Kitabı oku: «The Beast Within», sayfa 2

Chapter 2

The world as she knew it shifted, changed. Pain seared her temple, sudden and nearly blinding. The ground on which she stood swayed, seemed to open a chasm into which she dropped—yet it was no chasm that enclosed her but rather Kieran’s arms. Paige was hit by confusing sensations of safety, rightness, fear—but the pain made it all impossible to sort.

She could only stare up at him, locked in by his fierce, protective, angry eyes. Those eyes held her, kept her from the fast-swirling darkness.

The gathering storm over the barrier island receded until there was nothing but Kieran’s arms, Kieran’s eyes, Kieran’s heat.

Then he was gone, somehow, in the time it took her to blink. He’d lowered her to the ground—she knew that. She could feel the soft-packed forest floor beneath her cheek, smell the dirt and the moss. Now a shadow blurred past her eyes.

Low, lithe, dark.

The form streamed across the earth like a ghost, only it was real, she was sure of it. She watched it bound, lifting through the air toward another blurry shadow—a man. There was another sharp explosion, and she realized he was shooting, only comprehending then that she must have been shot. Her gaze spun around wildly, desperate for some point of connection.

Where was Kieran?

The world wavered, and she felt lost. Bright bursts of light crackled before her eyes. She knew she was going to lose consciousness, and she made a desperate attempt to stave off the enfolding blackness, blinking hard, clearing her vision with an effort. The dreamlike quality of the scene gripped her in fear.

The bounding creature reached the man, snarling in lethal fury, and she knew it for what it was. A wolf. Faster, more powerful, larger than any wolf she’d ever seen.

The man stumbled backward, screamed. The wolf latched on to his throat, and they were both down, in a struggle for life or death.

Paige jerked up from the ground, her mind crying Kieran’s name, but pain streaked immediately through her head and she couldn’t make her lips form the word. The world around her tilted, turned black.

The image waved into her consciousness, blurry, shifting, rippling like water. It was the wolf, red now. Dripping blood. She kept staring, baffled and scared, slowly understanding what she saw.

It wasn’t blood. It was some kind of dye. Ochre. She’d seen art like this before, in museums and books. Feather drawn, crude yet sophisticated at the same time. This was not the wolf she’d seen bounding in the shadows of the stormy forest. That wolf had been real. This was another wolf, created by some primitive hand, springing against a stone backdrop, wild and beautiful. Running free. Hard as the immutable surface on which it was painted and gentle as the soft, blowing breeze that seemed to sweep back its fur.

The wolf pulled at her heart in some inescapable way that baffled her even as it held her fast in its lonely, lost world.

Paige stared at the figure illustrated on the rock surface above her head, her eyes adjusting to the low light, the source somewhere beyond her view, her mind coming awake in dreamy increments. Finally, she tore her gaze from the rock with a sharp force.

Where was she?

She moved, started to push up on her arms, but pain dropped her back down onto something soft, padded. Oh God, her head throbbed. Her whole body ached. And then she remembered—

“Kieran?” she whispered, her voice coming out raw, hoarse.

“Don’t move.” He appeared above her, and she realized he must have been there all along, at her side. But for how long?

“Where am I?”

“Callula Island.”

“No, I mean—” Callula Island. Kieran’s home now. His cave. She struggled to put together the pieces from her memory. “The hurricane—”

“You’ll have to stay here till it passes.” He was doing something, his shockingly tender fingers moving over her head. His nearness was as strange as it was achingly familiar.

“How long was I unconscious?”

He glanced at the watch on his wrist. The leather strap was worn, the clockface scratched. His arm looked like one solid muscle.

“It’s about seven o’clock now,” he told her. “Several hours.”

He was removing some kind of gauze compress from her forehead, she realized. She felt the rush of air meet her wound, the sting of the raw pain. Still stunned, she took in her surroundings. She was on some kind of pallet, a thin blanket pulled up around her, in an alcove of sorts. Above her, there were those haunting, painted images of wolves running, leaping, flying. Alive in the stone, real inside a dream.

Had Kieran painted them? She had never known him to paint, but she didn’t know this Kieran of Callula Island, did she?

Her gaze shifted from the artwork to his face, his expression intent, his powerful hands steady. His touch soothed her and terrified her all at once. It was bizarre, intimate and yet distant. She was closer to him than she’d been in two years, and yet she knew nothing about him—just that the sensation of his touch on her skin brought a fearsome grief that pinched her heart, and she couldn’t bear the knowledge of loss that came with it.

She turned her head away slightly, and from the corner of her eye she was drawn to the low glow that seemed to fill a cavernous space, much larger than where she rested now. A vast space filled with the most unlikely of items, utterly incongruous in their otherwise primal, sepulchral environment.

Laboratory equipment. Microscopes, a generator, a small refrigeration unit, slides, burners, a laptop computer, work lights—

Ointment stung her wound as he dabbed something onto her skin, and she gasped.

“Don’t move,” he said, his voice grim. “I’m going to put a fresh bandage on the wound. It’s just a flesh wound—thank God.” He turned away to pick up a fresh bandage that he must have prepared in advance. “I’ll get you out of here as soon as possible.”

Out of here. Off Callula.

Her mind clicked onto another link and she looked back at Kieran, a hum of understanding beating its way through her pulse. Seven o’clock. Well past the time she was to make the return flight.

“The helicopter pilot—” Panic seized her. He would have left her by now—He’d made it perfectly clear he wouldn’t wait.

Kieran’s gaze darkened. “Tell me his name. What do you know about him?”

She struggled to put the words together, to remember. “Matt Dinsmore.” She felt cold suddenly though the air in the cave was warm, heavy. “He’s a charter pilot out of Savannah. Fifteen years experience. Ex-military. I ran a background check myself.” She had taken the extra precautions to ensure the secrecy of her trip to Callula. “I have to get off the island.”

“The helicopter’s still here.”

He taped the new bandage with quick, sure movements of his strong fingers. His voice frightened her, it was filled with such ferocity.

“What do you mean, the helicopter’s still here? What about the pilot?”

“He’s dead.”

Paige’s pulse thumped. “Dead?”

“He would have killed us both if he’d had the chance.” Kieran’s face was hard. “I made sure he didn’t get the chance.”

The shadow of the man with the gun came back to her. The helicopter pilot was the man who had shot her in the woods. Why wasn’t even a question yet. She was too shocked. Her mind reeled.

“There was a wolf. It attacked the pilot.” Her memory stretched, searched. Where had Kieran been? Why had he left her alone? “You’ve trained some wolves to protect you?”

He was silent for a long beat, and she was suddenly more scared than she’d ever been in her life. She pushed up to a sitting position. Pain rocked her temples, but she fought through it. The alcove in which she had lain on the pallet was small, low, the painted ceiling of rock just feet above her head. It made her think of a bunk on a ship. Beyond, in its stark, unnatural light, lay the main part of the cave.

No, not a cave, despite its natural setting. A laboratory.

Kieran’s laboratory. She looked again at Kieran. His deep, secret eyes blazed back at her with some unknown pain that went past anything she could have imagined. Questions tangled in her mind. Answers twisted within those questions, answers she didn’t want to believe.

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

“Lie down, Paige.”

She ignored him. “Kieran—”

“I did everything in my power to protect you, Paige.” His voice lowered, and a new quality crept into it. Something burned-out, hollow. She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she knew it wasn’t just about the helicopter pilot. It was something more.

Dread seeped into her from out of nowhere. She watched as he rubbed a frustrated hand over his forehead, and she realized within her own shock that Kieran was exhausted. He looked drawn, pale, as if he’d suffered through some kind of horrific ordeal.

He rose, stretching to his full height as he stepped back from the alcove, back from her. He looked larger than life, like some transcendent being.

“Protect me from what?” she demanded shakily, determinedly pushing past the fear. “What are you doing here, Kieran?”

Sudden comprehension exploded in her mind. Kieran had been developing a way to imbue a PAX agent with extrasensory powers of scent, sight, hearing. The attributes of a wolf. It was what PAX did best—research and create superhuman qualities that enabled their agents to fight terrorism on a level heretofore impossible. Kieran and his partner, Phil Bennett, had been working on a containment serum to control the effects of the activation they’d already perfected. None of the testing had been completed, but its possibilities had ripped through PAX like an electric shock in those days. Everyone had known of the startling potential of the research. Even the Pentagon had been aware—and wary. The impact on the human mind of such transformation held the dormant capacity for unrestrained violence, powers beyond any control. There had been quiet rumbles that the research funding would be pulled, and the PAX chief had fought relentlessly for the project’s survival.

Then the lab had blown up, and deadly documents found in Phil’s home had told the tale to PAX investigators. He and Kieran had been planning to sell the serums to a terrorist network. Together he and Phil had plotted to cover up the crime by destroying their lab, but something had gone wrong. The activation serum had been destroyed in the fire, along with all the data on the lab computers. Phil had died, and in the panic of his escape, Kieran was believed to have left the now-useless containment serum behind.

With PAX hot on his heels, Kieran had disappeared—without either of the precious serums. PAX wanted Kieran back. They wanted justice.

And Paige wanted answers. How could the gifted, dedicated man she’d wed betray PAX that way? She wanted him to tell her it was all a mistake, that he’d never been involved in the plot with Phil. Even the discovery of the containment serum in their apartment hadn’t taken away her questions. Her heart had held on to impossible possibilities.

Knowing his past as she did, she’d understood his flight on some psychological level. Kieran had lived in frightening neighborhoods where he’d slept under his bed instead of on top of it for fear of drive-by shootings. He’d been twelve when his strung-out father had driven their car off a washed-out bridge. Of course his dad had survived while Kieran had nearly drowned himself trying to hang on to his twin sister. When rescue workers arrived, his dad was passed out on the riverbank and Annelie was dead. By the time he was fifteen, his addict father had him doing the driving, and when a drug buy ended in a murder, he’d put the gun in Kieran’s hand. Kieran had spent the next three years of his teenage life locked up in a juvenile detention center for a crime he’d never committed.

He’d achieved things no one would ever have expected from the troubled teenage boy he’d been. But there was no way he could let himself be locked up again, for another crime he hadn’t committed. She couldn’t blame him for not believing in the justice system or even PAX. His life hadn’t given him a whole hell of a lot of reason to believe in anything. But that he hadn’t believed in her—That was what she couldn’t forgive.

And now, she had to wonder if she’d been wrong and naive all along to hold on to even a measure of her faith in him.

What was he doing? Had the activation serum really burned up? Had Kieran stolen it? Was he recreating the containment serum now? Without it, the activation serum was far too dangerous to utilize. Or was he working to reproduce both serums?

Why else would he be hiding here, reproducing his work, if not to sell it? Everything she’d never wanted to believe ripped into her heart like a knife. Betrayal seared her all over again.

“You’re recreating the serums,” she whispered starkly, and she wanted him to deny it. She wanted to beg him to give her some rational explanation for everything. Oh, God, if this was true, she’d have no choice. She’d have to do anything in her power to stop him. “I can’t let you do this,” she said, gazing at him in growing horror. “You’re going to have to kill me. Because if you don’t, I’m going to turn you in.”

“Paige—”

“I just thought you were hiding here on this island so you didn’t have to go to prison. I never wanted to think—How stupid could I be? Was the activation serum really destroyed, or did you just make it appear that way? You decided to sell your own research, and leaving part of it behind only meant it would take you that much longer because you would have to recreate it from scratch.”

Kieran spun on her.

“What do you mean, left behind?” he demanded.

“The containment serum was found in our apartment, in your lockbox. They searched everything—”

“What? Where is it? Where is the containment serum now?”

“Why? So you can steal it—again?”

“I thought it was gone. I thought it was destroyed in the fire. I thought there was no hope—”

He turned away again, made a sound in his throat, a keening groan of horror. Then he swung back, eyes so dead she nearly screamed.

“I never tried to sell it, Paige. I never tried to sell any of it. I was framed.”

“If that was true, why didn’t you stay? Why are you here, with this secret lab?”

The weight of the betrayal in the evidence before her was crushing her. Her heart was dying, right here, right now.

“Tell me where the containment serum is.” He came back, took a strong hold of her shoulders as he sat beside her. “If you ever believed me, Paige, believe me now. If you ever loved me, trust this one thing. I have to have it.”

Suddenly she was overwhelmed by a terrible foreboding. The force behind his voice terrified her. She didn’t want to be humiliated, betrayed, destroyed by him again, but she had no choice about asking the next question.

“Why?”

A nightmarish beat passed in the heavy silence of the cave. The storm outside might as well have been a thousand miles away. In Kieran’s laboratory, it was utterly, eerily still.

He finally spoke.

“That was not a trained wolf.”

Chapter 3

The horrific admission hung between them and he watched its meaning dawn in Paige’s eyes. Kieran dropped his hands from the slender, fragile shoulders that did nothing to convey the true strength he knew lay inside Paige’s steely will. What he’d told her—what he was—was more than he could expect her to accept. He’d been the scientist, but he’d become the deadly experiment. Paige knew enough as his wife and a fellow PAX agent to know that the activation serum alone could be dangerous. She had no idea how dangerous.

He lived with that horror every day. He might live with it for the rest of his life—however long that would be. And he didn’t expect it to be very long at all now.

“You were contaminated with the activation serum,” she breathed into the eerie stillness left behind by his words. “Oh, God.” She reached out and the shocking tenderness of her fingers touching his face filled him with intolerable longing. Her eyes were huge, dark, liquid. “What’s happened to you?”

The horror in her night-tide depths mixed with grief, and he had to shift back, away from her, in order to keep his head straight. The searing emotion of her eyes and her touch stunned him as much as the information that the original containment serum still existed. And that it had been found in their apartment, in his own lockbox. What did that mean?

His whole world had rocked off its axis and he needed time to think. Abject horror tightened around him, grew exponentially at the possibilities. Worst of all was that now Paige was involved.

He’d already told her more than he’d intended, more than was safe—for her. But he’d had no choice. She’d seen his laboratory. He’d had to stop her from turning him in. And now—

“You don’t want to know,” he said grimly. “You don’t need to know.” He had to protect her from the full implications of the information she’d brought to him. She didn’t realize the meaning and he didn’t want her to realize it. If she did, it would only make things worse for her—-and for him. “What you need to do is to get off this island and forget you ever saw me. Forget you ever knew me.”

“No,” she said immediately. “I can’t do that. You’re my—” Husband. He was her husband. She broke off, her face etched in pain.

“Whatever we once were to each other, it’s over now,” he said with bitter force, a force intended to protect her even as the flinch his harsh words brought to her soulful gaze killed him. He didn’t want to hurt her, had never wanted to hurt her. She’d come to Callula Island for closure, and he had to give her that. There was no going back to what they’d once had and he had to make sure she understood that.

He was a different man, forever changed, and possibly doomed. Paige deserved more. He’d learned on this island to shut off his emotions, and he had to rely on that skill now.

“As soon as possible, you’re getting off this island,” he repeated.

“What about you?” she demanded, and he could see the fighting spirit in her unquenched in spite of his brutally cold words. Resilience grew in her eyes. Her chin was high, her shoulders square. “If this is true, you have to go back to PAX. You have to get the serum, and you have to tell them the truth.”

“They bought the frame, Paige,” he said bitterly. “Who would believe me now, after I ran away?”

When he’d finally come to himself again after the explosion, he’d found himself deep in Rock Creek Park. He’d made it back to his and Paige’s apartment building. She’d been asleep and he’d been terrified—of himself. The phone had rung, and he’d overheard that awful conversation she’d had with PAX chief Vinn Regan. And he’d known there was no going back to PAX and that the best thing he could do for Paige was disappear.

He’d waited, hiding, until she’d gone into the bathroom. He’d heard her sobbing over the rain of the shower, and he’d wished he were already dead. He’d slipped out, run across the street, and watched as PAX agents had entered the building moments later. And then he had, quite simply, vanished.

“I knew that day that I wasn’t the same man, and might never be again. Without the containment serum, I’m a monster.” And he’d known then that PAX believed he was a traitor. He couldn’t put Paige through the truth that he was something much worse. He didn’t know what he was capable of doing when he shifted. He didn’t know if he could hurt Paige. He was a man in fear of himself, and it was why, above all, he’d isolated himself on Callula Island. Its remoteness protected not only him, but protected others from him.

The containment serum hadn’t been thoroughly tested. The research hadn’t been completed. The intent had been to create a strong enough serum to deactivate the power, should that be required, as well as controlling it through smaller control doses. But there were, in fact, no guarantees the serum would act on him at all after all this time—even if he did get his hands on it.

The end was coming, and much faster than he’d even expected.

Just in the past few weeks, he’d completely lost the cone photoreceptors in his eyes that gave humans full color vision. One step at a time, he was changing, forever. The human inside him was dying, and he had no idea what that meant to his very existence.

As a scientist, he was fascinated. As a man, he was frightened. All he knew for sure was that the end was near and that it would be terrible. He’d had bouts of pain for months, pain that came on with erratic severity, and the bouts were increasing at an alarming rate.

Would he go to sleep one night and wake a wolf—forever?

He knew he was frightening Paige now, and he had to. He wanted her to run away from Callula Island as soon as possible.

Then he had to figure out what to do next. Burning inside him now was the knowledge that he’d been wrong, that the containment serum hadn’t been destroyed. All this time he had hidden here, trying to recreate it, and it had still existed.

But how had it ended up in his lockbox?

There was only one answer. Someone had planted it there. And it couldn’t have been Phil. Had Phil been set up, too? His mind reeled.

Knowing the serum had been found in his lockbox changed everything. Kieran had gone back to the apartment. He’d taken cash out of that lockbox that terrible dawn before he’d fled.

The containment serum hadn’t been there—and Phil had already been dead.

Someone else had been involved, someone who’d gone back to Kieran’s apartment and planted the seemingly now-useless containment serum to seal the frame of Kieran. PAX had searched the apartment that morning, right after he’d left it, and they’d found the serum.

There was a traitor in PAX. If Phil had been involved, he hadn’t acted alone. And the traitor was still there.

“But you have a chance now,” Paige said emphatically. “There is hope.” She reached out again, took hold of his arm, her eyes huge and pleading. “You need the serum, and the serum is at PAX, locked up in your old office. They let me in to clear out your personal effects. I saw Vinn lock the serum in the cabinet. As far as I know, it’s still there. They left your office intact, just as it was, in case they needed anything later for the investigation. The project was shut down, the lab and your office sealed. You have to go back for it!”

He didn’t want to talk to her about what he had to do. He didn’t want her involved. He had to go back, she was right. It was his best chance to survive now, slim as it might be. But Paige didn’t have to go back with him, and it could cost her life if she did.

Just the thought of something happening to Paige twisted up his insides. “This has nothing to do with you, Paige.”

Her expression stiffened.

“How dare you tell me this has nothing to do with me?” Her voice grew stronger with every syllable. “Do you think it had nothing to do with me when you disappeared?” Woven into her voice was that profound pain that he knew too well and only wished he could forget.

He forced himself to speak with cold determination. “You came here for a divorce, Paige. I gave it to you. It’s finished.”

It had to be finished, for her sake. This new information changed everything. He had no choice. It wasn’t only his own life at stake. The future of PAX could be at risk, too—and that was the last thing he wanted Paige to know. She’d be better off going on with her plans to leave PAX. Then she’d be out of danger, once and for all.

No way was he doing anything that would put her in the bull’s-eye that he now knew was waiting.

“You’re going to take your signed papers and go on with your life,” he all but growled at her. “That’s how I want it.” She’d stepped out of his sweet dreams and into his all too deadly nightmare. He needed her back safely in his dreams.

In the shadows of the alcove, his keen sight knew too clearly her defiant eyes. “And what about what I want?” she asked quietly.

“You wanted closure. Here’s your closure. It’s over. If you wanted more than that, you made a mistake. I don’t have more to give you.”

He felt the cruelty of his statement in the heat of her hurting gaze. But he couldn’t allow what she’d learned about him to lead her to believe anything could change between them.

Then he told the worst lie of all.

“I want this divorce, even if you don’t.”

He left her, strode away into the open cavern of his laboratory. Paige stared after him, controlling the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. She blinked rapidly to bring the cave back into focus. She was battling so many emotions, she had no idea where to start in dealing with them.

Shock still hummed through her body. If Kieran had been contaminated with the activation serum—What had it done to his body, his mind? What was going to happen to him now?

He’d gone two years without the containment serum. That alone was almost unbelievable. And even if he got his hands on the serum now, would it save him?

She’d never understood what had happened that night, and she was only more confused now. She’d yearned for answers for so long, but all she had now were more questions. It had been hard to believe Phil had been a traitor, working with terrorists. Even harder to believe Kieran had been, too.

If he’d been in the apartment that morning—His life depended on that containment serum. He wouldn’t have full control of his wolf side without it. He could, as he’d said, end up a monster. He wouldn’t have left it behind, not after he’d been contaminated by the activation serum. But it was a fantastical story, one her heart was too eager to latch on to and run with.

And she had good reason not to trust her heart. Or Kieran. He was hiding something from her, of that she was certain.

She followed him, not finished—not by a long shot. Her knees felt rubbery and her head light, but she wasn’t letting anything stop her from finding out what he planned to do now.

Kieran turned, and she saw the unforgiving line of his jaw, the harsh angles of his cheekbones, the brutal intensity of his gaze. But in the glow of the cave, she saw something else in his eyes that shocked her. She’d seen their hollowness, but she realized now they burned with an almost eerie energy. They were familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time. And she understood now where that energy came from.

The containment serum had been intended to control the activation of the wolf powers, integrate fully the exchange of ectoplasm. The activation had never been intended to be taken alone, without its companion control.

He wasn’t the same man she’d known. But no way could she turn her back on this new Kieran, even if he didn’t love her anymore—because even now, she could see the Kieran she had known deep inside those shocking eyes. She remembered the way his fingers used to feel on her face, the way his mouth felt on her lips, the way her heart would pump whenever he came near. To think of what could happen to him now made something inside her shatter. And if she was kidding herself that she could deal with this horror, she didn’t want to know.

“Our marriage may be over,” she said, mustering all the strength in her aching, damnably shaking body, “but I’m still a PAX agent. And so are you.”

“You’re leaving PAX,” he said. “And I left PAX a long time ago. And dammit, Paige, you’re about to drop. You have no business being on your feet.” He reached out and took hold of her just as her weak, rebellious knees began to give out.

His strong arms pulled her up into his hold. She breathed in the male scent of him, her cheek resting against his broad chest. For a surreal moment, she was thrown back in time to the days when being held this way by Kieran was something she’d both loved and taken for granted. The wound of two years without him bled anew.

He deposited her on a crude wooden chair by one of the work tables. The air in the cave was warm and heavy from the generator-powered heater, but when he stepped away, she felt only cold emptiness. Her throat felt thick with feelings she couldn’t allow. She had to keep her head clear.

“If you didn’t leave that containment serum in the apartment, then someone else did,” she said quietly, watching him, working to distance herself from the storming emotion and focus on the question at hand.

Her head hurt and her body felt stupidly weak. She hated weakness, always had—in herself much more than in others. She’d gotten through everything in her life by relying on a determined spirit, and she had to call on that strength now. Her own observation pierced deep, bringing with it an old ache.

He was ignoring her, but she went on: “The terrorists haven’t forgotten about you. Maybe when they realized you hadn’t died in the lab, too, they thought by making sure you were framed that then you would go to them for help since you couldn’t go back to PAX. But you didn’t, and now they’ve found you.” She worked to follow the dark path of the plot. “They still want the secrets of the serums—and you’re the only one who has them.”

Her mind was spinning. She didn’t know what made sense anymore. How had they planted the serum in his lockbox in their apartment? But who else would be after him other than terrorists? PAX wanted him back, but if that pilot had been connected to PAX, he would have revealed himself as a PAX agent, demanded Kieran’s surrender. If PAX knew about Callula Island, there would be a dozen agents here taking him in.

Kieran turned and walked across the lab, his posture stiff and remote. He reached down and took something out of the refrigeration unit.

“We need PAX’s help,” she said fiercely. “You did the wrong thing two years ago to run away. Don’t make the same mistake now.”