He looked around, taking in the concrete block construction and acoustic ceiling panels. Damn, this girl was sharp. “You think that there’s a way into the isolation ward through the ceiling?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But like I said before, getting in here might be tough. This door used to have a cheap lock you could jimmy with a metal ruler, but they changed it a while ago. So unless you’re better at picking locks than I am, I don’t think we’re getting in.”
Trevor took one more sniff to confirm there wasn’t anyone around, then grabbed the knob and gave it a savage twist. There was a metal-on-metal grinding sound, then a sharp pop as something inside the lock broke.
Brooklyn blinked in surprise, but then that familiar look was on her face, the one that said she was wise beyond her years.
“It’s still a cheap lock,” he murmured.
“Sure,” she said.
Trevor could practically feel her suspicious eyes boring into his head, and he opened the door and switched on the light. He ushered her into the room, then after another glance around, quickly followed, pulling the door closed behind them. Fortunately, it was heavy enough to stay in place.
He looked around as the overhead light flickered a few times before settling into that putrid institutional fluorescent glow. The place was bigger than he thought it would be. In addition to the typical racks of maintenance and cleaning stuff, there were also a refrigerator and a sofa. The custodians must use the place as a break room as well as a supply closet.
“You used to break in here?” He glanced over his shoulder at Brooklyn as he headed toward the back wall. “Why?”
“Ian and I used to slip in here all the time at night so that we could—”
Trevor turned and cut her off. “TMI. Don’t want to know.”
He didn’t have to wait to get the ceiling panels pushed aside to know that Brooklyn had been right. He could already hear people talking on the other side of the wall. He could also pick up a mishmash of hybrid and shifter scents wafting from the ceiling. Unfortunately, none of them were clear enough to tell him exactly what was going on in the isolation ward.
He was looking for a chair he could climb so he could reach the ceiling tiles when an ear-splitting scream ripped through the air. The tortured sound climbed higher and higher until he swore the vocal cords of whoever was making the sound would surely tear apart. But instead, the scream transitioned into a pain-filled growl.
The sound was so primal and raw that Trevor felt his claws and fangs extend, regardless of the fact that Brooklyn was standing right there beside him.
“What the hell was that?” she asked fearfully from behind him.
He didn’t answer. He was too busy clenching his hands into fists and fighting down the need to shift, something he hadn’t needed to do in frigging years, not since he was fourteen. But the urge to let out the animal inside was difficult to get a handle on.
He was just getting a grip on his coyote half when a completely different sound reached his ears—the creaking and rending of leather and the snapping of metal. At the same time, the growl changed tone, becoming angrier and more savage.
Terrified voices rose on the other side of the wall before turning into high-pitched screams as panic reigned in the isolation ward.
There was a slash of claws, followed by cries of pain, then running feet. It wasn’t hard to figure out where the footsteps were heading.
Trevor spun around and gave Brooklyn a stern look. “Stay right here. Don’t frigging move!”
He’d barely made it into the corridor when he heard the crash of the heavy metal doors of the isolation ward smashing open. The smell hit Trevor at the same time as a teenage boy rushed around the corner in full-flight mode and slid to a stop a few feet from him. The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old. He was thin with dark hair sticking up all over the place, pale skin, and angular features.
It wasn’t the short fangs protruding from the boy’s snarling mouth or the blood-smeared claws that kept partially retracting and advancing every few seconds that gave the creature away as a hybrid. In fact, his claws and fangs looked more like a shifter’s. It was the scent. Hybrids smelled…well…wrong was the only was Trevor could think to describe it.
He couldn’t tell exactly what shifter animal was mixed in with the kid’s DNA as part of the hybrid process that had changed him, but if he had to guess, he’d say some kind of canine blend. The smell and facial shift weren’t right for a coyote, but maybe something smaller. A fox?
Oddly enough, the kid didn’t have the red eyes hybrids usually had. He sure as hell still had the typical hybrid rage thing going on, though. And he didn’t seem to like the fact that Trevor was standing in the way he wanted to go.
The hybrid took a threatening step toward him, his mouth opening wider, his hands coming up with fingers spread and claws extended, ready to swipe.
Shit.
Trevor didn’t want to get into a scrap with the kid, not when there was a facility full of Taser-toting orderlies sure to descend on them any moment. But it didn’t look like the hybrid was going to give him any choice.
“Ian?” Brooklyn asked softly from behind Trevor.
Trevor groaned silently. Dammit. He should have realized who the kid was. He started to warn the girl and tell her this wasn’t the Ian she’d known before, but it was too late for that. She stepped around him and reached out a hand toward Ian.
All at once, the fangs disappeared, and the claws retracted until only the tips remained visible. The rage that had filled his features seconds earlier faded.
