Nero looked back at Josh, who tightened his face into an “as-if” expression. Then, as one, they said, “Challenge accepted.”
A moment later Josh went back to typing and Nero headed to kitchen. Stratos glared at him as he passed, her hand gripping a pen where it rested on Yordan’s paperwork pile.
“I can’t help you,” he said softly. “Wiz has to—”
“Fuck you,” she snapped. Then she abruptly closed her eyes and exhaled. “Sorry. I’m pissed, and I hate this. I hate everything about this.”
Nero was about to say something, but Gelpack beat him to it. He hadn’t even seen the alien in the room, but the guy straightened up from a chair and came to stand in front of Stratos.
“It is time for your appointment,” he said. “Explain ‘pissed’ to me in as much detail as possible.”
Stratos gaped at the gelatinous being, and for a moment Nero thought she would throw a punch. Instead, she stood up and got nose-to-nose with the alien. Then she bellowed, “Arg!” right in his face.
And Nero laughed—straight-out laughed—surprising everyone in the room, himself most of all. How the hell had he just found the right balance of quiet and noise?
Two weeks later, Josh blew up the lab.
Chapter 19
JOSH COULDN’Tbreathe, but that was only because he was coughing so much. He blew out weak puffs of air filled with the horrendous stink of chemicals fried into vapor or ash or whatever the crap it was that he was breathing.
A face came into view, which was startling really, because his eyes were watering so badly he couldn’t see anything. But then Nero appeared in a blurry kind of way, as did the man’s words through the high-pitched whine he’d been ignoring.
“Shift, you pyromaniac. Get human, right now!” Nero had that alpha note in his voice, so Josh struggled to comply. He’d really rather just lie here and keep trying to hack up a lung. But that was becoming too painful, so he might as well fix it.
He gathered his energy and moved back into his human body. It was a smooth transition now, thanks to lots of practice. And within a few eternities of effort, his body reformed and he could take a full, deep breath.
Then he started coughing again. Shit. Whatever was in the air stank enough that it made his human nose shudder in horror. Whatwasthat…?
Oh hell. He remembered. What stank was his new fire-resistant compound that had indeed kept his test dummy from being fried by Stratos and Laddin’s favorite flamethrower. In fact, it had worked perfectly… up until the whole thing destabilized and went kaboom.
“Don’t breathe,” Josh rasped. “Toxic.” He wasn’t sure it was actually toxic, but there was no reason to take stupid risks. Or rather takemorestupid risks.
“Yeah, we guessed,” Nero answered. “That’s why we hauled your mangy ass outside. And why the hell were you blowing shit up as a wolf?”
Because his senses were more acute as an animal. And part of testing was seeing how things affected the people using them. And the people who would use his fire protection were werewolves. Or they would have been using it… if it had worked.
“Stratos?”
“She’s fine. You’re the one everyone’s worried about. You were closest to the boom. And what the hell are you doing making explosive compounds? You’re supposed to be finding a way to survive a fire bomb, not create—”
“Thatwasmy fireproof compound,” he growled. That shut up Nero long enough for Josh to roll onto his back and stare up at the grayish-blue plume of smoke that lifted into the blue Michigan sky. He saw a singed Stratos sitting a few feet away and Wiz looking murderously at him.
“You said it was safe,” the magician snapped.
Yeah, he’d thought it was. But guilt made him snap back with a flippant response. “We’re not dead.”
“Because you were lucky!”
Yes, he was aware of that. Then his gaze caught on Stratos’s as he studied her head to toe. She looked good in a charred, rumpled way. And when she realized he was looking, she gave him a gleeful thumbs-up. “I always wanted to be in an explosion,” she said. “Now I can scratch that off my bucket list.”
“Glad I could help,” he returned. His voice was light, but he and Stratos had developed a shorthand in the days that they’d been researching together. He ducked his head in an apology, and she snorted and shrugged in an “it’s all good” gesture.
Then she waved her hands at him. “What I won’t recover from is seeing all your private bits out and dangling. Cover up, will you? A girl’s got to eat, and no way can I erase that shriveled horror from my brain.”
Oh shit. Yeah, he was lying here naked. Nero was ahead of Josh, though, already covering him with a blanket. Then, after a narrow-eyed look, he shrugged out of his sweatshirt to give to Josh.
“Can you sit up?”
