PAWN AMONG WOLVES CH. 16

Gemma's limbs gave out at the same time as the third grating.

The metal she was weakly wrestling with was rusty, corroded, the orange dust causing a paroxysm of coughing in her sluggish, frosted lungs. It didn't help that the steep angle of the last ten feet of the ventilation shaft meant that she had slithered down on the slippery metal and was pressed to the grating, back hunched and shoulders and head at an awkward angle, cheek jammed against the crumbling orange-tainted bars as she struggled with them.

Her limbs were trembling in exhausting and this horrible, pervasive sickness, her tears trickling across her temple. The dragging vacuum inside her was leaching what little strength she had, her fervour dwindling despite the faint, hopeful scent of fresher air in the gloomily lit rock passage below her.

Mac. The emptiness ached through her, sapping her last shreds of will.

A small whine escaped Gemma as she wrenched wretchedly with the makeshift lever bar she had brought, one of the slats she had broken from the last vent. A gasp escaped as the entire square metal fitting suddenly emitted a grating noise, shifted, then gave way under her weight.

The side of her face smashed into the rock floor and her eyes blacked out, head spinning in pain. The emptiness in her stomach heaved. She could do no more than retch helplessly as the giddy feeling from slamming to the ground sucked to the surface the icy, sullen feeling in her veins. Her sense of her surroundings faded as her body struggled feebly against the ice and the emptiness to stay afloat, stay alive.

Weak convulsions wracked through her as she lay, trembling and writhing on the cold stone, unaware of time passing as her mind swam in and out of the edge of consciousness.

Humans.

In disorientated patches, Gemma gradually became aware of the scent now beside her, recognition filtering slowly through her swimming head. She couldn't open her eyes, her limbs heavy beyond her control, body still periodically convulsing in paroxysms of agony, cutting her mind blank with pain. Between the bouts, waves of awareness swept in to baffle her with new scents and sounds, retreated, leaving her empty, then swirled back in, teasing her with dimly recognised sensations.

Two women. Urgent whispers above her shivering, helpless form, the sound muffled, incomprehensible outside the steady crackle in her head, like a radio that had lost signal.

A dim sense of movement. Being lifted, carried.

Colder.

The shivering increased, and Gemma's teeth chattered as she was lain on cold, smelly rock. A rubbery scent of tyres permeated the sand dusting on the floor, tyres and metal, rust: cars. She swam back towards dizzying, nauseous reality.

"All right," was hissed above her head, the woman's voice a low whisper. "You keep checking for somewhere."

Both women reeked of fear; their voices were trembling.

A hand grasped her hair, quite gently, but any movement hurt, and Gemma whined helplessly as her face was turned slightly to the left, to where she could smell one of the women crouched over her.

"Told you," hissed the other voice close by, the tone a low accusation, revulsion pulsing through the air.

"Where did you go to school?" whispered the first voice.

Gemma was fading again, being dragged back under despite the shivers that shook rattles of pain through her battered limbs, when a finger tapped her cheek, abruptly.

"You. Where did you go to school?"

What?

"Answer. Or we just leave you here anyway," cut in the second voice harshly. The first made a little huff of disapproval.

Gemma shivered harder. Strained to open her mouth, eventually letting out an unrecognisable grunt. Tried again.

Once she had finally managed to whisper an answer, the woman asked a second question. Then a third. It was such an effort to talk, grinding out stupid answers to stupid questions. The grilling didn't stop. Who was her favourite Sesame Street character? Favourite movie? Who won the last Olympic 100 metre sprint? Russian president? Best flavour jello?

It made no sense. Gemma gave up at that point, and collapsed into a new set of coughing, feeling herself receding. She just didn't care, the whispers over her head sinking back into oblivion.

Mac. She couldn't get to him. Her body was too weak, poisoned. She was lost.

A tiny spark rose. No, she couldn't give up. Not on Mac.

She struggled again, reaching out a flopping, limp limb, straining to haul herself weakly across the rough, petroleum-soaked sand dusting the rock floor, towards that beckoning scent, her legs trailing uselessly. She was pulled by the scent of outside. Outside this horrible stifling rock prison.

As sigh above her head, and she was lifted again, carried jerkily and slid into a metal box. A thin carpet was under her bare skin, and she curled up, shivering more heavily, brain empty, losing her fight as the nausea swept up again, pulling her stomach up, up, tearing it into her raw throat. She lay and sobbed, only glad to be off the cold stone, fading out.

A gentle hand wiped away the tears running down her cheeks, and a soft material was tucked over her shoulders and breast. She couldn't interpret the whispers through the thunder in her pounding head, but she felt the gentle hands and more tears eased gently from her eyes.

A heavy clunk sounded, the slam of a car trunk above her, shaking her body.

Gemma curled in on herself and sank into a nightmare of shivering, lonely agony.

*

The days swam by in throbbing and fading gasps of semi-awareness. Her body was sweating, convulsing, fighting and fading in a constant, ceaseless cycle. It seemed interminable, and she longed at times to give in to the despair, the pain pulling at her.

But dimly, she was aware that there was something comforting about her small, dark hidey-hole. Something held her.

The humans came twice daily and fed her: the one who had questioned her, and one of two others. They brought her clothes. Water. A damp wash cloth stroked over her clammy, sweating skin.

Gemma surfaced once to find her shivering, wasted form being held crouched over a grate in the centre of the cold rock space. Her eyes blinked at the parked cars gleaming in the dull light around them. A finger prodded steadily at her distended bladder and she gasped, letting go, crying at the humiliation, the pain and sluggish sickness shaking her useless limbs.

"Shh," whispered the woman on her right soothingly, stroking a hand over her face. Helen. "Don't let it worry you. I used to be a nurse."

Back in the trunk of the car. They fed her spoonfuls of black, dusty granules.

Gemma choked, coughing on the dryness, but the gentle voice of the nurse admonished her like a small child refusing her medicine: "It'll do you good. And you can have a yoghurt if you swallow this."

Activated carbon, the name of the black granules swam into Gemma's mind. Charcoal.

She had been poisoned.

Struggling against her dry throat, she swallowed.

*

Gemma felt completely wrung out, boneless, when she finally swam into true consciousness, alone in the small, dark trunk of the car where they kept her hidden.

Dark. Pressing on her.

Inside her. Empty.

She opened her eyes to escape the ache, ignoring the weakness shivering through her at even that small movement.

Blackness. The sheer darkness sheltered her, except -. Faintly, her eyes made out the contour of a misshapen hole above her head, a patch of greyness in the dark. An opening in the lid of the trunk.

The hole looked a little like a hand.

There were four long rough-raked scrapes for fingers, with a fifth gash scored in from the left. Then a wide triangular hole at the base, cleanly cut away.

Almost undetectable, a tiny whisper of scent teased from the rough edges of those finger marks. Gemma saw her own hand lift, weakly trembling palm and fingers stretched open to meet the mark, touch palm to ghostly palm. So close. A little smile curved her mouth while tears ran down into her hair, her blurry eyes focusing on the gleam of gold just visible around her left wrist. Her heart beat fiercely, longing rising through her.

That scent. All this time, hidden in the trunk of this car, too sick to move. But it curled around her protectively, even here. Her Mac.

Stealthy footsteps approached in the semi-darkness outside, and Gemma dropped her hand, her heart freezing. A corner of her mind noted, slightly bemused, that her bracelet had disappeared.

Human, her nose told her, calming her pounding heart. Helen - the nurse.

Then a slender hand reached with careful, practised ease through the hole above her face, curved back on itself, and pulled an exposed cable over her head. The trunk chunked opened a crack, while Gemma smothered a laugh at the practical reason why the humans had hidden her in this car.

A second scent hit her, a taint colouring Helen's skin and hair, and Gemma clenched her teeth against the shot of anger that wrenched through her.

The scents of pain, fear, and lust burned in her nose - human mating scent and seed - wolf seed.

The rage burned through her, shaking her weak limbs exhaustingly: Helen was torn, and aching in pain.

That wolf needed a lesson in manners: this had to stop.

Gemma remembered now, what had been done to her. The poison.

She didn't know how long it had been after the show when she had come around. The show when she had publically humiliated Nicolas Grey. Mac had humiliated him. They had humiliated him, publically, together. It had felt like it had been a long time, she had been fully healed, lying on a hard board in a small chamber.

Her nose had wrinkled instantly at the scents of three other wolves in her nostrils. The female lying across the room had been in pain. The males had been enjoying it.

Almost instantly, Grey had noticed that she was awake, and had stridden over from tormenting the sjeste on the other side of the room, to her. His stride had been slightly off, his gait hunched to ease a lingering pain between his legs. Gemma had smiled, and Nick had erupted. The wolf had begun striding about, screaming about how he was going to subjugate her, make her crawl, display her cowed submission to the world and to the damn Mackeld.

Gemma's thoughts had fled to Mac, and she had felt her own anger rising. She had been pierced by the memory of the anguish she had sensed buried in her mate, that he'd been unable to hide, twinned as they had been in that fight: Mac loathed himself for not protecting her better, not protecting her from this damn wolf. He had been in such pain.

She didn't even remember going for Nick, the desire seamless with the action. No Argen collar then, no bounds between rage and reaction, she would have killed him almost instantly, moving past his startled evasion with ease, had the other damn Grey wolf not shot her from across the room.

The dart hadn't stopped her, but it had slowed her down, the needle seeming to punch ice into the veins of her right thigh. She had had to work a little harder to kill the cowardly cur who had so hurt her mate.

Grey's crashing fear had been thick in the room, making him react wildly, off balance, and he had been screaming orders at the other wolf while he had barely held her off, his flesh tearing under her claws.

She had felt so whole in that rage. Clean.

Another dart, the slug slamming into her, and she had slowed slightly further. Determination drove her on, but Nick's return blows had been landing then, and her own blood had begun to run, the scent mingling with Grey's as they had swirled around each other.

A third dart; fourth, spearing into her. Her veins had begun to spin out of control.

"She can't still be moving!" the other wolf had screamed then, in terror, still hovering at the opposite side of the room, flinging the now empty gun across to crack painfully across her temple before snatching something else up to throw to her adversary.

Gemma had been moving still. For Mac.

As she had strained to heave her limbs after her desire, Grey had swerved in underneath her attack, the desperate fear bright in his eyes, and had stabbed a finger-thick plastic syringe down her howling open throat, squeezing a slug of icy, viscous liquid down her gullet with a fist clenched convulsively around the bulb at the other end. A choked gargle, and Gemma's swimming awareness had lurched to the disturbing total absence of sensation from her legs as they had suddenly collapsed. Her ears had been ringing softly, the convulsions beginning to overtake her.

But she vividly recalled that last stark image of Grey's face, the last sight that had been in her fading vision.

Gemma returned to the present with a small, feral smile lighting her face when the trunk of the car lifted to the smooth whoosh of hinges. Nick had been terrified of her.

The smile snapped off as she looked up into the young, rounded yet gaunt face looking down at her.

The scent of Helen's pain, fear and misery was mingled with the wolf's mating scent and enjoyment.

These wolves needed an Alpha. A proper Alpha, who would teach them how a wolf should be.

She knew just where to find one.

*

If only life was that simple.

Almost two months had passed, Gemma's existence a mingling of unbearable, solitary endurance, and frantic, relentless necessity. During the weeks in which she had struggled towards enough health to escape, the mesh of her new friends had grown, until the weight of their whispered, mangled hopes now crushed her here, forcing her to think beyond her own, simple wishes. Wolves and humans both: she couldn't just leave them here.

Yet they couldn't get out. This prison had been built to keep wolves and humans in.

Gemma had mapped almost the entire subterranean hive since she had healed; recovering first under the care of her human friends, enough to simply to move again, then healing fully after learning which of the wolf lab-rat slaves she could trust, and teaching them to create her silver antidote.

There were three sets of people in the vast underground labyrinth. The Faulk overseers, the guards; the wolf prey, sex toys, slaves, or samples in the 'medical research' programmes; and the human slaves - also toys, and experimentees, but less difficult to contain and less valuable.

For this was Faulk territory, although only the hundred or so Faulk wolves who worked down here knew of the extent and purpose of the underground complex. The rest of the pack led perfectly normal wolf lives on the surface, proud of their homes and vast hunting range, the renown of their pack centred around the famous Faulk medical research centre.

None of the inmates were able to tell Gemma when the underground annex had been started. The oldest of her wolves had explained that this Alfamme's father had already been expanding it when he had been Faulk Alpha, working on secret plans with Nicolas Grey's grandfather, then father, both of whom had been frequent visitors. Upon the death of the old Alpha, only two Faulk warriors had challenged his daughter for the succession, and somehow she had defeated both.

When an Alfamme was loved and trusted by her pack, none of her warriors challenged her.

In this case, Gemma doubted that that was the reason why more warriors had not challenged Madam Faulk for the succession. Her stomach roiled. Madam Louise Faulk: The Louse.

Why on earth had the Faulk decided to bondmate with the Marsh? She couldn't imagine two more opposed characters - well, she knew why Jon Marsh had, his daughter had made that perfectly clear and it wasn't hard to guess, looking at the luscious Alfamme, but what had the Faulk gained from such an alliance?

What had the Louse been up to?

Whatever the plan had been, reputedly the Louse had been damn angry when she'd returned, after the mate-bond had been severed due to her treatment of the Marsh's human guest. Hopefully that had foiled whatever damned, nefarious plot she had been building. This place shouldn't be allowed to pollute further - it had already infected enough wolves.

For Grey's lair in Medway had just been a poor copy of this place; a weak seedling spawned by this central canker. The 'medical' research here at Faulk had yielded the wolf control drug, both elements: fix and key, yet the Louse guarded the secret formulae viciously. Here, Gemma had learned that neither Grey nor the Tzo could actually manufacture either half of the drug: they had to buy them. The Faulk complex reeked of the foul wealth it generated from two industries: 'health' and sex.

Consequently, Nicolas Grey's father had set up his own secret laboratories to try to identify and duplicate the drug. And his son had later inaugurated an illegal recruitment programme for skilled chemists.

It all led back to the Faulk. The Louse.

It was late evening, and the wereem was lying on her back in the ventilation duct just past the grill that opened down into the laboratory. She was listening with half an ear to a caustic argument between two of her pack as she waited; Alan, her second, was adamant that Ginger should not try to help his escape attempt later that night: he did not want anyone else involved.

Don't argue with him, Ginger, Gemma interjected on a growl. The stubborn bastard needs all of his strength right now, he has less than hour to heal his feet enough to be able to run.

The echo of anger in her conveyance silenced them both, although she could feel a tinge of amusement from her damn insubordinate second. She had told him that it would be enough of a distraction if he could just cause mayhem in the auditorium during tonight's show, but no, Alan had decided he needed to get above ground. For which he needed to escape from his cell. And therefore had needed to be damaged enough by his afternoon purchaser to be withdrawn from the menu for tonight - ugh. She felt so guilty. Already!

Oh stop whining, my titchy little Alfamme, Alan conveyed privately. I cleave to you - but if you won't accept my advice then I'll just have to make sure you get the help you need anyway.

Your advice is not always right, she grated.

Your reason for vetoing this was not sound, he returned dispassionately. You didn't want me hurt. I'm a warrior, Little Gem: I fight, I hurt, I heal. Tonight I am already almost healed - the pack bond is so much stronger with your key.

Gemma kept her eyes closed and breathed deeply, holding in her anger: What was it with fucking Alphas? That they were always so damn convinced of their infallibility.

I am not an Alpha, Alan grated in his turn.

Oops - touched a nerve. Despite never intruding on his thoughts, Gemma had picked up that Alan had once been a pack Alpha, many decades ago. Now he had been broken, drugged into a semi-stupor, used, and tormented both as Louise's toy and by his memories of what had brought him to where he was. A morsel on the Faulk menu, for the wealthy clients who visited this hell.

This underground complex had obviously started as a series of passages hewn roughly from existing rock caves, possibly store-rooms. Those were now the garages. The entrance hall, human and wolf cell blocks, kitchen, dining hall, exercise rooms, shower and toilets areas and relaxation quarters for the guards were also hewn out of the solid sandstone, but lined with beautiful, curving brickwork that arched overhead, the material and workmanship showing the age of the extensive network.

The more recent areas were obvious from the concrete structures and plastic studding: the dungeons, morgue, new laboratory, stores, offices, studios, arena and auditorium, and the plush reception area for the well-heeled clientele. Most recent was the swimming pool adjacent to the garages, where the human slaves were exercised daily to keep their attractive figures.

All of the labyrinth, both old and new areas, was well served with high-quality ducting for ventilation. Narrow rectangular tunnels which, if you were small enough, and good at carving bypasses around fans, could serve as a hidden travel network.

The only place down here that Gemma hadn't even seen was the block of maximum security cells, buried in a second layer below the central corridor. The sole lift down was pass activated, and the spiral emergency staircase riddled with sensors. The one time she had tried to penetrate down there was the closest she had come to being recaptured; there had been both motion and scent sensors even within the air ducts - programmed to identify both wolf and human scent. Luckily she had been scent masked, her human scent weak and wolf scent undetectable, so the signal that had triggered the alarm had been borderline. After a desultory check, the over-confident guards had decided that the alarm had just been tripped by a rat or something.

Despite not being able to get down there, Gemma had found out who was kept in those cells, or at least one of the captives. Her human friend Helen had been drafted to clean up the nauseating signs of systematic abuse mottling the skin of a new inmate who had been brought here by Nicolas Grey just before the Halloween show and taken downstairs immediately.

That show had starred Gemma; it hadn't gone exactly as Grey had intended.

The girl Helen had treated had had a mop of startling platinum-blonde hair, and high, Slavic cheekbones. And after Gemma's 'death' Opal had overheard the Louse, in her fury at his killing her bait for the Mackeld, refusing to return Grey his toy when he had left. Natasha Vanilchov was still down in the high security cells. And Nick was not here, torturing her.

So they would be able to kill him! Damn, if only Mac knew!

Mac. Gemma's heart creased around the draining, relentless emptiness, mind reaching blindly for the solace to fill that vacuum. The longing surged through her - but she couldn't think of him. Not and function. She had to hold back yet. But Gemma couldn't repress her silent prayer, just praying that he still was. Praying that he would wait. Yet for what? For what would he be waiting? As he felt dead to her, so she would feel dead to him. Maybe her Mac was no longer out there, no longer there to return to: her home, her songmate? She couldn't tell.

Stop it, snapped Alan harshly, his conveyance slapping at her. You cannot indulge that pain tonight. He would not wish you to.

Gemma hauled her equilibrium straight, annoyed at herself for deserving that rebuke. She must be more unsettled by the uncertainties ahead than she knew, it was a long time since she had unintentionally succumbed to the dragging doubt. That was a raw, frozen wound that she couldn't touch, or it would freeze her also. She couldn't.

He would not wish her to.

That was true, as her second knew: Alan knew Mac. Years ago, Alan had lost his temper once too often and had admitted himself to the Aster Centre for Anger Management at Himlesky, when the Macs had been among the Alpha-lin, the alpha trainees learning to expand their self-control to help the volatile wolf patients with their own anger.

Sadly, despite what he had learned there, Alan's anger had always remained a little too close to the surface, and years later he had come to Faulk medical centre in search of further help.

He had found it.

Although this help left anger strangled in Gemma's throat: Alan no longer had free will. He had agreed to take part in the experimental anger management trial, as had most of the older wolves incarcerated here, and so had volunteered for the first administration of the drug.

He had never been offered a choice since.

Until now, his voice suddenly grated in her mind. Will you fucking stop lying there reminiscing and get a move on, my titchy little Alfamme? I don't want to waste the only free evening I've had in months.

The guards and clients never let up on him - it was Alan's own morbid joke that the reason the Faulk no longer kept him down in the maximum security basement cells was because he was so popular - the guards had grown tired of having to go through all the damn extra rigmarole to escort him up to the dungeons every single time he was purchased for an hour or two.

In truth, he had been too battered, too abused, to care any longer: to even try to escape. But his Alpha training had been a godsend for her, for all of them - she knew she wouldn't have got this far, wouldn't have gotten them this far without him.

You'd have managed, Alan snorted gruffly.

I thought you said I'd have been crashed out by the first reasonably powerful guard I meandered across if you hadn't taught me to hide my shouty shields?

He'd actually been a lot more scathing than that.

The first day when she had crept along the metal vent above Alan's cell, she had suddenly been startled by a sharp blow on her mind shield, and a strange mind blasting into hers, taunting her as he had attacked. Alan was damn powerful; the Faulk guards had learned how dangerous it was to approach his cell between drug dosages, and were now meticulous about waiting for the control drug, replenished via the aerosol sprinklers in the ceiling, to take hold again before they came to get him. Gemma had gotten too close to Alan's cell.

Yet her gasp of pain had been echoed by a gasp of wonder from the small concrete box below, and the abrupt withdrawal of the painful rake of intrusion.

You survived? Alan's incredulous mind-voice had been strained, muffled by the clouds still stifling his mind - although the drug hadn't stopped him from breaking her defences. But Grey killed you for your beautiful, public humiliation of him.

Gemma hadn't been able to reply, her throat dry, head still ringing from that blow, the mental whiplash from her broken shields slashing like snapped elastics across the tender inside of her mind.

I would cleave to you, my Alfamme, had been the deafeningly startling follow-on comment, and Alan's mind had brushed hers again, like a reaching hand seeking a handclasp.

The words, the feel of the oath had shocked her into replying, despite the echoing pain.

What? NO! I'm not an Alfamme - don't be ridiculous. Shuddering even at that breath of touch, she'd pushed him away.

You are an Alfamme. Please. Your humiliation of Grey is a legend within this hell. And -

That wasn't me! That was my mate - my Alpha! OW her mind hurt. What had he done?

-now I find that despite your being silvered to death when subsequently almost managing to kill him - Opal was in the room too - you're slinking blithely through the halls, defying them further. Alan's mental tone had been both awed and smug.

I am A WEREWOLF!

I would cleave to you, Alan had insisted. Please, he'd added, reaching out again with that mental tendril.

She had pushed it away again, panicked, Will you just listen - I can barely control myself, never mind anyone else. No way.

Pl- damn, Alan had broken off. They had both been unaware of the hiss of the gas through the sprinklers inside his cell during their silent shouting match, but both had abruptly fallen silent at the tramp of several sets of heavy feet approaching. The footsteps had halted outside the door, and a key had sounded in the lock.

Keep your fucking shields tighter - I could sense you, Alan had snapped at her urgently, now having to struggle to convey even over the few feet between them as the waves of fog rose in his head.

Gemma had lain silent in the duct, tears on her cheeks when the guards had finally entered and hauled the powerful old wolf from the room. The Faulk wolves had been laughing, sneering, and just the mental images that their words had dredged up had been revolting, while she didn't have to - wasn't the one who would have to experience what they were so casually joking about.

But she couldn't accept that wolf. She'd only just been able to handle the Whites without going insane, with all of Mac's help.

She couldn't, she'd told herself.

Famous last words.

Well, if you hadn't still been crawling about waving those smug: look! you can't see what I'm thinking nyah nyah nyah, shields that your idiot mate let you taunt him with, I wouldn't have badgered you so much, Alan pointed out in annoyance. Her blatant shielding had really annoyed him, he had mentally shouted at her so much every time she had come within his range that she had had to learn to hide her shields to give her ringing head a rest.

Accepting him had somehow happened during those caustic lessons, and then her second had immediately started sorting out who of the other drugged slaves down here he thought she ought to accept too. It had been easier to accept them than to continue arguing, and something about the bond - once she had started, with Alan, it would have been impossible to deny the others what she had somehow given him.

Gemma hadn't been able to understand Alan's almost desperate exuberance when he had first conveyed to her. But then, she had spent most of her life alone in her head, and found the pack mind cloying. Most wolves, having lived with their families sharing thoughts and love since before they'd been born, found it echoingly, wrenchingly lonely. Unbearable.

That was partially why the control drug combo was so undeniable. The drug blocked normal conveyance at any distance beyond a few feet, killing the pack gensis, isolating each wolf and making him or her exceedingly vulnerable. Vulnerable to the single, commanding connection with the key holder, which it was almost impossible to withstand. Gemma couldn't block the instructions from the keys to her new wolf pack, couldn't stop the guards from drugging her wolves and manipulating them, but accepting them as hers loosened that hold and gave them a little corner to cling to. When Gemma was close enough her wolves could whisper with their packmates, sense them, buoyed by the gensis: true pack.

Aren't they there yet? Alan demanded impatiently.

You know the shift changes go haywire when there's a show on: just hold your horses, they'll let me in when it's safe, Gemma retorted.

Hold your horses, Alan repeated on a snort. Damn stupid thing to say to a wolf.

He really was a lot stronger tonight, and itchy with the desire to get moving. Gemma gave a little moue of distaste at the reason. Her lab-rat wolves had keyed a dose of the control drug to her, and she had managed to sneak it to Alan earlier this evening. The main ingredient was almost impossible to get hold of safely, they had to be very sparing, only use it in emergencies, so it was only Alan: most of her wolves she could only hear weakly, if at all.

And they wouldn't be able to get any more shampoo once her humans were gone. Shampoo contained the ingredient most carefully inventoried in the lab, every millilitre tallied so that the rebellious element among the lab-rat slaves couldn't siphon any away into their secret tests. This was the fourth batch her human friends had managed to smuggle in to her.

You really think they won't tell? Alan said brusquely.

Gemma closed her eyes and counted to ten. Then to twenty. This. Every day. Every fucking day. She had had enough of defending one race to the other - the wolves were never going to trust the humans in a thousand years, and the human slaves truly believed that the others were there simply as spies for their pimps.

Suddenly, her eyes sprang open as she heard the faint rustle of the grating beyond her feet being pushed up into the air vent. The faint scent of Ben reassured her and she heard the soft brush of metal against metal as her packmate carefully laid the metal grill in the ducting beyond the gap. Already she was arching on her hands and feet to crab herself backwards soundlessly over the hole, then she lowered herself onto her back, dropped her feet in, squirmed around in the cramped space and felt her hips grasped firmly, steadied as she was lifted down by the young wolf.

There was a pyramid of wolves underneath her; four sturdy hulks at the base, standing impassively shoulder to the shoulder with their backs to the wall while holding the ankles of the three they were supporting. Those three were steadying two more who were standing on their shoulders, and Ben was standing on the last two. A silent, skilful pack of defiant acrobats, who were currently out of sight of the guards in the spur off from the main lab.

Ben crouched swiftly, silently, swinging Gemma down to the two below him, who grasped an arm each and lowered her further, until within a blink she was placed gently on the concrete floor, the pyramid disintegrating seconds after her safe arrival to a chorus of silent greetings. Simone was already enveloping her in her labcoat while Jorgen pushed some safety glasses up her nose and disappeared around the corner by the furnace, following his already-departed packmates.

Gemma pulled on a pair of oven gloves and was just opening the door of the incubator, reaching in for the tray of samples she had left last night, when a pair of guards strolled into view in the main lab area, strutting their smug, menacing swagger.

One of the guards glanced indifferently across at the two silent lab-rats working back-to-back in the small annex lined with the ovens and sinks. Simone was scrubbing something out in the sink opposite, and Gemma was too accustomed by now to her daily excursions into the lab for fear to make her hand shake as she carefully laid her beakers on a tray and slid the gloves off, then picked out some lab gloves to pull on in place.

She carried the tray around the corner into the main lab, mind idly noting where the batters were tonight - the labyrinth slang for collaborators, as she crossed to a workbench far from the main doors where the guards usually stood. The batters' positions were passed to her through the weak, sluggish links with her pack, dotted around the huge room. They loved it when she joined them, all she heard was an irrelevant murmur of idle commentary, but they could communicate, the gensis whispering silently among them. The power they gave her rebounded to them, she was just a conduit, a focus.

The laboratory was vast - the central chamber large enough that it would have fitted five or six large juggernauts side by side down the room without brushing the walls or the heavy-duty lifting cranes suspended from the ceiling. The yellow-orange lights hanging below the crane hooks shone a harsh bleach into all corners of the room, although beyond the dozens of rows of grey worktops with their silent chemist-slaves, the green glow of the emergency exit sign above the double doors of the main entrance cast an additional, eerie light on the faces of the pair of guards standing below.

Another four were standing by the door to the store room, watching one of the laboratory rats emerging with a large bottle, then checking the contents as he stood waiting, pale face downcast. The pair of guards who had just come off duty said something provocative to the pair taking over, and all four laughed maliciously as the slave shivered helplessly. But the off-duty two turned and left by the adjacent side door with no further action; damaging the lab-rat slaves on a whim was forcefully discouraged by the Faulk.

The silence of the lab fell again, the only noise the monotonous rumble of the extractor fans, and the whirring and occasional electronic beep from a machine or workstation. Lab rats were not allowed to talk.

Gemma pulled the concoction she had prepared the previous night from the fridge, diluted it carefully with the incubated liquid, added the extra ingredients and then set the timer, forcing herself to work slowly, meticulously, despite the heavy thud of her heart.

She waited. But the anticipation of tonight was burning her blood too quickly through her veins, beginning to colour her scent, and so Gemma grabbed her latest antidote attempts from the fridge, trying to calm herself down by concentrating again on this exercise in futility. She began to pipette solvent into these latest test samples, preparing them for analysis, keeping her head down.

Fifteen minutes later, she stared at the results on her screen.

What?

This couldn't be right. The antidote attempt she had concocted yesterday was ridiculous, that test had really just been a joke - something to do while she had waited. Like tonight. The wereem checked a second time, a third, then got up, calling, Rupe, silently, and drifted over to the hand sink at the end of the bench to throw her gloves in the bin and scrub her fingers, trying to contain her jumping heart.

Ridiculous. Mac was not superwolf!

Rupert was the senior chemist here - he had been born down here, trained practically from birth to the position he now filled. Let him tell her how wrong she was.

Her brain kept jumping at the possibility - but why would that formula work? And just typical that, if it really did, she had no chance of making any more, stuck in here.

Aghast, she glanced down at her left wrist as she realised that she was twisting Mac's bracelet around, fidgeting feverishly with it while her mind raced. It was visible. Her horrified eyes flickered sideways to the wristlet of tiny glass cylinders on her right just as a shiver of fear crashed in over her and both bracelets abruptly disappeared, furring back with the light dusting of human hair on her skin.

Gemma's cheeks were burning red. Usually she had to fight her shields to get the damn things to appear, in any form. However sick, maimed or fighting-for-her-life she had been at times in here, she had never once, even in the rage apparently, allowed herself even the chance to lose Mac's bracelet. Andrea had laughed when she had first heard that Gemma could hardly ever get herself to not fur the thing, even in human form.

"That's how any cub learns," she had said. "Plait something they love into their fur, and they soon learn to fur it as they shift. When you aren't scared of losing it, it'll appear."

And apparently even seasoned adults had difficulty differentiating between left side and right when furring, although it was easier to select between materials. Gemma still couldn't fur clothing at all, but Mac's bracelet, in unison with the elasticated metal wristlet of tiny phials on her other wrist - that wasn't going anywhere.

When she had been able to get hold of the thing, the wristlet had been incredibly useful, as it held tubes containing the remains of a variety of the drugs that she had been working on back in the city. She had built much of her packs' freedom and their escape plans from it.

Now this new antidote, if the readings were right and then a physical test worked the same -. Her heart jumped again. No, she must have gone wrong somewhere, it was impossible.

Rupert was seated at her screen, his eyes narrowed as he checked the concentrations on the read-out. Again. And again.

Gemma was quivering.

This set was B3? the chemist demanded, trying to hold onto his own calm.

B3, corroborated Gemma automatically. But -, she turned slightly too fast to evade attention, glaring as she watched her packmate fumble in a drawer for a new syringe, rip open the seal, then carefully draw up the small amount of liquid remaining in the labelled MS-tube, before gently lifting the needle and expelling the air.

Her other wolves, those dotted close enough around the lab, were watching out of the corners of their eyes, quivering, realising something important was going on without knowing precisely what.

Don't you dare, conveyed Gemma. We need to test it further first, make sure.

I volunteer to test it, responded Rupert fiercely, and slipped the needle under his lab-coat sleeve.

Remember what happened to Melanie? Gemma snarled in his head, stomach sick, but Rupert was smiling gently, she knew he didn't care.

Whatever happens, this is not your fault, our Little Gem, he replied lightly. You didn't drug us in the first place - you are just trying to give us back the choice. Much as I prefer the wisp of freedom since I have cloven to you, I will be ecstatic if this gives me full free choice, frees my mind from this fog. And I will be a much stronger fighter for you, with no involuntarily divided loyalty.

Gemma almost snarled, blood pounding in fury, but simultaneously her timer for the humans' drug went off, and a pair of the guards began to walk over, sensing the excitement in the air.

Get away from here! Gemma ordered her damned insubordinate koiru, rapidly scooping the pea injectors she had laid out into a drawer - she didn't want any questions. She was fuming. Tonight was not a night for this.

Rupe ducked his head, hissing faintly through his teeth at her anger she had projected into his head, and picked up the tray of wolf samples to carry them away.

Put those down!

I've emptied it. I may as well clean up for you, my Alfamme. Rupert replied as he walked hastily over to the sinks. Hastily enough to narrow the attention of the guards onto him. On purpose.

Gemma clamped down on her anger, and began to add the last ingredient to the humans' drug as the guards strode past, following Rupert. She couldn't hear the menacing conversation over by the wall, but her fingers were shaking as one-by-one she filled eight little plastic bulbs the size of a pea with the liquid. Her human allies could administer the contents just below their skin with a simple slap, and this amount was all they would need to give them hours to lose their pursuers. It was a pity that the only human scent-block she had managed to create lost its potency so quickly, hence having to cram a trip to the lab into tonight's madness.

A hasty movement made her look up, and she saw one of the guards smash his clenched fist heavily against the side of Rupert's face, knocking him into the sinks. Rupert snapped something which made both guards jerk in incredulous anger, then they grabbed him by the arms and began to haul him away backwards, towards the cells.

Gemma watched, white-faced, as her damn wolf bloody well winked at her over the shoulders of the two vicious bastards dragging him off for punishment.

You said you needed a diversion to be able to leave before the third shift-change, Rupe told her seriously, using all his strength to broadcast so the rest of the lab rats could hear. You know I am too valuable for them to seriously maim.

Damn him. She could feel the members of her pyramid drifting back towards the ovens, each with a plausible excuse, while the guards dragged Rupert towards the door, taking it in turns to smash heavy blows into alternate sides of his face.

No! She started forward after the trio, her blood seething, anger rising as she watched.

Do not spoil it: let him fight for you, Alan snapped furiously in her head, stopping her short. You have to learn to let us fight: we are warriors.

Gemma growled silently in reply, both at Rupert's self-sacrifice and the necessity of letting him get away with it. Then she took a resolute breath, heart wincing, and turned to follow her acrobats into the small space by the ovens, dropping the small bag of pea injectors she held clenched in her fist into her lab-coat pocket.

A minute later she was crawling swiftly through the vents.

She stopped and injected herself with the wolf scent-mask so that when she reached the human side, her scent would be human. However, the guard on the human side was already asleep, his snack drugged by her friends with the phial she had given them. Once she had lifted the keys to their cells it took less than ten minutes to collect all eight of her friends, hand out the injections, and sneak with the then scentless humans back through the side door into the kitchens.

Actually, they still held a slight hint of a dusty tint to Gemma, but her wolf colleagues had assured her that they hadn't been able to smell any of the test volunteers at all.

The humans assembled silently in the far corner of the room beside a large brick mound shaped like a beehive, its domed top higher than Gemma's head. In the centre of the structure was an old, cast iron door, at waist height. The bread oven hadn't been used for almost a century, apart from as a hidey-hole for Gemma after she had moved out of the garages.

The wereem swiftly locked her friends into the kitchen and ran off to replace the keys on the guard's belt, crawling back through the smelly air vent. By the time she returned, Sandy, lying head first in the old oven, had carefully lifted out the last bricks that they had worked loose over the preceding weeks, opening the back into the guards' locker room. To get around to the boiler room from the kitchen door would have led them past the auditorium side-entrance, and there were guards stationed there. They had had to find an alternative route.

After a breathless moment's pause, Alex relayed, "All clear," as Sandy's legs began to draw forward into the small tunnel. A moment later his feet disappeared from view.

Time to go. The humans each took a deep breath; nerving themselves for this journey.

The wolves in the cells they passed remained silent, unaware of their scentless presence. Gemma grimaced. It would be so much easier if they could all escape together, humans and wolves, but she had realised early on that that would be suicide, the two races just could not work together, the distrust, revulsion was too great.

It was hardly surprising.

The most cunning of Madam's imperatives down here was the confrontational segregation of wolf and human slaves. The only times when wolf and human were physically in one place was if a client had requested both types of toy. However, both races were marched along the same corridors, fed in the same hall, saw each other day in, day out, ignoring either other's presence with disgust, or glaring bitter hatred.

The division stemmed from the weaker members of both races - the reward for useful information was treats, and some wolf or human slaves would succumb to the urge for better food, better treatment, and betray their fellows for any infraction of the rules. The rewards for betraying members of the other race were significantly more substantial.

And besides, it wasn't really betrayal. Not of them.

It also didn't help that occasionally Madam had placed a wolf guard among the humans, as a spy, to measure any level of insurrection.

And so these humans who had rescued and hidden Gemma had constantly been testing her at first. The wereem hadn't known it at the time, but even the wiliest of the spies set among the human slaves faltered over reminiscences about Sesame Street, Starbuck summer specials, or third grade homework. The lack of shared childhood was telling.

But slowly her human friends had come to believe that she really wasn't one of them. The circle of humans helping her had gradually increased as they had also realised - she would get well. She could help them. Because Gemma could and did remain hidden - the guards hadn't found her, despite her initially being hidden in the trunk of a car which several of them had passed by daily. The inordinate level of silver in the wereem's body had meant that she had had no scent that would alert the wolf guards.

That much silver would have killed a wolf. Luckily, she wasn't one. The humans were right.

Even if she had dared to risk trying to make her wolves and human friends escape together, the wolves would not have been able to take the route she had planned tonight. For a start, the sensors sealing off the defunct boiler room were all keyed to wolf. As usual for places where the human slaves were meant to go for cleaning or household duties, the sensors were paired: a motion sensor detecting anyone, coupled with a scent sensor which only sounded if detected motion was not accompanied by a human scent.

The device was cunning. Her wolves from the lab had warned Gemma that even a scent-masked wolf would trip the coupled sensors: the motion detector noted that someone had moved, but the scent sensor alarmed that the interloper was without human scent. The Faulk left no loophole; her alchemist slaves made the wolf scent-mask drug, after all.

Or only one loophole: werewolves. The scent sensors had also been created by wolves, and could no more detect the metallic smell of the mask bi-product than their inventors. And when Gemma wolf scent-masked herself, she still exuded enough human scent that the sensors registered her as human: no threat. Hah.

Carefully the eight humans and one scent-masked werewolf worked their way inside, and Gemma breathed more freely once they had closed the door of the small, square room behind them. She pulled the makeshift rope her friends had manufactured out from where it was hidden hooked inside the old chimney, then looped one end around her waist while Mel began to coil the rest loosely over her arm.

Sandy was standing beside her in the small square space at the base of the chimney, looking up inside the narrow, smooth vertical shaft. Cursing lightly, he shivered, "We'll never get up there - it's too tight! Even you couldn't swing your elbows at the top, Gem, you'll get stuck."

Gemma made sure the rope was secure about her waist and stepped closer to the lanky, beautiful teenager. "Made sure the rope doesn't get caught," was all Gemma advised, reaching up to touch her fingertips to the blackened inside of the circular shaft before adding, "Give me a leg up!"

Even as he dropped onto one knee and lifted her dusty foot onto it, Sandy continued protesting on a mutter, "It gets narrower the higher you go - you might be able to squirm through if you didn't have to wriggle against gravity, but you've got no chance, no room to manoeuver, you'll fall!"

Gemma stepped from her foot on his knee to having both feet on his shoulders and replied laconically, "Can you get higher? I need as much boost as I can get - this is going to be exhausting."

The others stepped in around the young man, heaving under his shoulders to help him surge to his feet, until the crown of his head was in the opening to the shaft and Gemma was inserted into the base of the stack. Tilting her head so that her forehead was pressed against the grimy surface of the chimney, Gemma could just look down into the despairing eyes below her. Leaning to one side, her eyes holding his, she stretched one arm above her head and put the finger of her other hand to her lips, calling for silence.

She shifted her right hand, claws springing out and biting into the mortar between the bricks lining the chimney.

Sandy's eyes shot wide in disbelief.

"Make sure the rope doesn't snag," Gemma repeated, squirming on his shoulders to force her other arm above her head. His eyes were whirling in shock, anger, doubt, hope, and the young man swallowed, uncertain.

"It's our only chance," the wereem reminded him, and saw his eyes settle into a kind of horrified acceptance; there was nothing they could do. If the humans were caught as they were at the bottom of the shaft, they were just as guilty, just as liable for punishment, or termination. This was the only chance: trusting one of them.

His eyes were glittering angrily.

Gemma pulled herself up on her right claws, and bit the left into purchase in the other side of the shaft, slowly, steadily pulling herself up the first few inches. It was a relief when her feet were finally out of sight of the others, and she could shift them too, push off with her toes. But she had thought it best not to spook the whole bunch of them; Mel was pretty volatile at the best of times.

Her arms had begun to burn even before her feet were brought in to help. By half way up, she was sweating heavily, panting the sooty fumes, her limbs trembling.

You've done this before, she reminded herself fiercely. You can do this.

She had only done this once before, just. And had discovered, when she had cautiously peeped her head out of the top of the shaft, just how impossible it was for a wolf to get any further. A human?

Piece of cake.

It took over an hour to get herself to the top. Cautiously she lifted her eyes above the rim of the stack, and took a look around, her limbs trembling in fatigue.

The cool night air was a caress on her grimy, sweat-shining cheeks, and a tear trickled out to sweep a path through the soot as she absorbed the sense of space around her.

The stack emerged in the middle of a large pond, a small, four-foot diameter man-made island buffering the chimney top from the water, but leaving no place to hide. The shimmer of dim starlight reflecting on the water surrounding her soothed her eyes and fast-beating heart. She was outside.

Across on the other shore of the large pond, she could see rows upon rows of silent, expensive clients' cars parked around the back of a large white building. A single pair of guards were silhouetted against the faint glow through the plate-glass entrance, waiting for late arrivals.

They were not looking this way, and with the trees on the opposite shore shadowing her silhouette - it was possible that they might remain undetected. Faintly beyond the trees behind her she could make out the tall, solid bulk of the perimeter wall. She tasted the air. Only distant scents, both human and wolf: clean. Luck was with her, there was no tell-tale breeze to carry their whereabouts to the guards at the door or the guards on the wall.

Silently, Gemma heaved herself out to balance precariously on the man-made island. She took a long, steadying moment, but her heart was beating faster, wilder, and she couldn't afford to wait. They couldn't afford to wait. Slowly, exhaustingly, she began to heave Ramona up on the rope. The petite Mexican was very good at jamming her feet into the sides to give Gemma rests, and the werewolf kept reminding herself fiercely that her muscles were damn fit and healed damn fast.

They were both grimy, sweating and exhausted when the girl eventually heaved herself out, flopping over the rim onto the small circle of concrete bolstering the chimney-top. One foot splashed into the surrounding water, the sound carrying on the night air, and Gemma murmured, "Shh!"

They both froze as the guards looked over. A pair of sleepy ducks, startled by the sudden noise in the night began to glide swiftly further from the island into the patchy moonlight .The guards grunted and looked away again.

Ramona pulled her foot back, leaned over, and cautiously prodded her whole leg downwards, but couldn't feel the bottom. "What is this?" she whispered, hauling herself back into a crouch on the opposite end of the chimney top, and wiping a slightly oily-looking residue off her wet skin.

"Industrial residue lagoon - I've tested it," Gemma murmured back almost soundlessly. "Mainly silver - no need to worry, you'd have to swallow half the lake for it to have any effect on you."

A tug on the line indicated that back at the base, Helen had tied herself on.

"C'mon," Gemma added, a wary eye on the guards.

Ramona groaned softly, but got to her feet and placed her hands behind Gemma's on the rope. Steadily they began to haul in unison. They had practiced this a lot.

Ramona discovered, as she waited, shivering, while Helen and Gemma pulled Liz up, that she could stand in the lake, the tops of her shoulders just proud of the water as she held onto the edge of the chimney support. Slowly the circle of escapees widened, until, at last, Mel and Gemma hauled Sandy, the sole male, up the shaft. His shoulders were scraped and bleeding from the last part, he had to force them through with forceful heaves of his legs, but the young man was grinning broadly as he stuck his head out into the open air.

All of those standing in the lake were shivering with cold, the air had the nip of late autumn, and it was a chilly night.

"How come," panted Mel to Gemma between gasps a moment later, "you're not as exhausted -," another gasp for air, "- as the rest of us?" "How come you could do that eight times?"

Gemma's eyes met Sandy's, both opaque in the darkness.

The moment of truth.

"I -," began Gemma. Then she swallowed, a feeling of fear welling up. Her eyes sought Helen's, pleading for understanding. "I'm sorry. But I'm not one of you."

Helen's eyes didn't change, just the corner of her mouth crooked slightly. Gemma had had a feeling the nurse had known for a long time.

"You can't get off this island, can you?" Helen asked softly.

"What?" hissed Mel in counterpoint. "One of them?"

Gemma tore her gaze away from the warm, happy sparkle in Helen's eyes, and was revolted to discover Mel's outstretch hand pointing accusingly towards the pair of guards murmuring together at the entrance to the huge building on the opposite bank.

She only just held back a snarl. She was nothing like them.

"No," she hissed, having to keep the sentence short to stop herself swearing at the damn bigot. "Not them. Either trust me. Or shout. Now."

Sandy had already made this decision. He clamped a hand over Mel's mouth as she opened it to snap hysterically at the wereem, and hauled the girl's curvaceous frame back against his, holding her firmly.

"We have no choice," he hissed almost silently into her ear. "Either shut it or I'll knock you out and fucking drop you head-first back down this shaft."

There was a long, quivering silence reverberating between the still figures crouched on and around the small island, eyes glaring suspicion and hatred in the darkness. Then Mel hissed out a sigh, relaxed slightly, and shrugged against Sandy's hold. He let go.

"I never trusted you," she spat the whispered vitriol into Gemma's face, before turning to slide almost silently into the water. Without looking back she began to swim for the shadow of the trees on the opposite bank.

Helen touched Gemma's arm softly, but the wereem had turned urgently to Sandy. "Can you stop her from going off on her own once she reaches shore? We're lost if even one of us is found - need to stick together, stick to the plan," she whispered.

The youth had already slid into the water, and the ripples curved their tell-tale path out from his trajectory straight after the black shadow of Mel.

Gemma watched the retreating ripples nervously, her stomach tightening in dread. That left her with only six humans.

Helen touched her shoulder softly again. "Can you get off this island?" she whispered again, worried.

Gemma looked straight up into the soft eyes.

"If you will all help, I can," she replied hesitantly.

Six was pushing it - especially when some, like Ramona and Jess, were so short that only their heads were above the water. But each of her friends folded her finger-linked hands against the back of her head, braced the sides of her forearms above her ears, elbows facing forwards, and took a position stoically, waiting. The heads of the women were evenly spaced across the not long, but oh, too, too long stretch of water to the trees. Stepping stones. Gemma shivered, looking down into the liquid blackness, her skin shuddering at the memory of pain, insides tightening in revolt. Silver. She couldn't do that again.

Her heart was screaming at her to go back, climb back down the shaft - she had got them this far. The rest was up to them.

They would never get over the perimeter on their own. Or even if they did, they would be hunted down immediately.

Taking a few short breaths, stiffening her nerve, Gemma allowed herself one brief glimpse of memory ; that beloved face. Asleep, relaxed: home. Mac.

She darted lightly across the makeshift stepping stones, blanking her mind to all else except getting them home. The second to last, Jess, faltered as the ball of Gemma's foot slipped on her hair, swaying sideways on uneven footing, and Gemma was falling, lurching clumsily, desperately to drive off from Alexandra's sleek blonde mop, choking back the cry as the clumsy leap was too short, the poisoned water waiting to engulf her all that she could see.

A firm hand fisted in her hair and yanked, screamingly painfully, although she swallowed the sound while Sandy whirled her by that excruciating grip on her hair onto the grass bank. Her fingers clutched automatically and she lay, panting, her scalp feeling like rivulets of blood were about to cascade down over her eyes. He let her go. Gemma clung to the grass, tears leaking from her eyes as she buried her nose into it and held back the sobs, body shaking in terror.

Her nose was delighted. Grass. The soft, sharp scent caressed through her. Green blades stroked her fingers, the touch of a friend. The tears rolled and rolled.

Mel sniffed her distain, standing waiting impatiently turned a little away from the were while the others waded ashore as silently as they could.

Sandy nudged Gemma with a foot, and she hauled herself back together, swiping a hand across her wet face as she uncurled effortlessly to her feet, still shivering. They weren't out of the complex yet.

Alan? she called silently. If you are sure you will risk this for us?

I will do this for you, came the clear reply.

Her heart thudding painfully, Gemma began to flit carefully between the trees, leading the humans toward the side gate in the high perimeter wall. Many of the patients at Faulk Medical Centre were admitted here because they couldn't control themselves, couldn't control their rage. Even the above ground, legitimate centre was built to try to help them, and contain them as they were treated.

"What are we waiting for?" hissed Mel, some quarter of an hour later. Several sets of increasingly suspicious eyes were glinting at Gemma in the faint light as they sheltered in the last of the trees, looking across the wide stretch of short-mown grass to the large, locked gate for trucks, and the smaller standby for foot-traffic. The side gate was slightly less littered with guards.

"It's not working, is it?" whispered Sandy half angrily.

"Patience," breathed Gemma brusquely in reply. Her eyes were angry, mind locked on Alan, and she lifted a finger to her lips.

It had been over a decade since Alan had last broken out of his cell and attempted an escape. The old Faulk had broken him - so they thought. Yet now her second was creeping up the main staircase by the auditorium, having disposed of the guards at the bottom. He had also managed to link in with Liz, probably the strongest of the Little Gems on duty in the auditorium, and had obtained the information he needed.

As he drew closer to the top of the steps, Alan's nose allowed him to time his arrival perfectly, so that when a silken-sheathed woman emerged from the guest bathroom at the head of the plush staircase, the naked wolf was kneeling waiting beside the male bathroom doorway like an abandoned puppy, his hands seemingly manacled behind his back, head bowed. A short chain led from the collar around his neck to a loop on the wall.

"On my," murmured the black-haired woman and halted, eyes widening. "My absolute favourite cock." She stepped forward and caressed his curly locks with a gentle hand, running it down the side of his neck before closing her long, blood-red nails on his earlobe painfully.

"You weren't on the menu tonight, it's been most disappointing," she sighed, stepping in closer, her legs widening so she could rub her crotch against his face, twisting it up with the hard grip on his ear.

Suddenly she leaned over him, smothering his face between her thighs with a hand on his head and whispered into the back of his neck, "And I've got that very special something for you in my car, like I promised. I'm sure you would find it a spectacular ride."

Her low laugh was not pleasant, and Alan found it simple to mask his tremble as a shiver.

The predatory woman shot an angry glance at the closed men's room door. She hated men. Why should some man have been allowed to purchase the big one, when she had been told that he wasn't on offer?

Alan waited, his heart beating steadily. He could but try - Lady Cruel was a little intoxicated with testing his pain boundaries and had been taunting him about taking him for a ride in her "special car" for months, although he had known it would never happen. The Faulk weren't lulled enough to let him above ground, however heavily drugged. He burned it off too quickly to be entirely predictable, they never let him beyond the monitors which registered the level in his sweat.

The monitors didn't register who the drug was keyed to.

The woman drew back with a snort, and he heard a lipstick unstoppered. Alan watched through his lashes, heart exulting, as Lady C casually scrawled an I.O.U. on the solid oak door to the ladies' washroom, unclipped him, and led him away toward the lobby.

This wouldn't work. It wouldn't. But it would get him further, create more mayhem. His glazed eyes fixed on the back of the woman leading him, Alan was nevertheless aware of the slightly suspicious glances that the smattering of guards placed around the ornate hallway were casting him. The monitors remained silent. Lady C stopped the approaching pair of Faulk with a scorching glance, and tugged her toy into the waiting lift.

"Which floor, my lady?" asked the young wolf brightly as the doors began to close. The youngest guards were always posted furthest from the shows. Watching was one of the perks they had not yet earned.

"Dungeon," drawled the woman, scoring a nail harshly down the crease between Alan's pectoral muscles.

The young Faulk swiped his cuff-pass across the reader to silence the wolf alarm which had sounded as soon as Alan had stepped in. As the doors closed, the woman tapped the youth smartly on the shoulder and said, "But first take me up to the car park - I have left my new present for this toy in the car."

The Faulk wolf hesitated, staring at the woman, and her eyes narrowed dangerously. Lacy C was one of the wealthier clients, and did not like being crossed. Especially by men.

The young guard then glanced up at Alan, who was doing his best impersonation of the angry, drugged shiver that had plagued him for so many years.

"He can't leave the lift," insisted the wolf.

Lady C sighed, "Silly boy. You can have him suck you off as you wait if it's that important to you."

The young wolf sighed and pressed the button for the entrance hall.

*

The floodlights within the hospital grounds suddenly swerved from their usual beam on the beautiful clock face in the central watch tower, and swiped in to focus on a lean figure sprinting flat-out towards the base of the gatehouse. There was an upheaval at the side gate, guards sprinting off into the darkness toward that zigzagging light. Gemma snapped "Now!" sharply, and led her small group in a running crouch along the waist-high hedge toward the gate. Despite leaving no scent, the humans were incapable of running quietly, with heavy footfalls and thunderously heavy panting.

She hadn't thought of that.

"Wait!" Gemma growled, and pulled ahead, tearing full speed across the gravel driveway to leap onto the startled guard turning to face the sound. His partner also spun a little too late from where he was staring out trying to see what was happening around Alan, and after finishing him, Gemma beckoned urgently to her friends.

She would not think about what she had done, the bodies lying twisted at her feet.

Sandy was the first across, knowing what they had to do, and he heaved the second guard up so that they could place his still-warm palm on the door pad. At the bleep, a green light appeared, and Gemma swiftly typed in the four digit code that Opal had decrypted from the mainframe downstairs.

The gate cracked open, the screeching alarm which burst into the night as it did so drowning out a unified gasping sigh from the whole group.

"Gem!" Helen embraced her in delight, disbelief.

The wereem let out a long, unsteady sigh of relief.

Then a howl of fury sounded from the darkness under the central watch-tower, jerking them out of their momentary inaction as they all squinted across at the light. The floodlight was still zipping around, trying to focus on a whirl of breathtakingly swift bodies.

Get moving! One of them yelled at her silently. Alan was now attacking the guards who were swerving back toward the open gate.

Gemma quelled her surging impulse to go and help her warrior. No. She first had to lay the false trail. Had to.

"Get going!" Gemma hissed to the humans, folding her nurse in a swift hug. Heart burning, she herself shot out into the darkness beyond the gate, her feet crunching loudly on the loose pebbles. A second alarm screeched out as the wereem ran between the posts, and a new shout went up from the walls.

A searchlight suddenly flashed down over the parapet, zigzagging in violent, searching swipes of movement before it blazed onto her form, running low across the open grass towards the forest. The spot was burning on her skin, semi-blinding her as Gemma sprinted flat out. Good: they wouldn't be looking for another trail.

Behind her, under the still shrieking alarm, she could just faintly hear a separate patter of stealthy crunching as the humans tiptoed off in the opposite direction.

Gemma ran with all-out abandon to give her friends as much of a head start as possible, and then the scent of the trees was about her, the dense underground catching at her ankles. She tried to pass silently over the muddy ground, but could hear the rattling of briars as she burst through, the snapping of twigs underfoot. There was so damn much to learn. She wanted to learn. Here, alone in the forest, her tears overcame her as she sprinted with a burning heart: she wanted to get home to Mac. She had just killed two wolves.

Run.

Not far into the forest, four skilled warriors overtook her and pounced, tangling her in a net that burned against her skin and brought the icy, retching sickness surging into her throat. Her limbs faltered, trembling as she struggled, panic crashing over her until her energy was sapped away and she faded to the chilling touch. Dimly she could feel the Faulk lugging her somewhere, panting. The crunch of gravel, shadow of the gateway, then she was dumped back onto grass, lying in a sharp, bright light. The net was stripped off her and two of them pinned her flat on her back to the ground while a third twisted her head sideways by the hair so that her face was dazzled.

What the hell are you playing at? screamed Alan in her head. She could smell him not far away.

She didn't answer, mind still spinning in the sickness, although her blood was beginning to beat more strongly now that they had lifted the net off her. A new scent caught her and her eyes cracked open. Sharp, black stiletto heels were approaching her face, gemstones flashing along the edges of the leather upper. The shadow of their wearer fell across her.

"Well, well," murmured a sleek, cultured voice, the tone delicately chilling. "Look who we have here."

The Louse crouched, and taking Gemma's chin in a firm grip, turned her face so that the wereem's bared teeth were inches from the Faulk's nose. Angry, predatory eyes glared down.

The scent cascading over Gemma raked her with the memory of Adam - this scent, polluting when she had last seen him: his tortured eyes. Her teeth snapped painfully on air as she lunged without thought, and a howl ripped from her as the warriors pinning Gemma down snorted with laughter and easily quelled she struggles.

Madam Faulk stroked a gentle finger over her cheek, trailing revulsion, then traced it down toward her heaving breasts. "Such passion," she purred. "Such - resilience."

Then the Faulk Alfamme unfolded gracefully back to her feet and murmured, appraising Gemma, "I must get back to our guests. Take them to the basement, and prepare the wolf for punishment." She paused, pondering, "The were - prepare it for a photo shoot: no damage. I want to get the adverts up tomorrow."

"Adverts?" echoed the guard, respectfully.

Madam Faulk slanted a malicious smile down at the pinned wereem, and purred, "A new act for the Advent Show. I think we'll call it, 'The Taming of the Shrew'."

**

The show was on.

As the Louse had promised, Gemma had spent the last two days being rigorously, exhaustively prepared for the presentation. Her hair had been cut and styled, skin buffed and waxed and lightly tanned, teeth whitened, and their continued bluntness verified.

There was no punishment as yet, no drugs. Madam had apparently ordered that Gemma be left untouched, just readied for the act. The Faulk Alfamme was intending to break the insubordinate wereem publically, as the mainstay of their biggest annual event, in order to demonstrate her mastery and renew the Faulk reputation.

Gemma teetered upwards one more step, the ball of her sandaled foot landing on soft, thick carpet pile. This was it. The last run of the stairs that bent around the back of the auditorium, rising up to the rear doors.

Her stomach was churning lightly, tension beginning to tighten as her two guards drew her carefully on, toward the hum of sound echoing from the theatre. Towards that reek of anticipatory lust: cloyingly human, with some faint hints of wolf. Each equally disturbing.

She could do this, Gemma reminded herself, seeking the calm which had enveloped her as she had reassured her pack earlier. Her stomach quivered, and she deliberately smothered the glimmer of fear with a self-congratulatory reminder: the Faulk were still hunting her human friends. They could not yet have escaped the forest, but her hope grew with every passing moment.

The ripple of noise grew louder as they approached the closed doors at the back of the room, the rustle of movement, clatter of voices and laughter and chink of glasses easily audible. A wild image flashed into Gemma's head of a huge mouth waiting to swallow her.

Calm down, she ordered her seething blood, her clenched stomach. She shivered, saw the guard holding her right leash smile and took a deep breath to calm herself as they halted just outside the double doors.

That was a mistake. The thickness of the scent unhinged her spine, little ghostly touches of aversion swirling discordantly across her skin, breaking her into a convulsion of shuddering. Revolting: the warm, damp, pushing smell of male and female lust. Tendrils of the cloying fumes seemed to slide across her exposed flesh, making her clench her teeth on a sudden surge of revulsion.

Show no emotion, she admonished herself fiercely.

The guards had stopped too, making her wait excruciatingly outside the doors. She shut her eyes, and the one of the left stepped in behind her, pulling her naked shoulders back, straightening her spine. Displaying her.

Gemma tried to block out the knowledge of what she was wearing. Wasn't wearing. The short black embroidered corset covered more of her than a bikini would, although the way it accentuated her full bust, it was a danger to her walking on these ridiculous heels, overbalancing her so that she was likely to fall flat on her face.

Her attempts at internal humour were getting more and more feeble, shaken by the stark reality of what she was facing.

Her slender, athletic legs were shimmering in sheer gloss fishnets, attached to the base of the corset by fine strings of tiny black rosebuds. Most humiliating of all, a small rectangle of black gossamer looped between her thighs, her 'panties' attached by further clips to the corset. For ease of removal.

Her wrists were tied behind her. Gemma held her head high, and kept her eyes fixed unfocussed ahead. This was her plan. She had to succeed. Over the last few days she had cultivated an air of bored, slightly detached disdain. It was farcical, considering the way she couldn't stop shivering, but she would keep pretending.

The doors opened.

There was a moment of blindness as a spotlight hit her, blinding her, burning against her naked skin and heating the black corset. But the scents told her, without her looking. Both Madam Faulk and Nicolas Grey were here tonight, down on the stage, waiting to restore the Faulk reputation for ruthlessness and dominance.

Yes.

Her eyes scanned the boxes on the balcony above, and there was Ginger, kneeling submissively by the side of her current purchaser. Gemma triple blinked the agreed signal, and saw her sjeste close her eyes as she conveyed to the others.

Here we go. Gemma swallowed, her spine stiffening as she obeyed the light tug on the leashes attached either side of her Argen collar, and began the long descent to the stage. Another shudder shot through her. She felt criminally negligent, being cut off from her pack, unable to sense or guide them at this crucial moment. Damned Argen. She could feel the collar clearly, like a buzz of weak acid against the skin, nauseating.

There was a rustling murmur as hundreds of people turned to follow the spotlight heating her path down the shallow stairs. Eyes gleamed at her in lust - lust for both sex and pain, the reek of their anticipatory enjoyment pulsing on the air.

Disdain. Disdain. Her heart was panicking.

A murmured request, and her guards stopped her, turning her to face the sea of dimly seen faces to the left of the walkway. The left guard stepped behind her again and pulled her shoulders back again sharply, causing a drawl of soft comments and some quiet, unpleasant laughter.

The stench of sadistic arousal rolled over her, pulling her back into this room, her personal danger. Gemma's heart was thundering erratically, her stomach churning with bile. She hated the feeling of fear, but hating it didn't subdue it, so she glared out above the gleaming eyes, focussing on the walls behind, breast rising and falling rapidly.