Getting to her feet, Alyssa ran toward the door Stefan had disappeared through, slowing down only long enough to scoop up a handgun and extra magazine from one of the dead guards—there were lots to choose from.
She was a little unsteady on her feet. Between the bloodletting, the vampire crap in her veins, and the backhand to the face, she was dizzy as hell. But she made it out the door, avoiding the running battle going on in the corridors and ignoring the acrid smoke coming from the burning tapestries along the walls. How the hell they’d caught fire, she didn’t know. The place was going up fast, and it looked like the vampires didn’t believe in sprinkler systems.
She passed Rachel and Diego exchanging gunfire with several men and a vampire down one of the side passages. There were already several dead bodies on the floor around the two werewolves, and Alyssa desperately wanted to stop and help Zane’s friends, but she knew if she did, Stefan would get away and she’d never get Stacie back alive. She refused to let that happen.
Alyssa let her instincts guide her through the chaos and the spreading fire, until she reached a metal door near the elevators. Her gut told her Stefan had gone that way. She shoved the door open and found stairs. Two sets of footsteps pounded up them, echoing in the close confines of the stairwell.
She took the stairs two at a time, not even slowing to consider whether she was going after the right two people. It was Stefan, she was sure of it. And he had Stacie with him. Alyssa knew that for a fact, just as she knew if he made it out of the corporate headquarters building before she caught up with him, they’d never catch him.
Halfway up the steps, the fire alarm started to ring, the sound so loud it was almost enough to deafen her. Smoke followed, thick enough to make her eyes water. But she ignored both, catching up to Stefan and his hostage just short of the door that opened onto the main lobby—and all the Black Swan employees he could have gotten lost in as they made a dash to get out of the burning building. While Stacie wasn’t resisting him as he pulled her up the stairs, she wasn’t helping anymore either. Maybe the girl wasn’t as far gone as Randy Curtis had claimed.
“FBI! Freeze!” Alyssa shouted loud enough to be heard over the fire alarm.
Stefan spun around and pulled Stacie in front of him, his gun to the side of her head. “Drop it and let me walk out of here or I’ll shoot her! I swear it!”
As if to prove he meant business, he pressed the barrel against the girl’s temple so hard it almost pushed her head all the way over to her shoulder. It had to hurt like hell, but Stacie didn’t make a peep. Yet as glassy as the girl’s eyes were, they were still pleading with Alyssa to save her.
Alyssa considered trying to talk Stefan down but knew it would be pointless. The man knew he was never getting out of this, not after everything he’d done. If she let him get out that door behind him, he’d shoot Stacie just to slow Alyssa down.
Taking a deep breath, she lifted her weapon a little higher, planning to aim for a grazing shot to the top of his shoulder. It would be a tough shot, especially since she was still a little dizzy, but she could make it. She had to.
Suddenly, Alyssa heard a scrabbling sound on the stairs behind her followed by a loud growl. Alyssa knew it shouldn’t be possible, but she recognized that growl.
Stefan’s eyes widened and he jerked his weapon away from Stacie’s head, straightening to his full height and pointing it over Alyssa’s head, aiming at the wolf behind her.
She didn’t waste the opportunity, lining up the shot and squeezing the trigger two times in rapid succession before Stefan could squeeze his. One round hit Stefan in the left shoulder. The other got him in the neck.
Alyssa didn’t bother to watch Stefan fall, instead darting forward to catch Stacie before the girl tumbled all the way to the bottom of the stairs. Stacie collapsed into her arms, pressing her face into Alyssa’s shoulder and sobbing softly.
“Thank you,” she whispered before passing out against her.
Alyssa lifted her head as Zane moved up the stairs in his wolf form and stopped at her side. His beautiful gray fur was covered in blood and she didn’t doubt that some of it was his. But he’d survived a full magazine of bullets to the chest and stomach. She doubted a few scratches would put him down.
He lowered his broad face, resting his forehead against hers. He just stood there, breathing her in. Alyssa wrapped the arm that wasn’t busy with Stacie around his shoulders, digging her fingers into his fur and hugging him tightly.
“Don’t ever think you’re a monster again,” she whispered. “And don’t ever forget that I love you.”
* * *
Zane sat in the back of the FBI tactical response vehicle, gritting his teeth as his pack mate and SWAT team medic, Trey Duncan, dug an endless number of bullet fragments out of his chest and stomach. He had no idea how Trey was able to find all the pieces, but he was damn happy his fellow alpha werewolf could do it because having all that metal inside him hurt like a son of a bitch. Even though he was grateful to have Trey’s help, he couldn’t help tensing every time his friend took another piece of lead out. The last time Trey had worked on him hadn’t ended well.
Alyssa had watched for a few minutes before finally turning away, refusing to witness Trey alternating between cutting into him with a scalpel and poking around with long forceps. She’d turned green after the first several pieces, deciding to keep watch out the window instead of trying to help.
She craned her neck to look at the circus of activity still going on outside Black Swan Enterprises. “If your injured arm completely healed itself when you went through a full shift, why didn’t the bullet holes heal up, too?”
Zane looked over at the back of his left arm, still kind of stunned to see an entire triceps there. A tiny trace of the scar was still there as well, but where there’d previously been a whole lot of nothing, there was now new muscle tissue. According to Trey, it seemed like he’d regrown the muscles while in wolf form and they’d stayed there after he’d changed back to his human form.
“His inner wolf is smart enough to know those fragments would irritate the hell out of him if they stayed in there,” Trey murmured as he continued to work. “When he shifted back into human form, it left the wounds open for a while to give us time to get them out. If we didn’t, they’d heal over regardless, but they’d hurt and reduce mobility.”
Alyssa seemed to take that answer in stride. Truthfully, she was taking almost all of this a lot better than he’d thought she would. She hadn’t even batted an eye when he’d turned back into his human form starkers as the day he was born. She’d simply found him some clothes, then helped him continue to get injured people out of the burning building.
Not that there’d been all that many people. Other than Zoe, Chloe, and the three kidnapped girls, the only people who’d made it out of the nest had been a dozen nearly catatonic enthralled servants. Everyone else had died in the shooting or the fire that still continued to burn under Black Swan Enterprises despite the efforts of the fire department. Apparently, fire and vampires didn’t mix well.
“Okay, you’re good to go,” Trey said, putting away his medic tools and handing Zane a T-shirt. Knowing that a good portion of the Pack would be going through a full shift today, the team had shown up with lots of extra clothes. Just in case.
Zane almost groaned as he pulled on the T-shirt. Damn, he’d forgotten what it felt like to get dressed without experiencing pain in his arm. He glanced at Trey, still busy with cleaning up. Trey had been the one who’d had to cut the muscle out of his arm to save his life after Zane had gotten shot a few months ago. Even though he didn’t want to admit it, Zane had blamed Trey for his bum arm, and his pack mate knew it. Since that day, neither of them had spoken to each other very much.
“Thanks for fixing me up,” Zane said.
