was more Vi's concern than ours- Daniella and myself were less wary of those things. Maybe it was because we'd grown up in Australia. Full of scary snakes and spiders and things.
I made my way into the sand, ignoring the rocks that caught my bare foot, and knelt down. The surface was freezing but when my knees sunk down a few inches the ground under there was still warm.
The change wasn't fun again. The usual, scream inducing, gut wrenching, 'I need to vomit', pain, head slamming thing, something I didn't recall reading or seeing in anything that came with werewolves.
All worth it though when I could lift my head and the smell of the world slammed into my lungs, a reunion with reality, the sound of everything around me returning full force. I whined softly, shut my eyes, and rolled around on the sand as I smelt it. Smelt it properly. The scents, the smell of the cacti nearby, the wind carrying smells of others from distances. Vi and Daniella.
We played and rolled around together, the three of us enjoying the freedom and relief of being this way, some part of me not wanting to change back. Some part of me could have stayed like this for hours. Days. Play, hunt, sleep, love my pack. What else did anyone need? We hunted, though it didn't work as well out here, but we did find some things. Mice. Tiny rabbits. Then after, when we'd called Savannah and made sure everything was calm there, we headed into the town and got takeaway.
This was amusing to us, sitting there in the middle of a smaller country down, two Australians and a Russian. People assumed we were backpackers and hit on us. Daniella was hostile, cut them off, but Vi and I were amused enough to be nice. I had to admit, the accents were nice, because like Australia the further in the country we got, the stronger the accents. Nick had that more general accent that I was used to from American TV. In other words, it didn't sound as 'accenty' as it probably should have. Out here... they had accents.
Once we filled up with groceries, we headed back, only to find Savannah struggling with another fire with her magic.
A week of this, of Savannah constantly needing to be with Adam as his fever burnt, both inside him and outside, his nightmares or whatever he was dreaming keeping him and us awake most of the time, and we were all exhausted. The more he was like this, the more we thought of the basement we'd ignored all this time, the basement and those giant walk in freezers. The ones that they'd kept the corpses in. Savannah had spotted them once while exploring and while we'd told her why we avoided the basement... now that she'd brought them up, we thought more and more seriously about it.
Compared to the vampires Adam was a nightmare but at least his needs were sort of obvious. They still just slept on through the fever so peacefully that we had to set alarms to check their temperatures. How did you know what a vampire's normal one was anyway? Weren't they dead? We struggled to know what to do for them. We got them blood, donating it ourselves, but they ignored the offer. Maybe they liked it fresh. That was a problem too. Antonio continued to be consistent, at least, high fevers, vomiting, nightmares about Lily, and we fell into a routine with him. I didn't tell them who Lily was but I probably didn't need to. Eveyr time he called her name, he seemed heart broken, pleading for her to forgive him, over and over and over... I knew that he hadn't wanted to leave her, if he kept following her, but I didn't keep it from Nick either. He knew what his father was dreaming about.
In some ways it was a comfort to him, as strange as that sounded, to know that. And sometimes it made him angry and he hung up on me. It was hard to know what Nick was, now, half the time he was working, never at home, sometimes up to his eyeballs in toddlers, but a lot of the time in a car somewhere. But he never failed to pick up when it was time to go to sleep. He didn't admit it but I suspected he was starting to enjoy Harry Potter and our 'bedtime' session, which involved wand jokes and other things half the time, now that Harry had a wand. Apparently Nick had a very good wand.
Adam woke us up again, one night, screaming his head off. The heat, when I came downstairs, was more than usual, the entire factory floor hot enough to create an instant sweat. Savannah was sweating in the cage, hands on his arms, as he thrashed, Daniella heading for the hose as the first flame caught onto one of the sheets lying spare nearby.
"We can't do this. We have to keep Adam somewhere colder." Savannah hissed, sweat dripping into her eyes as she tried to hold him down and keep him cold with the spell at the same time. She was a powerful witch, I knew that from what I'd seen of her, but even this was pushing her. She was exhausted and the worry about him had kept her awake even when he was calm.
Just as she'd that, he really screamed, flames licking up Savannah's arms with the suddenness, and she screamed. I grabbed the woollen blanket and grabbed her, wrapping it around her, Vi fast to get the back of her. We smothered the flames as she tried to put them out with her spell, the smell of burning hair and skin strong, till the flames were gone.
"Out. Get out. Leave him to rage." Vi ordered, pulling Savannah back, as Adam thrashed and struggled with the restraints, the whites of his eyes showing, flames licking up and down his arms. Suddenly I was glad he wasn't on a bed and we had tied him to the concrete ground- a metal frame, what if it burnt him? "Let me see."
We tugged the blanket off, Savanah's eyes wide with pain as she stared down, her top singed and blisters up and down her arms and up one half of her neck. She was breathing hard, cringed as Vi moved an arm, biting a lip.
"It's nothing."
"It is not nothing. I am very sorry but ..." Vi started to press the skin, ignoring Savannah's soft cries of pain, and even I cringed as she kept doing it on both arms, on Savannah's stomach, pressing into the blistered burnt skin over and over, right up her neck. By the time she'd done tears were leaking out of Savannah's eyes with the agony of the touches. "All have feeling. Good. I'm sorry, I had to make, Dani-"
She glanced to where Daniella was standing with the hose. "Put that down. Get cloths, soft ones, torn sheets, and a bucket of cool water. Not cold but cool." Daniella nodded and hurried off.
"I should stay." Savannah was already shaking though, her skin pale, and Vi cursed. A tongue of flame shot out, right across us, as the half-demon struggled hard against the bonds. She was breathing fast now. "He's-"
"He doesn't know anyone from a bar of soap right now."
"She is right, and you are going into shock. Dani, I will come, get the medical kit out." Vi swore as she glanced at Adam. There were too few of us for this job. Not only was Adam in this state, one of the mutts had started to panic as well. "Anne, I'm sorry. You will have to watch him on your own."
"Go, take care of Savannah." I rushed into the cage with the mutt, checking, finding his skin rippling. Great. Vi led Savannah off, as Adam roared again, flames bursting out of the cage. I yanked the mutt's clothing loose, undoing his restraints as he began his change, probably set off by the threat. Once he was freed and able to change, and I had the door shut, I checked the other mutts, finding them more or less tempted to do the same thing. It was a natural reaction to a threat when we were weak. As wolves, we could run or defend ourselves better, and I ended up loosening all of their clothing and loosing the restraints just in case.
The smell of burning had me turn and I saw flames licking up a wooden beam. Shit. The fire extinguisher was sitting waiting, as was the hose, and I used the fire one first as the flames got higher, smoke filling the top of the factory. Shit, shit, shit...
It was too high for this thing.
I grabbed the hose and turned it on the flames. If the patients got wet then tough. We'd deal with it later. The water seemed to get the flames under control, knocking them down again, the water falling onto Adam as he thrashed and screamed, the water dousing the flames he was setting off all over his cell. It wasn't really calming him down but it did put the flames out around him, all those fires he'd set, as well ast he one climbing up the factory.
Finally it was out and I breathed out, slow, dropping the hose. Savannah was right. We needed to find a better place for Adam while he was like this. He was calming down too, the water must have lowered his fever enough, but I stayed out of the cage- the bars were red hot.
I checked on the mutts and the vampires. No one seemed bothered by the water, the vampires oblivious to it as they slept, several of the mutts already changed and watching me warily from under their beds, baring their teeth as I walked past. There was some advantages though to the 'mutt in heat' smell- they all seemed confused, even reluctant to threaten me, more interested in something else from me. While the mutts were sick they were more wolf than human. My smell was the ultimate bed side manner. As I checked them, I constantly checked Adam's cage, worried that the hot metal would set off another fire.
I got Aaron and Cassandra changed out of the wet clothing after I changed the wet sheets, got the wet sheets off the bed, lifting them onto the same bed as I worked fast, and sighed with relief. Adam had gone quiet now and was asleep.
I went into the cage, slowly, finding the metal still hot, but no new fires had started. Adam didn't react to me, not even when I touched him, his skin hot and dry already. He was cooler than before though. I sat down on the metal chair, the metal hot under my bum, and started to gently stroke his face and neck with a damp cloth. When he'd gotten to a safer temperature only then did I get up to check Savannah.
She was in the little room she shared with Adam and not in a good way, and not just because of the burns, she was upset. Exhausted. She'd kept a constant watch over Adam for days now, barely slept, exhausted herself trying to care for him, and now she had nasty burns all over her arms and up her neck to deal with, as well as one on her stomach. Vi had her sitting there in a blanket as Vi wrapped damp clothes around the burns, speaking to her softly, Daniella helping. There was a syringe near her, probably a pain killer of some kind, I couldn't imagine the agony those burns would be causing right now.
"Is he okay?" Savannah asked the second she saw me and I nodded. She sighed with relief, slow, shoulders slumping. "Thank the fates."
"He got a hose down." When eyes went to me, I added, "He set the factory on fire again."
"We'll have to move him down into the basement." Vi muttered. We stiffened at that, both myself and Daniella. "It has walk in freezers."
"That they kept bodies in." I reminded her.
"In the basement they did experiments in." Daniella added, quiet, her face drained of blood. She would not set a foot down there and I knew it was probably where they'd done the surgery on her. "If he goes down there, I don't go there."
"He can not set a freezer on fire." Vi shook her head. "I know we avoid the basement. I know why. But we can not risk the factory catching on fire again. If you cannot go down there then I won't force you."
We focused on Savannah then, going quiet, but I knew she was right. The basement was all concrete and it would be safe if he did have another episode like today's one. But it was one of two places I didn't go. The other was the security guard's rooms, just beyond this room, where I'd tricked the guard into thinking I'd … I still felt guilty about it.
The ring of the doorbell made us all jump. Door bell? Did we even have one?
"I'll go." I checked myself, finding nothing too bad, just damp clothing, and they nodded. I went to the door, opening it, and finding a man standing there.
"Is this-" He rattled off the address, and I nodded. "Are you Mrs. Sorrentino?" Another nod, a puzzled look at him, I wasn't sure what this was about. Some part of me was suspicious, tense, ready for an attack of some kind. "I have a delivery."
"Are you sure?" I blinked. He was gazing around, curious, then back to me. I could imagine how it looked. I was covered in water, sweating, probably looked like hell. Maybe had ash too. Who knew?
"If that's your address and you're Anne Sorrentino, then yes. Is there somewhere I can put it?"
"Here. We're cleaning in there and it's a mess." I tried to smile, shrug, shutting the door behind me. "Buckets and water and mops everywhere."
A howl and very loud growl made us both jump. One of the mutts had caught the sound and smell of the man.
"Australian sheep dogs. Constant cleaning. I train them." I tried to explain it off with a shrug, trying to make my accent more 'Australian', and it seemed to work. He relaxed. "So, a delivery?"
I could have killed Nick. He'd sent … I wasn't sure how many... so many flowers that they were all over the place by the time they'd been loaded off the truck. Not just that but chocolates too. A pair of teddy bears. Two giant teddy bears, to be exact, and I stared at it as the truck drove off. It was up to my waist. It was such a strange difference to what had just happened that I laughed a little hysterically, prodding the bear's nose as I read the note, and lifted up a genuine Harry Potter wand. Blackwood, fifteen inches, essence of wolf claw. Apparently Nick had sent me his wand. He had literally bought one and, apparently thought up ways I could 'use' it.
"What the hell?" Daniella stepped outside and blinked as she entered a flowery front door. "What's this?"
"Nick." I growled. Okay, it was sweet, and it was bad timing, but what if the man had come here while there was smoke billowing out the factory window? "It'll help make it look less ...tormenting. I guess. Can you help me put them around the place?" I stuck the wand into a pocket.
"And the bears?" She prodded it.
"Savannah could use a buddy."
I kept some of the flowers for me, the ones we'd had at the wedding, sticking them around Antonio. Chocolates were shared around, teddy in Savannah's room, and it even made her smile a little as Vi continued the 'cool water on burns' treatment. I had to admit, after the excitement, it was a relief to sit there against the other bear, read the hand written letter from him, and see the photos of the triplets. Eat chocolates. Relax.
I just wished he'd have warned me. We could have ...lit a bonfire outside so smoke looked normal. Or something.
"Savannah will not be able to help any more." Vi announced as I came downstairs to offer Savannah chocolates.
Savannah frowned, clearly upset, but she just took a chocolate and ate it.
"Why not?"
"The burns are at risk of infecting. She can stay here but is no longer able to help us." Vi took a chocolate and sighed. She looked exhausted. "We must ask Elena for help."
"I'm sorry." Savannah muttered.
"No, you've worked hard. Adam will be okay." I tried to smile and she smiled back, weakly, rubbing her head with one part of her hand that wasn't burnt. "At least you can still stay and talk with him. That'll help."
"I will call Elena. Keep putting these on Savannah's burns, gentle, and keep warm." She headed off to get the phone from upstairs. We heard the hose outside, Daniella apparently fighting another wave of flames, as I gently applied the bandages to Savannah's horrible looking burns.
"He's going to feel awful when he comes out of that." Savannah muttered. "I hope it doesn't scar."
"It might be around for a while but ...I had second degree burns once, they didn't scar." I smiled weakly and she smiled back, taking another chocolate with a slow painful movement, the end result worth it. "Not his fault. Guess you better take Vi's orders and not do any more work though, if you get an infection, it'll make him feel worse."
"Ha ha." She rolled her eyes. "You're right. No work."
Adam set the factory on fire twice more that day alone. Eventually Vi decided to sedate him heavily, so that we could move him downstairs, the risk to fire too much to wait for him to settle down again. Without Savannah's help we had to face it. We had to face the basement.
It was dark, dusty, and empty. Like the factory, it held memories I didn't want, memories of something else. Desks. Daniella stiffened, her face drained of blood as we carried him downstairs, and the second Adam was on a bed, she was gone upstairs. Vi and I tried to make it clean, tried to dust, but this was one space that neither of us wanted to spend long in. We had to for Adam's sake but...
I took first watch for Adam, as Vi was looking greener by the second she was down there, already on the phone to Pav. This was one place that she couldn't hide under strength or fire, this basement, and I had no idea why. Something about this place shook her so badly that she wanted to throw up.
There was only one thing I could do. I called Elena when we swapped shifts. Savannah promised to stay away from him, just to watch him, and to come up for us if he got too much. We could barely stand it.
Vi had called her earlier, and she seemed surprised, but not that surprised. "You need help, we know."
"I don't know how we're going to cope. Savannah needs to heal before she can help and Adam has to stay in the basement with me now." I hated to admit it. But we were in trouble. "There's too many here now."
She reassured me they'd find a way and we hung up. I had the feeling that she was as helpless as I was, with Clayton having to guard the babies now, Elena as alpha not really allowed or expected to do this work. Everyone else was vulnerable to the disease and had to stay isolated till it was figured out.
There wasn't much she could do in the end though. No one was allowed to come out, Elena had to stay at Stonehaven, Clayton had to keep an eye on the kids and the toddlers with the Cabal scientists desperate for 'samples' in order to try and find a cure. More sorcerers were being knocked down than any other species, apparently, and they were getting desperate. Unlike us, who could still change and were still technically 'werewolves', it knocked out a sorcerer pretty badly. This was made worse when it became clear that witches were somehow immune. I found out that sorcerers and witches had this fued or thing going on between them and had been for a very long time. Now that the witches were safe from the disease, but there were a lot of sorcerers being knocked down by the disease and made powerless, suddenly Kate, Lily and Susie's blood was precious stuff. Not just blood either. Apparently at one point they did a spinal tap too, something that pissed everyone off, because we'd been told 'more samples'. Not 'stick a needle into their spines'. So Clayton couldn't come help us.
I ended up spending most of my time in the basement after all. My experiences down here only came with my escape and with the 'hip breaking' thing. I wasn't sure what it was about the basement that upset Vi so much, except that she struggled to tolerate it, and she didn't struggle with anything. Daniella's womb had been cut out down here. She didn't come back down again. So it was me, and Vi when Antonio needed me to calm him down, as he didn't seem to be calmed down as well by other people. Savannah didn't leave Adam's side, even if she couldn't do much, but the burns were bad enough for her to need pain medication. The blisters looked pretty shocking.
Savannah was right though. The freezer, while it would have been too much for us, seemed to calm Adam down when he started to thrash. We left the door open, of course, but the freezing air cooled him down and whatever flames came out didn't make the same impact as they had before.
We watched the news as we sat down there, watched TV, joked, tried to relax and ignore the place. It gave us both the creeps, that basement, that freezer we had to put him in. The interesting thing was, while this disease didn't affect humans, it was starting to affect their pet dogs and the wild wolves. Amar, when Elena had talked to him, had been excited about this news. If the humans started research too, in order to save their precious pooches, then it'd assist with their research. And the humans did start to research how to cure it- they were obsessed. They called it the 'pooch plauge' and ran incredible figures about how many dogs were getting sick or dying. It may have been made up, I didn't know, I'd heard that the American media wasn't entirely trustworthy... but if people loved anything, they loved their dogs.
A few days after we'd put him down there, Adam started to come back, and we could relax. No more fires were started. He started to wake up for a few minutes, talk, and fall asleep again, not able to really consciously notice time passing, confused, but at least he was coming back. Savannah kept the burns hidden under clothing as she waited patiently.
I was called up by Vi as he slept. Aaron, one of the vampires, was also awake. Or we assumed so. He was walking around the cage, confused, and didn't seem to notice us. Then he collapsed and started to convulse, just as I got there, his body shaking so hard his head kept hitting the ground.
Vi rushed off for the medical kit, yelling at me to put something under his head, and I grabbed my shirt off and pushed it under his head. It was the closest thing he had. I grabbed Aaron's arm, trying to hold him down, his eyes rolled back in his head. Suddenly he was up, slamming me against the bars, pain exploding in the back of my head as metal pole met skull. Teeth tried to sink into me, hands clawing into my arms, Vi's arms flying past my head through the poles to grab Aaron's head and push it back, the medical kit falling out of her hands and exploding on the ground.
"Can you get his hands off you?" She was breathing hard, struggling, and I tried to free my arms. Vi growled, when she saw it was not going to work well, the strength of the vampire's hunger overpowering the fever's affect on his body. "If I let go, he bites."
"Everyone..."
"Daniella is asleep." She growled, I felt teeth drag across my neck as her arms struggled to keep him back. "Savannah is not allowed."
"Does the bite turn me?"
Vi hesitated. "I don't know. I do not think so." My eyes went to Cassandra but she was too out of it herself to answer. I doubted it would, if it did, they would be over run by the people they'd bitten.
He slammed me hard against the bars, probably trying to knock Vi back, another explosion of pain through the back of my skull. Vi fell backwards, cursing, and I realised it was her head that I'd hit that time. But I only had a moment to realise that before teeth sunk into my neck.
Screw teenage vampire romances. This wasn't fun at all. Teeth? In flesh? Pinching that spot was bad enough, at least for me, and I couldn't help but cry out in pain at that sensation, arms in iron fists around me, the vampire person too feverish to know or care about what it was sucking on. He was hungry and I was a walking fountain of blood. I stood there, aware that Vi was lying behind me very still, teeth and mouth clamped onto me with incredible suction, the shock of it making the world sway. The thought to 'think about alternative ways to cool them down such as a hose' drifted through my head ...then it stopped hurting, to my surprise. It felt like I was being drugged. The ability to fight him, which I hadn't stopped trying to do, was fading away.
I saw Daniella out of the corner of my eye pull the door open at the same time the other vampire seemed to inhale, very sharp, aware that maybe she was hungry too. I struggled harder, trying to fight this 'drugged' feeling, as Daniella tried to get his hands off me.
"Cassandra." I tried to warn her, head swimming, the world swaying around the two of us as he fed desperately.
She turned, arm going up automatically when she saw the woman fly at her, and Cassandra latched onto it with the same greedy need to feed that Aaron had. I watched as if I was in a tunnel now, watched with that sense of disconnection, that pain in my neck fading. Watched Daniella shriek with anger and pain as she tried to hit Cassandra's head off her. They were like babies, I thought as my legs gave way, desperate for a feed without knowing what right or wrong was.
I shut my eyes as someone else came into the cage, Aaron's arms tightening on me to keep me up, and fell into darkness.
I woke upstairs, a fucking awful pain in my stiff neck and in the back of my head, body as weak as it had been coming out of the fever. Antonio was beside me on the bed and I felt the air mattress under me sag gently as I shifted. Storage room? I guessed so.
Vi was in the office, I could hear her speaking in Russian to someone, pacing up and down from the sound of feet on floor. No... English. Mixed with Russian. She sounded pissed off. Someone was arguing with her. A male. Adam? No, he was still sick. Reece?
Wait, what?
I blinked and tried to listen, groaning as I tried to sit up, aware that I had something tying me down. For a moment I thought I had been turned by those vampires, that I had been ...I didn't know, whatever it was...
That thought was distracted by Reece's voices again, and Daniella's 'You're a fucking idiot!". The sound of something hitting something fleshy. Reece's hiss of pain.
I tried to figure out what it was holding me down and realised as my mind came back somewhat. It wasn't that it was holding me down, it was that it was wrapped around my neck. A stiff bandage. Some kind of neck thing. New fashion? Keep the vampires at bay with the neck brace? Next it'd be a full body fireproof suit for Adam's hot flushes. That wasn't a bad idea, I thought with a wry smile, I'd suggest it later.
Shutting my eyes, I rested back, sure that what I'd just heard had been a trick of the mind. This only lasted for five minutes before I was lifted up, carried into the office, and set down on the mattress n there. A body, heavy, sink into the side of the air mattress, an arm draping across me as someone made themselves comfortable there. I sat up fast, only to have hands yank me down hard, someone pulling the sheet over us again.
"Shh. Don't wake Antonio."
"Reece, you're supposed to be at home." I stared at him, big grin, no sickness at all, the blonde hair and tanned skin looking even worse than usual.
"Don't you start, I've already argued this out with Vi and Daniella. Besides, Daniella needs me." He replied, shrugged, and lay back between us on the small bed, relaxing. Extremely small bed. There wasn't really enough room for us and he kept slipping off the edge of the air mattress "Got another pillow?"
"Does she know she needs you?" Talking hurt. I cringed as I spoke again, reaching up to touch the stiff thing around my neck.
"No, so shh." He covered my mouth again, tugging me back down. "People maimed by vampires don't talk. They snuggle."
He wrapped one arm around me and went quiet, the smile fading as his eyes went to my neck. I touched it. It was clean, no blood, a tank top that was clean now, and I wondered how it'd looked when they'd detached Aaron. Like how it looked when you got rid of a leech, probably, a disaster.
Reece kissed my hair, his hand re-clamped over my mouth every time I tried to speak. There was no way he'd let me say a word. I sighed, shut my eyes, and went to sleep, feeling his arm slide down so that he could hug me close. Maybe a little strange to other people but to us, closeness, snuggles, this was the kind of thing we loved. Usually it happened after a run.
Daniella's voice snapped me out of it.
"What the hell do yo-"
She was cut off and I opened one eye to see Reece yanking her on top of him, twisting around so that he was on top of her, kissing her, grinning as he did. One of his hands held her head so carefully, so protectively, that I noticed that she too had something around her arm. He ignored the thump of her hand against his chest and head, careful I noticed to keep space between their bodies, but he didn't let her up till he was done. He winked at me and I flushed and narrowed my eyes.
"I decided to come help." He replied, sitting up, and flopped back to sit cross legged beside the air mattress, leaving the two of us on it.
"You're going home." Daniella growled at him. She glanced at me. "You ok?"
I nodded and cringed. Silly movement. "You okay?"
"I was, till I wake up to find Reece standing over me." She shot him a look. "I could have taken care of it on my own. You'll get sick if you stay here."
"Course you could. But I'm not going anywhere. You got me as long as I'm able to walk." He ignored her fists, gathering her up in his lap, hugging her against his side. I flushed, getting up, but Reece grabbed my arm and yanked me down. "I'll be like you two then. My women."
"She's your woman." I muttered. He bit Daniella's hand playfully and she slapped him hard. Very hard. Even I cringed when he flinched.
"She is my woman, all right." Reece agreed, cringing, as he reached up to touch the spot.
"We're not a couple." Daniella spoke up, sudden, Reece's soft sigh as he reached up to rub his cheek again, hurt on his face. "We're not one. You don't need to treat us like one."
I blinked at surprise at the two of them, trying to sit up, Reece leaning over her to help me. Forget asking what'd happened earlier with Aaron... this was much more important. "You're not a couple?" I spoke the words slowly, unsure if I'd heard them right, but she nodded. "Even though you sleep in the same room and kiss?"
She flushed and glared at Reece. "I don't get a say in that."
"Yeah, you do, you always get a say. Don't involve her in this." Reece reached out for her, glancing at me with an apologetic look, and she ducked out of his hands, standing.
"How can you two not be a couple?" I watched her storm out, arms crossed, the anger there. I understood, I thought, neither of us liked being weak. Neither of us liked being rescued or weak like this. "You're always together. Sleeping in the same room. Kissing."
"I don't know." He sighed, flopped on the bed, still looking hurt. "It's complicated."
I shook my head as I watched him lie there beside me, eyes still on the doorway she'd vanished in. It was pretty obvious, at least to me, who he had eyes for. Had they been like this for two years? No one really saw them kissing, sure, but they shared the same room every night, lived together in New York...
"So when are you going to ask about this?" Reece reached up for my neck, carefully brushing against the stiff bandage thing there. "Or who rescued you?"
"I got bit." I tried to shrug and again cringed. "Guess I got bit a lot. Who rescued me then?"
He flexed his muscles, flashing me another grin, and I rolled my eyes. "Hey, I seriously did. The Russian shiela's on the ground out cold, you're melting in another man's arms, Daniella's swooning in some other woman's arms... so I saved the day. So to speak. Prying their jaws off you wasn't as easy as I thought it'd be."
"We tried to feed them. They wouldn't drink the blood we got." I reached up to fiddle with the bandage, tempted to take it off.
"I wouldn't risk taking that off. Vi was pretty humiliated that she'd been knocked cold when she was needed so she's a little angry. Anyway, you've fed them now. Congratulations." He reached up to touch my neck, smile fading. "From now on, I'm on guard duty, day or night."
I wasn't in charge of that. Elena was. I rested my head against the wall and sighed out slowly. It was good to see Reece again. He'd changed the subject though, about Daniella, and I wanted to know more.
"What are you to Daniella?" I asked, softer, prodding him gently.
"I don't know." He sighed and shut his eyes. "Don't worry about it. She's been through a lot. Your neck looked fucking awful."
"How is Daniella's arm?"
"You both just got one bite. Hicky from hell too, they have incredible suction when they've latched on, you're going to be bruised for days. But it gave me a heart attack though, blood all over their lips, licking your necks, like you're a chocolate fountain, while you bled all over the place." He shuddered. "Makes me glad I'm not a vampire. But Vi wants your necks bound up like that just in case."
"Hey, we eat deer and rabbits. Raw." I reminded him.
"Yeah and they taste good." Reece licked his lips. "We're going home soon and you can try wombat."
"Wombat?" I shuddered. "No thanks."
"Why not?"
"They're cunning, scary, and painful at the best of times when they decide to charge. We'd be covered in bruises by the time we get one." That made him smile as I yawned.
"They've got something in their saliva that makes you go to sleep." Reece yawned too, catching it, and nudged me. "The vampires."
"Not lack of blood that made us faint then?"
"Might have been that too. We gave you some blood." He nodded at my arm and I stared down at it, seeing a little white tape over a spot. "But you seem okay."
"I am okay. Just a bit sore. Can you help me up?" Reece obediently got up and helped me up, arm over my shoulders, as we went to the window. I gazed down at the cage the two vampires had been in. Cassandra was in the one beside him now, I noticed, and both were sleeping. "Like babies."
"Huh?"
"They fed like ravenous giant baby leeches, now they sleep like giant bloated leaches." I muttered and he laughed, squeezed my shoulder.
"I hope breast feeding wasn't like that."
"I only got to do it for a little while. But it was... interesting." I had to admit, that was a sore point for me, and my smile twisted painfully at the memory. I had wanted to try and breast feed them, even if there were three of them, even if it was strange. The bite was a little like that though. "It was a bit like that except less teeth and no wound."
Arms grabbed me from behind. Vi hugged me hard, her chin on my shoulder, her mass of red curls tickling my neck. "I am so sorry."
I turned to see a big bruise on her forehead where the back of my head had met her forehead. She looked a bit upset, angry even, but her anger wasn't directed at either of us. "It's okay. They were hungry and I didn't think about that when I went in."
"How do you feel?" She gently undid the stiff thing, hesitating as I hissed in pain as dried blood caught on the bandage, and for the first time since I'd met her, Vi hesitated. This had clearly unnerved her badly. I glanced at my reflection and saw why. The two teeth, with a few other punctures, had left some pretty nasty looking holes, still weeping blood, and there was the mouth shaped bruise where he'd latched on. I wasn't sure where the vampire fantasy part started... but maybe that only applied to vampires that weren't feverish or delusional. If this was what they did, they'd have been discovered in a second, their prey would scream their bloody heads off.
"Like I was attacked by a giant leech. Are you letting Reece stay?" I asked as she replaced it, keeping it firm, her brown eyes going to Reece who was still standing and watching Daniella down on the ground floor.
"Elena and I have spoken. He stays if he wears this in the storage room or down there." Vi held up a box of disposable face masks. "And gloves. It passes through blood or water so we be careful."
"I got it, no drinking water with a mutt, no sipping on blood, understood." Reece took the box.
"And you sleep under mosquito net alone." She added. There was clearly no room for argument about that either.
"I'll do that. I'll do anything. You need a big strong man-" He yelped as Vi hit him hard, "-I mean, you need some werewolf strength. Sorry. I remember seeing you attack Clay, I don't think you're weak. Um. Is this where you were all kept?"
Whatever Vi had meant to say was cut off by that. She turned to look down at the floor. Her eyes automatically went to where she'd been kept, just as mine went to my spot, like they were screaming at us still. Both spots had empty cages. We refused to go near them. "Yes."
"Daniella too?" His eyes went back to Daniella who was gently sponging off a mutt's forehead, a bizarre sight from her, but he was too unconscious to be a threat to her. It was strange how she turned into this- an affectionate and gentle nurse- when the patient was too weak to know she was there. Reece couldn't seem to believe it either, he shook his head, and I even saw a flare of jealousy there for a second as he watched her care for the mutt. Young mutt. Relevantly good looking one too.
"I don't remember seeing her here. She said she was here though." I admitted. Nudged him, which made him jump, and he glanced at me. "Did you bring food?"
"Ah, dinner." Vi seemed to snap out of her quiet moment. "Reece, this is also your job. Do you feel well enough to observe Antonio, Anne?"
"I can do that. I'll call if I need help." I nodded, cringed, and decided to stop doing that. We went our separate ways, I bent down to pick up the mattress I'd been left on and put it against the wall, before sitting in the chair beside Antonio again in the cool room. "Is Adam okay?"
"He sleeps better. I think he will be awake in a few days." She smiled a brief tense smile. It was a relief.
After that, Daniella and Reece started to argue again, like they had when they'd first reunited. We never saw it, exactly, but we saw the end results of it.
It was after we'd gone out to change again. Vi kept guard on the place, refusing to change right then, so the three of us headed out. The second we'd changed, Reece had bounded over, playful and delighted by this reunion, nuzzling me and heading straight at Daniella the second she appeared.
Daniella snapped at Reece as he bounded up to her, ears going down, fur rising, teeth bared. She wasn't kidding. Only when he backed up several feet did she relax, even then only barely, making her way several more feet away from him. This kept happening as we tried to hunt something to eat, which made it impossible to find anything, so we had to give up, change back, and head into the nearest town for something filling instead. One BBQ chicken each, we could have easily have eaten two at that point, plus extras for the ride home...
That night it got to its lowest point. I woke to the sound of scraping. Someone was dragging something near my head, against the wall, and I opened my eyes to see Reece dragging a mattress to the other wall, so that our mattresses touched in the corner. He dropped some blankets and a pillow on that, and flopped down with a groan, the red mark of a hand across a cheek again. It was only then that he saw me watching him in the dim light.
"Sorry, did I wake you?"
"Yeah." I wasn't going to lie. I sat up as he leaned up. "What's wrong?"
"Daniella's decided she doesn't want me near her. At all." He muttered. He tried to smile but it was a tense one, angry almost. "Mind if I stay near you at night?"
"I do night shifts sometimes but yeah, you can. What's she upset about?" I regretted asking it the second I asked, particularly because I didn't like giving advice, and the last time I had it'd turned out badly. He also cringed, closing up somewhat, but the anger burst through. Reece got up, closed the door to Antonio's room, and returned.
He didn't answer for a good five minutes, just breathed in and out, hard, trying to calm down. Finally he spat, "I found her being fucked by the mutts outside. Both of them. At the same time. Fucked and choked."
What? I sat up, thinking I should go out, but he yanked me back down.
"She doesn't want you to stop it. Or me. She wants them to do it. She wants them to hurt her. She enjoys it. Then she comes back and she sleeps, and then she's not as angry for a while." Reece growled low, his hand around the pillow, squeezing hard. The anger flooded his face. "She likes it."
Other ...men? I didn't understand that. "Huh? Maybe you-"
"If you're going to say I'm mistaken, I'm not. She said it herself. I used to follow her to make sure she wouldn't get hurt and ..." He shut his eyes, squeezed them shut. "Or she'd come home. Like that. She likes to go out and get hurt. She likes strange men roughing her up. I can't go near her, I can't treat her good, but she'll let any random human beat her up and fuck her on the street."
I stared at him as he growled, slamming his fist into the wall, over and over, till I smelt blood. I grabbed his hand, and Reece blinked, as if he'd forgotten I was there. He shuddered, the anger not fading, but increasing as he stared at me.
"I don't understand it. Is that why you let Nick have you so fast? Is that what raped women need? To be used?"
I shook my head, ignoring the anger directed at me now, reaching out for the first aid kit on the table. "Not me. I don't know what she's doing."
"How'd you get pregnant so fast then?" Suddenly, Reece moved across the mattresses to pin me down, lips kissing mine hard with all the two years of pent up frustration, his strength more than enough to pin me there. And anger. He was angry. Not with me though, I knew that, and I remembered that apparently men displayed grief and sadness this way, but it scared me what he was doing, especially when he tried to pull my legs open, biting at my top, a low growl there as he inhaled. He was loosing it.
"Reece... it's me." He blinked at me, suddenly, as if he hadn't realised who I was, and was quick to back off me.
"Shit, sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me." He swore, looking like he was ready to get up, guilt flooding his face. "I'm sorry. That was ...did I hurt you?"
Not yet. I breathed out a long sigh of relief and made him sit back down. "No. Stay here."
"I'm just angry." He growled again, squeezing his eyes shut. "That damn wh-"
"You're sad."
Reece's eyes flew open at that. He blinked at me, his jaw tightening, I saw the anger return... and then he blinked again. He shook his head slightly, reaching up to touch it. "I... yeah. I guess I am. Shit. Sorry. I'm taking it out on you. You have a smell like hers." He tried to not breathe in deep, eyes shutting, squeezing shut as pain filled his face as he inhaled. "I don't get it. I don't understand it. I'm offering her love and she wants to go out and be beaten up instead. It makes no sense."
"I don't understand either." I admitted. I still wanted to go down and stop it. It felt wrong somehow, even if Reece said that Daniella liked it, it felt strange. I didn't know a lot about rape or how people dealt with it. I just ...didn't think about it and when I did I reminded myself it was about power, not me. "I don't understand. Maybe Elena might."
"Elena?"
"She seemed to understand when I told her." I didn't tell him about Elena's past. It wasn't something she shared with everyone. "She talked to me about it. Or someone. A counsellor. Some kind of hotline about rape."
"You think this is to do with her rape?"
"I don't know. I don't know what she was like before."
Reece went quiet. That hurt came back, that grief, and he said quieter, "She wasn't like this. I'll think about it. Calling them tomorrow."
"They might help you understand. I don't know. I never called anyone. But they're trained in understanding it." I cleaned the bloody hand as he sat there, his breathing slowing, the grief still there. It wasn't just us who'd been hurt. That was the whole point of rape. "It isn't about her. Rape. It was about power. That was it. Power over us. Maybe she feels powerful when she decides to let them."
"Rape's about power?"
"Yeah." I glanced up at him. He shook his head, exhaustion filtering in. "Maybe that's why I let Nick … so fast. Because I knew deep down that he would stop. That it was my choice. He wasn't doing it to feel powerful like ...the others did."
"I don't know how much of it I can take." Reece admitted, quietly. "I don't know. I thought I could wait, and take it from her, but ...I don't know. It was almost like she wanted me to see it tonight." He shut his eyes again, the pain making him screw his face up, and he slid down to lie back down when I let his hand go. "I think she did want me to see it. She knew I can hear her. She knew I'd hear it."
"It's-" I checked my phone. "Three in the morning. You don't have to know right now. Just sleep."
I waited till he'd fallen asleep before I got back into bed. Then I got up. I wasn't sure what to do, exactly, except that I felt like I had to do something. I saw Daniella return half an hour after Reece had come up, limping, but she looked satisfied and in pain all at the same time. It was strange. I didn't understand it either. Was it the power thing? She didn't answer Vi, just headed for one of the rooms downstairs, and I glanced at Reece.
"She's back." He muttered, awake again, eyes on me. "Isn't she?"
"You can hear her as well as I can see her."
"Yeah." He agreed, shutting his eyes, a small shudder going through him. "Yeah. I can hear her. Come here."
I went over and let him pull me into his bed, his arms going around me. "You ok?"
"Stay here. The sound of your heart drowns it out." Reece muttered against my head. "Nick won't mind a cuddle."
"No, but he might get cranky about that kiss." I reminded him, lying on my back as he rested his forehead against the side of my head, an arm draped across my waist.
I felt Reece laugh softly. "I'll take my punishment from the older wolf for it. Tomorrow."
We fell asleep like that, at least until Antonio started to groan and thrash, and Reece got up with me instead of trying to sleep again. Once he had his mask and gloves on, we headed in, and he helped me with Antonio. It was the same thing, higher fever, Antonio vomiting all over us and himself, which meant changing him and cleaning him up. Never mind our clothing. This was a good thing, in a way, because while we changed him and cleaned him, we could also use cool cloths to cool him down again. Reece seemed amused and a little taken back by the 'undress Antonio and give him a sponge bath' part but I had done it so many times now...
"Guess you know your father in law really well now." He commented lightly, and I laughed softly, shaking my head. Reece was trying to not choke at the smell. "Urgh. What have you been feeding him?"
"I've seen you all naked before. Slept with you all naked. I can handle some vomit." I gently stroked the cloth across Antonio's head and shoulders as he was stretched back out, re-dressed, the soiled clothing in the hamper. "Soup broth and some special drink to get over dehydration and to fatten him up a bit. Can you get some? It's in the fridge."
"He might throw it up again."
"Yeah, but we do it anyway." We had to. Antonio's body was loosing weight too fast and we'd started to mix other things in with the broth just to try and stop it. The same problem came with all the mutts downstairs- fast metabolism and a body that couldn't eat the same amount right now meant that they were all loosing weight. No wonder why I was so weak when I'd woken. It wasn't just the strange change in my body, it was also muscle loss. "You don't want to get sick."
Reece returned and we carefully fed him, ignoring his struggles to avoid it, patiently feeding him till it was all gone. It took over an hour and it was just two cup's worth. Reece carted the laundry downstairs while I coaxed Antonio to eat and, as he apparently wasn't tired, started on getting breakfast ready.
When Daniella came up for her shift, he ignored her, and she ignored him. It was a relief to get out of the office at that point. I headed downstairs for the ground floor, Vi heading up for her sleep, and sat there all day ignoring the office and the spot I'd been caged in.
Adam woke up a day later, properly, weak as hell, but awake. Strangely enough though, he hadn't lost anything, not a power, nothing. He was perfectly fine. I didn't understand that. Maybe there was something different about his genetics to ours. Apparently half-demons couldn't pass on their genetics, maybe that had something to do with it, I didn't know. He was guilt ridden over Savannah's burns though.
Then one day we were flooded with people. Sick, the well, sorcerers and carers alike. One second we were alone in the factory, just us and the mutts, then several large trucks pulled up. Lucas had no clue they were coming, neither did Elena, they just showed up. Took the sick inside. And stayed there. The people working for the Cabal, which weren't just sorcerers as it turned out but all kinds of races, took over one of the areas of the factory and the vampires. We were left with the mutts in the other area. We retreated upstairs into the office and storage room, Adam moving his things up there when he could walk, and let them. What were we going to do? Kick them out?
There were thirty sick sorcerers and half-demons. Thirty. Thirty more 'carers', one for each, half of them doctors or nurses, and they claimed the basement for the science stuff. Amar was brought in too. He smiled weakly, looking fucking exhausted, clearly glad to see Vi. She smiled a brief tense smile at him as she watched the space get claimed and set up, watched equipment be taken downstairs, Reece standing near us as he watched them warily. We may not have had the full senses he had, as a werewolf, but this was our space. They were invading it. The only good thing we could say was that they were very clear about leaving the mutts to us. They were even kind enough to dump another twenty mutts into our area for us to handle. Twenty? Apparently they'd found them sick and brought them here.
We still had five from before. So that made twenty five of the mutts from the North America area. When we informed Elena, she had trouble believing it till we sent her a photo of it. It was almost every mutt. They were in various states of the fever, some in it for a long time, some of them still lucid and angry about being forced here, and suddenly every cage was filled except for the two spaces we refused to touch. Vi's 'space' and my 'space. Suddenly, we really struggled, because five mutts were manageable. Sort of. But twenty five with raging fevers and that needed constant attention? It was too much. Antonio was still sick too. He had been sick longer than Clayton had been, the disease still going strong in him, and when it took two hours just to get him fed, we knew we had more than we could handle.
This time when we called Elena, she seemed to agree, sighing softly.
Some of the Cabal magically turned up to help, new people, Paige and Ana showing up with them. Lucas wasn't sick, she reassured me, but he was now in isolation too. She was immune to the disease, as apparently Ana was, and they'd help. So would the three doctors and four nurses that Lucas's father had sent us. It was the best he could do.
It at least let me spend more time with Ana. As the week went on, Daniella and Vi had their 'change shift', and Reece, Ana and myself went for it the night after, the two wolves and the jaguar a strange sight probably. He was just amused by her, by how stealthy she was, how good she was at hiding.
Then we were spotted. We found it in the newspaper the next day. 'Locals sight two big dogs and a big cat'. Elena was pissed off about that. I couldn't say I blamed her either. We'd probably strayed too close to the road and had been seen by a truck. Or maybe the humans hunted out there. We hadn't smelt it but it was possible. The only positive was that the witness admitted he'd drank a few beers at the time and Hope, who apparently reported on this kind of thing, helped us out by writing an article that was pretty fantastic and out there. Anyone who'd read it would either roll their eyes and move on, or stick their tin foil hat on their head, get a torch, and go searching for phantom dogs and cats.
I woke up one morning just before sunrise, aware of movement, Reece asleep in the bed nearby, and slid up slowly. The Cabel weren't allowed up here. Maybe it was Ana, or Paige, or any of the others that were allowed but deep down, my gut told me it wasn't. I already knew what I'd find when I went in.
Antonio was awake.
It almost made me burst into tears to see him sit there, newspaper in hand, eyebrow raised as he read Hope's article about the 'phantom' dogs and cat. All he needed was a coffee and some muscles back and it'd be like staring at him any other morning.
His dark eyes came up to mine, clear of the fever, lips twitching up at the emotion in my face, and opened his arms.
I hugged him hard, his arms wrapping around me gently, dropping the paper on the floor. I didn't need to ask, deep down I knew, but I checked anyway. "You back?"
"I'm back. How long did it take?"
When I told him, he shook his head in amazement, and let me sit down beside him. "Did I miss a lot?"
"A lot." I smiled weakly. "A lot's been going on while you were asleep. Don't worry about it. How are you feeling?"
"Weak." He inhaled slowly, face twisting with a kind of sadness as he didn't smell anything. "It's all gone. Your smell, hearing, all of it."
"Not everything. You can still change." I squeezed his hand as he sat there, numb, staring at his lap. "I'll get you something to eat and drink and call Nick."
"Call Nick after. Let's eat first." Antonio smiled weakly. "Tell me everything I missed."
I got him breakfast, the fastest thing I could throw together in the pan, fried eggs and things. It woke Reece up who helped out, getting something else ready beside me, and we went to eat and drink with Antonio in the tiny storage room. We filled him in, he wasn't going to let us wait, and only when he knew everything that'd happened did he call Nick. Then Jeremy. Antonio had to use the speaker phone after a few minutes- his arms wouldn't even let him hold the phone up to his ear- but he was clearly back with us now. That was all that mattered to me.
The toddlers spent an hour on the phone to him. Even Dominic talked. They adored him and he fell asleep as they rambled at him, a smile on his face, his eyes shutting and a slow even breathing replacing the horrible uneven breathing he'd had for weeks. I spoke to them for a while before Jeremy got them lunch and we could get lunch ready. Vi hadn't bothered me to leave Antonio when she realised he was awake, instead getting Reece to go downstairs and help Ana out with cleaning things.
I fell asleep beside Antonio as he slept, just relieved that he was back, and when I woke I was in Reece's arms and being carted downstairs.
"Hey, who gave you permission to pick me up?"
"Nick." He carried me down the stairs, careful to make sure my head didn't hit anything. "Have you spoken to Nick lately?"
"He spoke to his dad this morning but not to me. I have to call him. How long was I asleep?"
"A few hours." He rolled his eyes and balanced me in one arm, careful, pulling something out of his pocket.
"She goes no where." Vi didn't let him get two feet onto the factory floor before she spotted us. She narrowed her eyes at him. "She cooks dinner."
He grinned, eyes crinkling under the mask he'd had to put on, sprinting for the door suddenly, and carried me outside. "Come on, surprise for you."
It was raining, a brief shower on our heads, as he carried me out and opened a car door as Vi chased him. Daniella was standing outside, against the wall, looking bemused as I was dropped into the back seat of a car. She glowered when Reece turned to her and headed inside.
The car doors locked, suddenly, as Vi came at the car and tried to open the door. She glared at the front seat. "Open!"
The car took off, suddenly, and I flopped backwards. Stared at the front seat.
"You kidnapping me?" I asked, prying a squeaky toy from under my bum, as Nick waved goodbye to Vi.
"Damn right I am." He drove only for a few more minutes though, just out of sight of the factory, before pulling over and hopping into the back seat. He held out his arms, a pleased look on his face, waiting. For me to hop into them? Was he mad? No. He went "Ta da!" at me.
"What are you doing here? Are you sick?"
"Not sick." Nick yawned, lifting me into his lap, arms tightening around me. "I lost my virginity in this place."
"The back seat of a car or in the middle of no where?"
"In a car." He got an idea, I saw it as he grinned, and suddenly I was flipped onto my back, Nick's heavy body pinning me down. He was trying to distract me, I knew that, and I tried to remember that as he yanked one leg up around his waist.
"You're going back." I pushed at him. "Going home."
"Nope." He nibbled on the side of my neck, curls brushing my ear, the unshaven chin tickling my jaw. "You have to shave me."
"I'm never going to do it again." I muttered, inhaling sharply as teeth grazed my ear, a finger sliding under my bra , eyes shutting. Stop it. He was trying to distract me. This was a bad idea and he wasn't supposed to be here.
"God, I missed you." He growled, trying to be patient with my tshirt, sliding it up. "Look at that. Still there. Can't believe you got a love bite from a vampire. How did it feel?"
"I said go home. I don't want you to get sick." I protested, pushing at him, only to be distracted as he sat up and tugged his shirt off in one quick motion, a button flying off somewhere. I couldn't help it. I reached up to touch his chest, stroking my fingers down it, breathing in slowly. "I don't remember. I fell asleep. I miss your smell."
"I missed yours too." He shuddered softly, inhaling, moving to bury his nose between my breasts. "Can't have been much of a bite if it put you to sleep. I love you, my girls, I really do. Never go away again." He grinned, kissing each of them, trying to get them from out of the bra as I pushed at his head. "Hey, let me say hello, I don't want to be rude."
"My smell will be gone if you get sick." I reminded him. He hesitated at that, blinking, and shook his head.
"If you don't get it, I don't. We're mates and I love you. I don't want anything you don't have." He rested down, head on my chest, the awkward position apparently not bothering him at all. The look in his face made me melt somewhat, my heart flutter a bit faster, the past few months suddenly not mattering in the slightest. I wanted to touch him. Touch that chest, those muscles, feel them contract under my fingers.
I added, "But you need to stay strong."
"There'll be a cure." He lowered himself down, tugging seatbelts from under me, head against the side of the seat for a rest.
"And if there's not?" I muttered. "Get home."
"Then we get old and tell the grand kids about the days when the werewolves had super strength." Nick nuzzled against my neck again. "Tell them all about your adventures too. Vampires, mad werewolves, jaguars in the jungle."
"You're already planning on having grandkids?"
"Sure. We're going to marry them to Clayton's kids." He laughed as I shook my head. "Or maybe the Russian ones your friend had. Maybe both. We've got three kids, we can mix it up a bit."
"Good luck trying. You've been avoiding Clay." I finally brought it up. He blinked and nodded. "Where were you? Where have you been all this time?"
"Protecting you and doing work from the car." He didn't try to distract me now, he shifted over so I was on him this time, very gentle with his movements, a hand guiding my head down against his chest. "Relax with me a moment."
"Elena's going to have to punish you." I reminded him, sighed, and did as he asked, unable to resist this offer- listening to his heart. "How?"
"Just watching from a distance. I know she will." He relaxed too, breathing slowing, arms squeezing me a little tighter than he really needed to. "Night off, you get bitten. Should have guessed I had no time to sleep. Those mutts camping outside the factory bother me. Can't we chase them off now? They're like lost puppies."
I didn't tell him that they were Daniella's lost puppies. I just stroked his face with my hand, Nick leaning into my palm as I did, his smile fading and that look returning. That look that was all love and affection and genuine adoration. It was probably mirroring my face. I admired him, his face, his eyes, even the stubble. I did want to shave it. Grooming him was so intimate.
"I love you." I sighed out, a slow release, chin resting on his chest. Shut my eyes. He was here. Nick sighed too, a soft shuddering sigh under me, as he finally heard the words he'd been waiting for. A hand stroked against my lower back.
The door opened suddenly, feet grabbing at Nick's ankles, the two of us pulled hard out into the rain and onto the muddy ground. Hands grabbed my waist, as Nick fell, Clayton pulling me up before I fell with him. Clayton stood above Nick, arms crossed, not looking amused at all. "You on vacation?"
"A bit of sun, working, a bit of sex-" He paused when I nudged him with a foot, tugging my tshirt down. "-well, no sex. But some stalking. Makes for a good break."
Clayton glanced at me and I shrugged. "I had no clue he was here. Till now."
The rain slowed now, stopping, leaving the dust and sand sticking to him. "You've got an alpha to talk to." He didn't glare, exactly, but he fixed Nick with such a look that even I wanted to cringe... and technically it wasn't my fault. Sort of.
"I'm not going."
"You're going with me. Both of you are. The pack's here." Clayton moved past us to the car, yanking the door open, and glanced back to Nick with that look again. "Nick, you have to come. Anne, you can come with me in my car."
"Wait, the entire pack's here?" I added, quickly, as he went past me for the car that I hadn't heard pull up. Clayton tugged open the driver's side. "My babies are here?"
"Everyone's here." Clayton replied, lips twitching. "Coming?"
I was in the car fast, Nick having no choice but to get into his car and follow behind us, Clayton already pulling out. We drove towards the old factory, and closer to it, came to one of the other abandoned houses. Or at least, it was abandoned once, now there was a bunch of rental cars parked out the back. The outside looked quiet but I knew the inside wasn't going to be, knew it without seeing a rustle in the windows, a shiver going down my spine as I felt an awareness of my pack close.
Jeremy greeted me, bringing babies out with him, laughing softly as I hugged both him and the babies in one go, arms stretching. "Welcome back."
"What's everyone doing here?"
"We decided to come closer." Elena called. She put her hands on her hips when Nick pulled up, any trace of a smile gone as he gave her a sheepish 'Hello'. "You- go inside."
"Nice to see you too." He leaned over to kiss her as he went past, arm pulling her in for an affectionate hug, and she pushed at him.
"Isn't it risky for you all to be here?" I asked. Jeremy headed inside and I followed him into the living room.
"There aren't as many mosquitoes here, even this close to winter, and some of us are-" Jeremy hesitated.
"You're sick?"
"Not me. Karl is and Noah is. They're already heading over to the factory now. I know you've got a lot there but ...we'll try and help somehow." He replied quietly, a tense smile. "Some others."
"You sure? How are you feeling?" Nurse-mode clicked on the second he put the babies down, I reached up to touch his forehead. I saw Jamie come out of one of the doors, arms crossed, and she didn't look good either. Susie and Lily started to crowd around my ankles, trying to get my attention, but my attention was taken by how pale she looked. "Jamie, you okay?"
"She's got a fever too." Jeremy said quietly. His dark eyes met with hers and she tried to smile, but she looked awful.
"Necromancers too?"
"It seems so." She tried to smile. "Just have to wait and see what it does to me. Jeremy is coming with me to the factory."
"Nick, you stay in with your babies and the kids. It'll be safe but don't share food or water, or leave your room after night. Those are orders."
"I should call Vi and let her know I'm here." I hesitated. "And to prepare beds."
"Already done. Clayton called me when he located Nick." Elena rested a hand on my arm and glanced down. I looked down too. Lily's eyes were filled with tears as she and Susie circled around me, struggling to get my attention. "You've got the morning off. Be careful with your neck."
I sat down in the middle of them, tears slowing and the girls climbing into my lap. Dominic was focused on his dad, smart enough to know maybe that I was already in hot demand, and Nick sat on the couch with him. "You're sure that they're immune?"
"Kate, Lily, Susie, all three of them. Somehow the three of them are immune." Elena replied, nodding, sitting on the couch beside Nick.
"You're really sure?" I smiled, reaching out to stroke the girl's faces with my hands, tangling in their curls. The silvery blonde curls were already darkening at the roots, just a fraction, showing that they wouldn't be blonde like this for long. There was a bandaid on each of the girl's arms, where there'd probably been blood taken, and even though it'd have only been a tiny prick, it made me angry. Any wound was a wound.
"Very sure. The mutated version only affects male werewolves." Elena sighed out as she watched them. Kate rushed out, closely followed by Logan and Matt, the two of them heading for the TV with a dvd.
"You're here!" Matt skidded to a stop. He grinned. "Want to watch a movie? We're going to watch Narnia."
"Um, sure." I nodded, standing up, heading to the couch to sit beside Nick, the two little girls clinging to a leg each, working together in keeping me in their grasp. I was sure this was a planned idea, even if they were only two years old, and it vaguely reminded me of hunting. The second I was down, they were crawling up, planting themselves in our laps, Nick's arm pulling me close to him as he relaxed.
The three kids sat down in front of us, Matt sliding back so he could lean against my leg, a tiny show of affection that from him said a lot.
Half an hour later, Ana was dropped off, and she sat on my other side the second she rushed in ahead of whoever else was there, happily accepting a toddler as Dominic crawled across us to her. Maybe she missed her brother and her family. It was a lot of work for her to do anyway, help them nurse those mutts.
Antonio was with her. Nick's relief, when he saw his dad weak, leaning on Reece, but alive, almost made me burst into tears again. Antonio couldn't hold the babies yet but he sat down and let them crawl all over him, that grief back again when he couldn't smell their scents. I understood. They may have as well have blinded him for all we'd lost without our noses. I sat beside him as he tried to ignore everything he was missing, tried to focus on what was left, his hand squeezing mine when I took it. Nick got the dinner ready while we sat there and watched the Narnia movies, all three, with the kids. Antonio slept sometimes, watched sometimes, Nick took him to change and shower at one point, but mostly he just wanted to be near us. I didn't blame him for that.
The day was peaceful and calm, quiet, a break, but it was also for Antonio. To try and get him to eat a lot, come back, Jeremy the most anxious out of all of us. He didn't show it, exactly, but he kept bringing food home. Watched Jamie like an anxious wolf. Tried to feed both her and Antonio as much as he could. Lucas turned up. His father had let him come here to stay and keep Cabal under control, apparently his father having not approved the spinal tap, and Lucas could remain in the house near the factory on the sole condition that he didn't leave it. I suspected it was as much to do with the fact that he was near Paige again as anything else.
We headed back to the factory that night, myself, Jamie, Elena, Clayton and Jeremy, Nick, Lucas and Reece staying back, Savannah and Adam joining them to defend and protect the kids, and we came back to chaos. Now we just had to get all the mutts through it.