4: Jack - In The Pack Page 5

  Even my eyes were beginning to ache. My whole skin felt...sensitive, energized.

  “You just rest.” She sounded like a mother or something. Not my mother. My mom had always been a pusher.

  “There’s time to rest later, Jack. When you’ve won your medal.” Her voice echoed in my head. “You can reap rewards and sit on your laurels all you want then.”

  My gaze traveled over Giselle’s face, and the wildly mussed, fucking sexy hair--which I really wanted to run my hands through again--but couldn’t find the energy to lift my hand to. Bleakly, I managed to lift my chin enough so I could see Hood. Now, I don’t know if he’d been undressed and was now redressed, or not. Like I said before, time stopped spinning while I was in that room.

  He was looking around, like he hadn’t been in that room before. Said, “We need to fix this place up. It’s a dump.”

  By anyone else’s standards, it was a penthouse apartment with fine furnishings. But not the cut that Hood liked, obviously.

  Giselle found that amusing. “You...” She got up. Like a cat uncoiling from a cozy slumber, she stretched. Correction, like a dog who’d lain too long, she padded over to him, and fawned up at him, cuddling right up under his armpit--like she hadn’t just fucked for hours with me.

  Funny, but it didn’t bother me. I felt no emotional attachment to her.

  Not that I ever felt that ‘kismet’, or belonging to or with someone else. I was a loner. Always had been. That’s what it takes to win the medals in a solo sport.

  Hood wrapped his arm around her, like it was second thought, and looked down at her, waiting patiently for her to finish her thought.

  She finished, “...are a serious control freak.” Planting a kiss on his chest--which was shirt covered--she pulled away and started getting dressed.

  His gaze was hard as it watched her. His teeth gritted as he said, “You like it.”

  I knew that he had a thing for her. I sensed it then. I didn’t get it. A man that powerful, with such animal magnetism--why did he literally order her into my arms when he obviously felt something for her? And she...she feigned indifference.

  Giselle shrugged on her clothes, not arguing his point. Occasionally, they looked over at me. But, for the most part, Hood watched her dress, and so did I.

  Finally, about the time she pulled on her jacket, I said, “I can’t move.”

  “That’ll wear off.” Hood was not concerned. “Just chill for a few.”

  “No.” It was all I could manage.

  “Come again?” Hood snickered a little. Hoarse-sounding dog laugh.

  “No,” I repeated.

  “No, what, sweetheart?” Giselle put her shoes back on.

  “No deal.” I felt sick. Like I was dying. The venom had reached the tips of my toes, and the ends of my fingers. It roiled in my belly, and fucked up my brain. Like I needed any more of that shit. I felt like my eyes had gone red.

  And, truth be told, they had. They sure felt like it.

  I was getting angry. Werewolf DNA integrating with my own natural aggressiveness, competitive spirit.

  “Ah, I don’t think you understand what we offered you, Jack.” Hood rocked forward on the balls of his feet, stretched his back. After all, it was a done deal, I just didn’t know it. Supremely confident, he told me, “We gave you terms you couldn’t refuse.”

  “Bullshit.” It came out a little more like ‘b-shit’.

  Giselle came over to me, dropped down onto her knees again, and started putting my socks on.

  It was funny. I thought, what the fuck are you doing?

  But I couldn’t fight her. She surprised me by dropping a kiss on each instep before working the socks on. I thought, you deserve better. But I couldn’t say it. I just looked sadly at her. I didn’t want to think about Hood or his damn deal, or what he’d done to me--which, at that moment, I still wasn’t sure what that was.

  She said, “It’s a good team to be on, Jack, honestly.”

  I grunted.

  Licking her lips, biting her lower lip for a minute, she reached for my underwear, turned it right side out. I should have been embarrassed, but I felt like an invalid. Grateful for her ministrations, unable to utter due appreciation, or help her in her efforts. I was really numb.

  “What she means is, welcome to Lobos, Jack. You’ll be our guest here for a while. Make the most of it. Relax. Enjoy yourself. Anything you want is yours for the asking.”

  “Leave.” I meant, I wanted to leave.

  “You’ll come to terms.” To Giselle, Hood said, “Make sure his needs are met. Explain things to him, so he understands the whole picture. And, for Gaia’s sake, take a fucking shower. Rinse yourself out.”

  He reached in his pocket, pulled out a pill, yanked her head back and pushed it in her mouth. He held her jaw shut. “Swallow, Giselle.”

  She didn’t do it right away. Her eyes flashed, and she looked at me. I had no idea what the pill was, but he didn’t let go until she swallowed it. Then he looked in her mouth, made her lift her tongue. I figured out later, it was a ‘clean-out’ pill...to insure she didn’t get pregnant by me.

  Yanking her chin from his hold, she asked, “Have you matched him yet?”

  “We’re running the numbers. We’ll know pretty soon.” He smiled. “It’s a big database.”

  Wistfully, she said, “I wish I’d been lupus born.”

  Hood bent over, his demeanor changing dramatically--becoming thoughtful and sensitive. He touched her chin gently and said, “Too bad, huh?”

  I knew they were intimate, without a doubt, then. Not that there was any emotional ties connected, or admitted to. But they’d used each other for satisfaction purposes. Maybe there was some affection, but it was covered up. I remember getting that impression. I haven’t changed my opinion on that. They’ve got history, a connection I don’t quite understand.

  He left us after dropping a kiss on her lips. We watched him go without saying anything more.

  She didn’t seem to mind. She took her time dressing me. I felt like I was a hundred years old. But she encouraged me to stand up. I let her help me get my pants on, leaned on her, then fell back to the chair.

  “The lethargy should wear off pretty soon.”

  My tongue was too thick to speak much. My brain was mushy, and I had a hard time connecting thoughts. You could say, there were no paragraphs in my brain then. Only mono-thoughts.

  Getting out of there. How to escape. How to get someone to believe what had happened. I knew no one would. It was too insane.

  Lobos International drugging the famed Olympian. The headline thought twisted my lips.

  Giselle noticed the small smirk, rubbed a thumb across the corner of my mouth and said, “There’s a lopsided grin. You’re pretty cute, ya know.”

  “Yeah.”

  It was funny.

  “All say it.”

  She giggled. “I bet they do. But how many of them get you to fuck them like I did?”

  “Not fair.”

  She climbed up between my knees, let her hands rest at my waist, and looked up at me, sort of searched my face before saying, “All’s fair in love and war, don’t you think?”

  “That’s bullshit.” I rolled my tongue around my mouth and added, “Not love.”

  Giselle’s pout was cute, but the shake had worn off. I was under another spell, and anger kind of rolled through me. “War.” I agreed with that. They had declared war, snuck up on me for their first attack. It wouldn’t happen a second time, if I had anything to say about it.

  If I could get my damn tongue to work again.

  “I know it’s hard to believe, as well as we fit together, but you weren’t made for me.” She smoothed the skin of my cheek, rather wistfully. “Or I wasn’t made for you, I guess you could say.”

  I managed, “What do you mean?”

  Chapter Three

  My tutelage in garou lore began then, when I was too stunned by Hood’s venom to move. By garou, I mean...werewolf, a sha
pe-shifting creature straight out of a Boris Karloff or Lon Chaney film.

  She gave me a skimmed version of the history, genetic lines going awry, the breed trying to get control again, mass extermination of what they called unnaturals--the bitten. Even told me of instances when the bitten had committed massacres of herds, neighborhoods, even zoos.

  The whole thing was crazy, but in the back of my mind, certain news bits came to mind. The unexplained crimes that had been happened around the globe. Cattle mutilations--attributed to aliens. Mass murders--credit given to uncatchable madmen.

  Somewhere, in all that she said, I found an element of truth. I started to believe what she was telling me. Maybe it was the DNA now coursing through my system, proving itself by imbedding in my brain, altering my understanding. You know, some people say that there is a genetic memory inset in our DNA. Maybe I’d received something there. All I can say is, after the day I’d had, it all started to sound reasonable, wholly believable.

  After all, I was still half paralyzed after a lunatic day of copulative antics. Who was I to say she was lying? I mean, if you’d asked me that morning if there was a protein shake, or a drug anywhere in the world that could Spanish fly your libido until you were raw, I would have laughed in your face.

  So, the bottom line here is, it doesn’t take much to convince you when you’re living that bullshit. It’s amazing how fast you open your eyes when that’s all you’ve got that’ll move.

  Giselle seemed intent on discussing the purpose and importance within their society--of the bitten wolves. How their presence split the general politics of the race, leaving those who would murder all unnaturals to those who saw something more, a way to improve the family tree--through careful selection, for specific breeding purposes.

  Several times, I told her, “Bullshit.” I found it all too hard to believe, despite what I’d gone through. I didn’t want to believe they had politics, or reasoning behind their plots and plans.

  At one juncture, I noted that my speaking abilities had returned to normal. I said, “Wait. If you exterminate these...unnaturals...why did Hood bite me? Especially if you often exterminate, or at least reprimand the biting garou?” The terminology seemed natural to me. In fact, I preferred garou to the truth that werewolf stuck in your face.

  That brought back horror films, and mass hysteria--and I was definitely trying not to fall into hysteria.

  “We’re conducting private, but sanctioned research within a controlled facility, under parameters that have been pre-set.”

  “I’m an experiment, then.”

  She looked away. In fact, she got up and paced the room.

  I had everything but my jacket and tie on. Those were lying neatly on a table now.

  “Giselle, sit.”

  Like a good dog, she did.

  “Tell me, how many more--before me?”

  She winced, glanced toward the camera. I’m guessing that we were edging around confidential stuff now. Real stats.

  “Let’s just say, you’re not the first.”

  That news was discomfiting. I mean, I should have been happy that I wasn’t the first guinea pig, but on the other hand, that meant that they were confidently repeating a process.

  It struck me then that Lobos was an international organization.

  “How successful would you say the program is?”

  Giselle tipped her head, and I realized how dog-like many of her mannerisms were. Like one of those intelligent dogs. A border collie or, no, a shepherd or husky, more like. Yes, definitely more like that. But I could tell that she wanted to please me and Hood both.

  She said, “I think it is going as they’d hoped. Only Hood would know for sure. And others.”

  “What others?”

  Fidgeting a little, she looked at her nails. Long, manicured, strong-looking nails. If she were to be believed, my little hallucination back in the other room--that she’d been half wolf and half woman while riding me--wasn’t so farfetched. That she, herself, was a werewolf.

  Looking at her, I had a hard time believing it. She was a very sensuous woman. Curvy. All sex appeal. A true courtesan. Half dog? Excuse me, half wolf? I wasn’t really all that convinced.

  “There’s Mark Wolf, of course...I think.”

  I wracked my brain. Mark Wolf. Where had I heard that name before?

  “He’s president of Wolf Enterprises, our U.S. affiliate. Takes care of our PR.”

  At the time, I didn’t fully understand that statement. Hunts down problems like mad wolves, and unnaturals would have spelled it out for me better, but see the terminology they use?

  Now, Mark Wolf had just taken over W.E., that made the news...hm...my brain was working too slow...made the news because his brother had gone missing. I saw mystery everywhere I looked, but didn’t have the brain capacity to work it out--at the time. I asked, “It’s all business with you, then?”

  She shook her head and smiled. “Family.”

  “So, you’re related to everyone here?”

  “One way or another, I guess.”

  “And how do you relate to Hood?”

  She laughed, and joked, “Pretty well, most days.”

  “I meant...are you kissing cousins, littermates?” I thought I was being a little funny.

  “Oh, Gaia, not half that close.”

  “Hm.” I was bored with the whole conversation. I wanted out. My legs were tingling. My fingers had that whole ‘fallen asleep’ thing going on; sharp needles prickled in my nerve endings. I glanced at my watch. Hours to wear off. Fuck.

  “Did you have an appointment or something? I can call and cancel for you.”

  “Hm?”

  “You keep looking at your watch.”

  “My lawyer was expecting me to call and tell him what I thought, if I was going to sign.”

  “You are. He knows that.”

  “What do you mean, he knows?”

  She shrugged. “Your attorney’s with us.”

  I could have laughed, but I knew, instinctively, that she was telling the truth.

  Giselle mentioned others, prominent world leaders or CEO’s of major companies, that were involved in their organization. She ticked off several subsidiaries, mostly names I’d heard of, or seen advertised on television.

  I couldn’t absorb it all, but I tried. My mind started whirring. And I thought, I’m gonna learn all I can, and expose the whole mess.

  Just as soon as I can walk.

  We had a meal, room service, a big steak with some trimmings. She offered me a drink. I took it. I figured, what the hell--if she was to be believed, I’d been a second from death when Hood’s teeth had dug into my back. God knows I thought I’d been a second from an ass-rape. That alone was enough reason to tie one on, let alone the bullshit of being paralyzed and told that, when the next full moon rose, I’d see what my new DNA had done for me.

  “So,” I said over a half-chewed piece of steak. I noticed that I was swallowing the near-rare meat without hardly masticating it at all. “You’re telling me that I’m lucky, Hood selected today’s calendar date so I would get maximum adjustment to this...” It still seemed totally implausible. “This metamorphosis I’m undergoing...?”