48. Growler One
FORTY-EIGHT
GROWLER ONE
Jack
G et your fucking hands off her! the monster roared, battering against the barrier I had erected between us. But fuck, I couldn’t watch this either.
I stepped forward, snatching Farida’s hands away from Seven just as she clicked the ankle shackles into place.
“I’ll do it,” I rumbled, and I must have looked as feral as I felt because Farida’s eyes widened. She gave a sharp nod and climbed out of the truck to wait in the forest with the others.
I took Seven’s hands in mine. “Fuck, I hate this, Blossom,” I muttered, rubbing at her wrists. The ones that were about to be chained.
“We all have our part to play,” Seven reassured me, her voice steady and so fucking calm I felt a tiny bit of my nerves dissolve. “I’d rather this than what you have to do.”
I glanced over at the stiff, bloody uniform—all that was left of the agent I was about to impersonate. Farida had decided it best not to fully clean it, to give credence to my claim that we’d been attacked, and I was lucky to escape with my life, not to mention with Seven in custody.
The thought of putting on clothes that still held traces of his bloody remains …
I shuddered.
“Just do it, Jack,” Seven whispered, turning her back to me and holding her wrists together behind her.
With shaking hands, I clamped the heavy metal cuffs around her slender wrists. Next came the neck shackle, attached to the wrist ones by a long, weighty chain.
The fact that there had been two sets of these shackles stored in the back of this truck—the one those dead agents had driven out to attack us—and that one set was sized perfectly for Seven, the other for me, told me all I needed to know about why we had to do what we were doing.
Baxter, the fucker, wanted us badly. And if we didn’t take him down, he was going to keep coming for us.
I swept her hair away from her neck, drinking in the dizzying scent of spring blooms and black tea.
“You said I smell like freedom to you,” I murmured, fiddling with the neck cuff until it sprung open in my hands. Reluctantly, I circled her neck with it, wincing as it clicked into place. “Well, you smell like hope to me, Blossom. And do you know what I hope right now?”
“What?” she breathed. I let my fingers trail along her collarbone.
“I hope that the only thing I ever put around your neck again is my own fingers, cupping that pretty throat while I fuck you deep, just the way I know you like it.”
The whimper that trickled from her lips almost brought me to my knees. She turned awkwardly with the very short chain holding her legs together.
“I don’t hope for that. I expect it,” she murmured. My eyes slid shut.
“But now you have to pretend to be disgusted by me,” she told me urgently. I opened my eyes, meeting her earnest stare. Reluctantly, I reached for the filthy uniform. “You have to make this believable, Jack. And when … when they take me away … you have to let them. You have to be okay with it. The monster, too.”
“I know,” I grumbled, heart hammering.
Just kill , the monster rasped. Just kill them all.
We can’t. There are too many other lives in the balance here. We have to be smart.
Only HER life matters, the monster snarled.
Behave yourself, or we, and Blossom, will end up dead. Or worse, stuck back in that place, pumped full of drugs and made to do whatever the fuck Baxter’s crazy brain can concoct for us.
The monster went mutinously silent. I felt a pang of anxiety as I closed my eyes, picturing the scrawny redhead, his knuckles too big for his bony fingers, as he held the gun to Blaire’s temple.
The shift was different this time. It felt … uncomfortable, almost to the point of pain. Like needles sliding just under my skin, as my body shrank, my bones thinned.
Shifting into a Candy body is the worst. Unnatural , the monster informed me, disgust creeping into his tone. But he merged with me nonetheless.
Can’t leave you alone to fuck this up , he grouched.
We opened our eyes, turning to Seven.
“How do I look?” we asked, running a hand through hair that felt coarser than our own. A horrified laugh barked out of us. Our voice … it was reedy and nasal. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it that night.
Seven eyed us up and down. “You look hideous,” she replied, her nose wrinkling. “So, it’s a perfect likeness of that disgusting excuse for a man.”
We hurriedly changed into the crusty uniform, trying not to breathe through our nose because the thing was fucking rancid. But mouth breathing was hardly better. The cloying copper of dried blood stuck to our tongue, to the roof of our mouth.
“I want to kiss you,” Seven said miserably. “But kissing that face is just too awful to contemplate.”
We tried out a laugh. The little man had a gritty, sniveling laugh. “You save that kiss, and when we get out of this on the other side, Blossom, I’ll be coming for it … and so much more, besides.”
Her bottom lip trembled, and we longed to reach out, to still it with our thumb. But the others were at the back door of the truck.
“Time to move,” Clay said.
“That means from now on, you’re in character,” Farida reminded us. We wanted to hiss at her, to grow fangs and snap. Hell, we wanted to fucking wrap our hands around her throat and squeeze … until her head popped off her shoulders.
But what we did was climb through to the driver’s seat, adjusting the position for a smaller body than Clay’s. Our Shifter eyesight still worked in this shitty human body, thank fuck, because it was approaching nightfall again, and the forest was gloomy.
“On the floor, Seven,” Farida murmured. “Like you got thrown inside, and you didn’t move.” A growl rumbled low in our chest, but we shoved the gearstick into first, revved the gas pedal, and the truck lurched forwards. Closer to Taiga.
“ G rowler One, come in … over.”
The feminine voice crackled over the two-way radio. In the back, Ellis snorted, the sound quickly muffled by her hand. Growler? They called their vehicles ‘growlers’?
We took a deep breath, pushing back our own hysteria.
“Growler One responding, over,” we muttered in the whiny voice of this agent … this dead agent.
Don’t freak out about it , the monster whispered. Do you want me to take over?
No, but I just … I was always shit at drama at school.
“Agent … McAllister? Jamie, is that you?” the voice went from businesslike to trembling. “Oh God, Jamie … please tell me it’s you!”
Fuck.
Of course he had to have some little agent sweetheart back at Taiga, and of course she’d be the first one we’d have to interact with.
We tugged the ID card out of the pocket, looking at it properly. Agent J McAllister.
Just roll with it , the monster urged.
“Yeah,” we choked out. “It’s me …” We couldn’t think of anything else to say that wouldn’t give the game away immediately, so we just mumbled, “Over.”
“I’ve been so worried! Everyone around here is freaking out! Thirty agents were sent out, and we lost comms ages ago. And one of the guys who gets to sit in on the meetings with the higher-ups said one of the Shifters ripped the drone out of the sky, so we have no idea what happened after that! They’ve been prepping a recon team to scout the area. It’s due to leave in the hour … oh, ah, over.”
“Well, ah … maybe tell them to hold off, until I can … uh … brief them on the situation? Uh … over.”
“Are you hurt? Jamie, I heard that some of the drone footage showed …” she broke off in a choked gasp. “The agent vomited when he was telling us what he saw … over.”
Fuck.
Why do I feel so guilty about lying to her?
Because we’re the good guys in this scenario. Good guys don’t like killing … but tusking that agent who was shooting at us … I very much enjoyed that. The monster chuckled. Just remember that they came to kill us. They came to hurt what’s Mine.
“I’m … pretty shaken up, but otherwise I’m … okay … over.”
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Okay … that’s … good, uh …” her voice suddenly became businesslike once more. “The southern entrance is cleared for entry … ETA three minutes. We’ll see you then, Agent McAllister. Over and out.”
The radio went silent. We turned back, meeting seven sets of eyes, all watching us with expressions varying from determination to trepidation. But there was only one set we cared about. We found hers, brown ringed with yellow, and we tried to convey the depth of our feelings in that one stare.
“No turning back now,” we joked flatly.