Page 45 of Guarding the Doctor
I saw the exact instant that Xi realized that I wasn’t bluffing about the silver bullet. Both of her hands went to her head as she screeched in pain. Blood gushed out from around her fingers and her body began shaking. As a physician, it took everything in me to let her die.
Then again, there was nothing I could do for her anyway. Silver bullets were fatal for supernatural creatures. As soon as the metal hit their bloodstream, they were poisoned from the inside out. There was no antidote.
Xi dropped to the floor just as all hell broke loose.
Darla
Iwas so shocked to see the calm way my mate took down Xi I didn’t realize my team had arrived until they broke down the door to the lab. Lois, Martha, Cassie, Wanda, and Angie came racing in, guns drawn, fanning out into the room in an attack formation.
“We’re over here,” I called.
I wasn’t sure what happened to all the people who’d been working in the lab when I came in, but the place seemed to be empty now. The workers had scattered like rats leaving a sinking ship.
Lois charged over, the rest of the team following her. Her shrewd gaze took in the scene. Yuri’s bear was still trapped in the exam room, although he was calmer now that Stacy had gone insideto be with him. He was laying on the floor like a puppy, his head on his paws as he watched everything that was happening. Meanwhile his mate was sitting next to him, stroking the fur between his ears.
I was still in full vamp mode, and my mate – my strong and wonderful mate – stood over the body of Xi, her gun trained on the dead fox shifter as if she wanted to be ready in case Xi arose Terminator-style and attacked us again. She was magnificent.
“You took out the fox?” Lois asked, obviously surprised.
When Kathryn only nodded I added, “With silver bullets.”
“Well Christ on a Cracker, what’d you need us for then?”
Kathryn finally lowered her gun, putting the safety on and sliding it into the cross-body purse she wore over her scrubs. I had no idea she had a gun – or knew how to use one – but I was glad about it.
“My father taught me how to shoot when I was a kid,” she said. “He insisted that I get a concealed carry permit and always have silver bullets with me just in case. He’d seen too much weird shit in the military, with humans and supernaturals alike. I always thought he was just being overly protective, but I guess not.”
“Huh.” Lois wasn’t often at a loss for words, but she was now. I could see respect in her eyes as she stared at my mate.
We heard a loud crash behind us and then two huge wolves burst out of one of the other exam rooms, growling loudly. They were shifters, but I could tell right away something wasn’t right with them. Their energy was all wrong, and when I looked at their eyes, I could see no sign of the humans inside them. They might be shifters, but their animals were fully in control.
The wolves stalked closer, walking side by side. I shoved Kathryn into the room with Yuri and Stacy, closing the door behind her. I knew Yuri would protect them both. Working as a team, my coworkers and I circled the two shifters, quickly surrounding them. They didn’t seem to have any natural fighting instincts because we wouldn’t have boxed in real wolves or experienced shifters that easily.
“These aren’t natural born shifters,” I said, keeping my eyes on the wolves. “They must be part of the group that lived through Xi’s experiment.”
I made my voice deep and ordered, “Shift back. Now.”
“I don’t know if they even can,” Wanda said. “I saw some documentation in the files that the subjects who lived through their first shifts were unable to change back without chemical intervention. Xi had to put a couple of them down.”
One of the wolves lunged for Lois. My boss growled, and in an instant she was replaced by a large, dominant wolf. She growled again, using her body language to demand submission, but the two wolves appeared to be unaffected by her alpha energy. That turned out to be a fatal mistake.
One of them leapt towards Lois, trying to attack her, but my boss made quick work of tearing out its throat, killing it in an instant. The wolf might have been immune to her dominance, but it was no match for a strong alpha wolf with years of battle experience. It collapsed on the floor in a pool of blood.
The second wolf gave a high pitched yip, pacing in circles, clearly realizing that he was surrounded and freaking out. Its muscles bunched and it leapt, somehow going right over Cassie’s head and crashing into the glass window that was full of cracks from Yuri’s escape attempt. Stacy and Kathryn, who’d been watching what was happening from the other side, jumped back as he hit the glass.
The glass shattered from the impact, and the wolf scrambled over the windowsill into the room. It jumped up again, unwisely going for the giant bear in front of him. Yuri caught him mid-air with a roar, slicing him across the belly with his claws. The wolf fell with a yelp and Yuri gave him another swipe, pulling out the wolf’s entrails as he lay twitching on the ground.
Stacy made a sound of dismay, then raced to the side of the room and vomited in a garbage can. Yuri immediately shifted back to human, running over to rub her back while she puked.
“I’m sorry mate,” he mumbled. “He was going to hurt you.”
Kathryn had her gun out again, holding it in one hand while she looked around frantically like she thought another monster was going to come out at any moment.
“Quit gawking all of you and clear the area,” Lois ordered, back in her human form. “Make sure there are no more surprises here.”
The rest of my team spread out to search the lab for other threats while I went to my mate, pulling her into my arms. She rested her head on my shoulder, giving me a tight squeeze.
“Are you okay?” I asked quietly.
