Chapter 97 Nico #2
Luis shook his head. “These cameras look like they’re motion-activated. It shows several more minutes left of the video. Something else has to happen.”
As though the characters in the clip heard him, the two guards reappeared with Viola at their side. My hand clenched into a fist at the sight of her. Viola strode up to the door and slid back a small panel at eye level.
Her voice came through the speaker, distant and tinny. “Good evening, Gabby. How are we?”
“Screw you.” Gabriella’s voice sounded even more distant through the door, but it was clearly audible.
“Oh my. I’m afraid that won’t happen. You are attractive for a woman your age, but I don’t swing that way. My apologies.”
“What do you want from me?” Gabriella asked, her eyes now visible in the small opening.
“It’s not what I want from you. It’s what I want for you. Your daughter is the entire reason you’re here to begin with. It’s her you should be angry with, not me. I want you to have your revenge against her. Doesn’t that sound marvelous?”
“My daughter has done nothing to me. You, you psycho bitch, are the one I want revenge against. You’re even crazier than I thought if you think differently.”
Ignoring Gabriella’s outburst, Viola went on as though the other woman had never spoken.
“If only we’d gotten the vial from the vault.
All this would have been much easier. But I think we’ve discovered a workaround.
A secondary plan since our first was unsuccessful.
” Viola gestured to the guards, who opened the door and stepped in.
The man on the right pinned Gabriella’s arms behind her back, the struggle visible through the door.
The second man pulled out a hypodermic needle and jammed it into Gabriella’s neck, pushing the plunger down.
Gabriella gasped and twisted away in pain.
The men tossed her to the ground and hit a red button on the wall. A thick glass partition slid across the room, separating Viola and her guards from their captive. Gabriella rolled onto her butt, sitting up and holding her neck with her free hand. “What did you do? What was that?”
Viola stepped forward until she was framed in the doorway.
“We wanted Edemas’s blood. Our scientists had a plan for it, but all we were able to get was Maddy’s blood from the vault.
She’s a direct descendant of Edemas, but there’s still very little of his blood left inside her.
While less powerful than what we’d hoped for,” she tilted her head, “there was something we were able to create with her blood.”
Gabriella never had the chance to retort; a scream of surprise tore from her throat as her hand and arm shifted to a wolf’s. She stared at the limb in fascination and surprise. “What’s happening?”
“Maddy’s blood didn’t have every component I needed, but I think we can work with this. Don’t you think?”
Gabriella’s shift started spreading. She called out to her wolf, begging her to stop, but the drug was too powerful.
She was shifting against her will. Soon, she’d fully shifted, and a massive gray wolf stood in the center of the room.
Instead of looking fearsome and powerful, the wolf had her head down and was whimpering—scared and confused.
“Gabriella? Can you hear me?” Viola asked.
There was no reaction from the wolf, almost like she couldn’t hear her or maybe was too stressed and panicked to acknowledge the other woman. Gabriella’s wolf looked like a fearful, caged animal.
Viola knelt so she was eye-level with the wolf, staring at her through the glass wall.
“The poison forces you to shift, but you have less knowledge of yourself, less human reasoning ability. It’s almost like the pure animal you are finally comes to the surface.
It’s beautiful, really. With this, we’ll finally show the world what kind of mangy, dangerous, and disgusting creatures you really are. ”
Luis and I growled at the screen in unison. I wanted nothing more than to have that woman’s slender, pale neck in my hands. She was experimenting on shifters, trying to create a drug that would eradicate us. The door behind us suddenly swung open. I jerked my head around to see Maddy walking in.
“How’s it going in…” Her eyes took in the video playing, and her face went pale. I leaped up and put an arm around her waist. Maddy shook me off and took a hesitant step toward the monitor. “That… that’s Gabriella’s wolf.”
I moved behind her again and helped her sit in a chair as her legs began to give way. She wasn’t fainting, but her entire body had gone soft, almost like the bones had been removed. She basically melted into the chair but kept her eyes focused on the screen.
“Something’s happening,” Luis said, nodding toward the footage.
I looked up and saw the wolf had raised its head and was now growling at the glass, taking a step toward Viola.
Then, in a flash, the wolf leaped at the glass, slamming its body into the barrier over and over again.
Her teeth snapped and screeched across the glass.
The snarls and yelps came through the speakers but didn’t do it justice.
I’d never seen a shifter in such a rage before.
Then, as suddenly as the attack started, Gabriella’s wolf stopped and collapsed.
My heart lurched. Was she dead? I tried turning Maddy away from the screen, but she wouldn’t budge.
Before any of us could say anything, Gabriella, still unconscious, shifted back to her human form.
Viola turned and glared at the security camera, her face bright pink with anger.
“What the hell was that?!” I wasn’t sure who was supposed to have been monitoring the video feed when it was live, but whoever it was, she was pissed at them.
She pointed a finger at Gabriella’s motionless form.
“They aren’t supposed to be able to shift back. Did you fuck up the formula?”
Viola gave Gabriella one last look, then shook her head in disgust before stomping away. “I swear to God, if those fuckers don’t figure it out soon, I’m feeding them all to a bear shifter. I swear to God I will.”
The last thing we saw before the video feed cut was Gabriella’s chest rising and falling gently, blood dripping from a cut on her forehead. Then the screen cut to black.