His friend seemed almost an afterthought now that Louis had finished experimenting on him. They’d left him strapped to the inclined rack, but even if they hadn’t, it didn’t seem like it mattered. Kyson simply stood there, eyes mostly vacant. He’d gazed at Shaylee for a while after Nadia had tossed her in the cage with Samantha, but then he’d shut down. Like there was no one home anymore. It was hard as hell seeing him like that. Trey knew he should be thrilled his best friend was alive. But truthfully, he wasn’t sure how much of the man he knew was still in there.
Was this the life Kyson would have wanted?
Was this even a life at all?
Even with those thoughts bouncing around in his head, Trey was worried about what Louis was planning to do with his friend. Was the son of a bitch inhuman enough to kill Kyson now that he’d gotten what he wanted out of him? Trey worried the answer was yes and that there wasn’t enough of his friend left to even fight back when the time came. The blankness in his eyes suggested he’d completely given up.
Trey subconsciously strained against the shackles again, only to feel the sensation of something crawling across his skin. He looked over to see Nadia staring at him, her eyes larger than they should have been for a normal human but still smaller than they would have been if she’d gone fully vita. A smile curving her lips, she walked over to stand beside the table he was shackled to and leaned down to put her face close to his.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she whispered in his ear as Louis moved over to attach cables and catheters to his son. “And it won’t work. You’re not going to get off this table under your own power. And when the doctor is done with you, I’ll get whatever is left. Trust me, I will take my time with you. You’re not the first werewolf I’ve fed on, but you are the first alpha, and I won’t waste the pleasure I’ll get from consuming you by rushing it.”
“Hope you choke,” Trey said.
Nadia let out a soft laugh and walked away, leaving Louis to take her place alongside the table. By the time the doctor was done with him, there were so many needles, wires, and cables attached, all of them taped and retaped, that it all started to feel kind of over-the-top. Had it been this complicated when he’d resurrected Kyson?
To distract himself, Trey spent the time darting his gaze around the room, assessing the threats and trying to come up with a plan. He wasn’t worried about the doctor himself, other than the fact that he might be able to order Kyson to attack him. But with his best friend strapped securely to the rack in the corner, that wasn’t too much of a concern. That meant Trey could leave the doctor for last once he made his move. Rogi also wasn’t much a threat either, other than the remote he had in his hand. That thing could kill Samantha, so Rogi would have to go first.
That left Nadia, the soul-sucking vampire. She was the only one who could stand toe-to-toe with a werewolf. She’d already shown that. Trey knew that no matter what happened, he couldn’t let her get her hands on his bare skin. She’d suck the life out of him before he could even put up a fight.
He expected some kind of big announcement before something happened, but Louis simply stated they were about to start the “DNA transfer” and then the doctor flipped the big lever on the wall.
The pain as his body jerked and spasmed on the table was so unreal, Trey was sure he was going to die. He watched in horror as his blood began to flow through the endless number of tubes toward the kid in the glass tank, swearing he could feel his entire body being drained. A second later, electricity began to ripple across the surface of the red goo, and the teenager started to thrash around in the thick liquid. His mouth opened and Trey could hear screams even through the fluids and the glass casing.
The pain continued to climb higher and higher, until it seemed like his bones would shatter from the stress of his body fighting against the restraints. He knew that at any second, those bones would fly into pieces, tearing through his skin like shrapnel from a grenade. But even worse than the pain in his bones was the agony screaming through his skull. It was like church bells smashing around in there.
“I might have failed to mention that the transfer process is probably going to kill you,” Louis said in a nonchalant tone as he watched his son splashing around in his tank of red goo. “Or at least leave you without all your faculties.”
Trey could hear Samantha shouting and slamming her hands against the metal grating of her cage, pleading with Louis to stop. Shaylee was shouting, too, but at Kyson, begging him to do something. Even Nadia was complaining, saying the whole thing was taking too long. Apparently, she was impatient and wanted dinner.
Trey found it nearly impossible to focus on anything going on around him. The pain was ripping though his head like razor wire, shredding his mind to pieces. When his bones finally started to crack, he was sure it was the electricity killing him, and he berated himself for not doing something sooner. Now, Samantha would be left on her own with no way to protect herself.
“He’s alive!” Louis shouted, stepping closer to the glass tank as his son fought his way to the surface of the goo, screaming and thrashing around even harder. “It’s working!”
Trey ignored the doctor’s announcement as he realized that the cracking sounds signified something drastically different than he’d thought. Something that had only happened to him twice in his entire life, both times under the guidance of someone in the Pack who knew what the hell they were doing.
Holy crap.
He was going through a full shift while being electrocuted to death.
Just as he felt the unnatural and itchy sensation of fur pushing its way through his skin, there was a horrendous roar of anger from the side, immediately followed by the shrieking of tearing metal. Barely able to control his body, Trey somehow managed to flop his head to the side in time to see Kyson jerking himself away from the rack holding him, eyes full of anger as he launched himself forward only to be met halfway across the room by Nadia in her fully transformed vita lamia form.
It was almost comical seeing the much smaller, almost frail-looking vita preparing to fight the mountain of a man that was Kyson. His friend easily outweighed her by at least a hundred and fifty pounds. Then the pale-skinned creature backhanded Kyson across the room, bouncing him off the metal rack he’d broken loose from, and Trey realized the fight might be as lopsided as he’d thought, but in the opposite direction.
Trey continued his shift, the process made more complicated by the shackles and straps confining him to the table. A wide-eyed Rogi came running toward him, remote in hand. Skidding to a stop beside the table, he grabbed a scalpel from the tray and stabbed Trey in the chest over and over with the blade.
“Stop it!” Louis shouted. “You’ll ruin the resurrection process!”
Rogi ignored him. Apparently, he couldn’t give a shit about the boy and his resurrection.
So distracted in his desire to stab Trey, Rogi seemed to have forgotten the remote in his hand. Trey wasn’t complaining. The razor-sharp scalpel struck multiple times and hurt like hell, even though the agony of the electrical current was still rippling through him.
Once the shift had gone far enough, Trey was able to get a paw loose from one of the shackles. That freed him up enough to lunge forward. Rogi assumed Trey was going for his neck and threw up his hands to defend himself. Not going to turn down the target Rogi gave him, Trey sank his mostly formed fangs into the man’s left arm. The resulting crunch and cry of pain was intensely satisfying—almost as good as watching the remote hit the floor and bounce away.
With Rogi slashing away at him, Samantha and Shaylee shouting in the background, and Kyson fighting with Nadia, it was damn near impossible to stay calm enough to focus on finishing the shift. Taking wolf form had never come easily for Trey, which was why he’d only done it with his pack mates around to help. Listening to your own bones shatter and then knit back together in a completely different shape was terrifying. Getting through it meant relaxing and letting it happen. And no, he wasn’t exactly relaxed right now.
He was still fighting both the restraints and Rogi, barely avoiding a scalpel blade in the eye, when Louis showed up. The doctor threw his weight on top of Trey, trying to get his paw back under the shackle while attempting to reattach the catheters that were somehow still stuck in Trey’s now partially shifted leg.
“Jamison could die if the resurrection process isn’t finished properly,” Louis ground out as if he thought that would keep Trey from trying to save himself.
