Brooding, he pushed onward, the mosquitoes and gnats unable to bite through his thick skin. Thick only in the physical sense. All this emotional bullshit is annoying.
So mired in his worries, Zack failed to note the warning silence around him until it was too late. He turned as he sensed eyes upon him. At the same instant, something solid plowed into him, taking him to the ground.
“Dammit, she’s mine,” a hoarse voice snarled as claws ripped into him.
Grunting under the assault, Zack quickly shoved the Circ from him and stood, cursing himself for his lack of attention.
Facing off against a rogue as tall as himself, Zack wondered how far gone this one might be. “What the fuck’s your problem?”
“The female’s scent all over you is wrong. She’s mine,” the Circ growled before he launched himself again.
Prepared, Zack caught him and flipped the asshole over his shoulder. The rage he’d felt about Kelly and Ace returned full force. Now this guy thought he had a claim to Kelly too?
“Stand in line, pal.” Zack met him blow for blow. He slipped under the male’s defenses with a long slash to his stomach followed by a kick to his solar plexus. As the Circ went down, Zack followed, continually striking the Circ’s face and abdomen. He managed a swift kick to his opponent’s groin as well, the haze of rage he felt further encouraging him.
Moments later, a satisfying groan of pain stopped him, and he stared down in shock at what he’d done. The Circ lay in a broken heap at his feet. The dumbass had started it, but still, Zack wasn’t this much of a brute. Not usually.
Feeling guilty, but wanting to make the most of this confrontation, he yanked the Circ up by his hair. “You don’t seem psychotic, just out of your mind if you think Kelly’s yours.”
“Not all of us are crazy, English. We’ve been developing quite nicely with what Weston’s bitch gave us.”
Caitlyn? What did she have to do with this? Then what the rogue said hit him. Holy shit. Pearson Labs was producing sane Circs again. But how long until they went nuts this time?
“How long you been a Circ?”
“A few months. So what?”
That was longer than the others Pearson Labs had turned out.
“What makes you think my female is yours?” he asked, avoiding the Circ’s question.
The rogue snorted. “Yours? Why? Because you own her right now? She was promised to me. I was designed just for her.” The rogue smiled, his left fang chipped, his mouth a bloody mask of joy. “She won’t be able to deny her blood, any more than she’ll deny her change. With you and Two Bears dead, and the right male by her side, she and I will --”
The male grimaced and stopped talking as several darts hit him hard in the neck.
Another planted itself in Zack’s thigh, and he dived for cover. His night had gone from bad to worse. He needed desperately to get back to Doc with this news. Elliot Pearl had managed to discover a new way to tamper with the Circe serum. Who knew how badly this next batch would behave? It had taken the original Circe’s Recruits five years before most of them had manifested dangerously aggressive behavior. The current rogues they encountered only took days, a few weeks at most, before they lost it. But this guy had been Circ for months?
A man stepped out of the shadows. Zack watched him from where he crouched in the brush as a familiar face spoke into a handheld device. “Fuck! If Pearl finds out about this, we’re all dead. Find Chenko and drag his ass back to base. I want the other Circ alive. I’ve got this one.”
Simon Dunn. The same asshole who’d almost raped Caitlyn weeks ago, and who’d threatened her yet again not soon after. Zack looked forward to this battle. Then more vehicles arrived, and with them the sound of many voices, more than he could handle at this point, alone and drugged.
Logic prevailed. Zack yanked the dart out of his side and prayed it wouldn’t make him too woozy to seek shelter. He tore through the marsh, uncaring about making noise, and sought the bliss of the ocean.
Sinking under the cold waves of life, he swam as if his own depended upon it.
Derrick cursed the shrill sound of his cell phone, pissed that Hale had managed, yet again, to change his ringtone into something earsplitting and just plain ugly.
“What?” He swore and glared at the blue glow of his alarm clock. Four thirty in the goddamn morning. “This had better be good.”
“Yo, D. I need a ride. A quiet ride, real soon.” Zack’s slurred voice shook him wide awake. Zack was supposed to be chilling out with Ace and Kelly. Doc had been pretty adamant they weren’t to be bothered with anything until he gave the go-ahead. Frankly, Derrick thought it was about damned time. He didn’t know what to make of this, but his instincts warned he wasn’t going to like it.
“Where are you?” Derrick rolled out of bed and threw on some clothes. He stuffed his feet into sandals and made his way quietly out the back door toward the garage.
“Not sure.” Zack’s breathing didn’t sound right. “I’m at a gas station, a Wawa, but…”
He paused, and Derrick heard voices in the background. “Try Tuckahoe Road. Bring a med kit.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Sit tight.”
Derrick disconnected. After finding a medical kit and a set of towels from the utility room in the garage, he grabbed keys off the key rack, slammed into Hale’s Toyota 4Runner, and took off.
Forty-five minutes later, he had Zack bundled up and lying down in the backseat.
“You look like shit.” Derrick glared into the rearview mirror, but Zack seemed too weary to care. Starting the vehicle, he took pains to watch the speed limit, driving away from traffic into the darkness of the rural roads he was more familiar with. Taking a long, back way home, he drove another ten minutes before jerking the car off the road.
“Here it comes,” Zack murmured.
“What the fuck is going on?” Derrick roared. “It’s nearly five in the morning, and instead of shacking up with your boyfriend and your new girlfriend far away from your horny buddies, you’re what, picking a fight in the swamp?”
Zack groaned. “I hate when my bones heal. Fucking hurts.”
“I don’t care.” Derrick hated feeling worried. Ever since encountering that bloodbath in the woods a few days ago, he’d done nothing but worry. First for Ace, now for Zack. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Things were…intense…at Kelly’s. I needed some space.” Zack swallowed. “I accidentally ran off the road somewhere off the Parkway. I don’t even remember the exit I took. I busted my ribs and my stitches. Then the PPA found me.”
“No shit?” Derrick saw Zack’s half-assed attempt to sit up and swore again. “Don’t move.”
He left the vehicle and popped the rear hatch. Then he carried Zack out of the backseat and sat him in the way back, as if he weighed no more than a child. Zack said nothing. His eyes were glazed, but Derrick didn’t know if it was due to his injuries or the faint scent of wrongness he smelled.
“Keep talking while I stitch you up.” Zack remained silent. “Unless you’d rather Doc did it?”
“Hell.” Zack exhaled on a groan and lifted his arm over his head, giving Derrick access to the gravest of his wounds. “I wasn’t paying attention. A rogue Circ knocked me on my ass.
Don’t worry, I took care of him. The dick actually claimed Kelly belongs to him.” Changed muscle rippled under Zack’s skin.
“Calm down. We both know she’s yours.”
“Yeah, right.” Zack sighed. “Anyway, he said some things that really concerned me.”
Zack proceeded to tell him about some weird-ass shit -- rogue Circs that weren’t crazy, Caitlyn’s DNA used as testing, and a Circ claiming he’d been created for Kelly.