Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Wolf Bait

How could he have explained, exactly, lucidly, what had transpired three months ago, on the last night they'd made love in her apartment? What had happened to him on the way to his car?

How could he tell Jenna that this thing in the cell—the mad thing she had labeled a monster by putting it here—was merely a woman caught in transition? A woman who hadn't yet adapted to the new shape she was to become?

Possibly just an average female.

Until she had been bitten.

By a werewolf.

Whatever drugs Jenna's staff had given this poor creature had jumpstarted this transition, usually tripped in the dark of night, by a full moon, into high gear without the presence of those other governing factors. The confines of this eight-by-eight cell would be claustrophobic.

In essence, the woman in there was being tortured, kept from attaining the new shape her mutated cells demanded she attain. Frozen in a horrifying sort of limbo, compulsively seeking her new self, her human side weaker than what was trying to take her over. She couldn't stop the process, become, ask for help, or go back.

I'm so sorry , Matt thought, fighting the urge to break down the damned door. Jesus, I'm sorry .

Next to him, Jenna's body was tight as she observed this so-called anomaly. She remained mute when the thing in the cell suddenly ceased its terrible gyrations. She kept quiet when the thing turned slowly, as if it could sense them staring.

Jenna said nothing when, even with the high-tech glass separating them, the thing in that cell looked at the door as if it knew he and Jenna were there.

But Jenna jumped back when the thing lunged, as it pressed its constantly morphing face, a face like some hideous version of a cartoon nightmare, to the spot where Matt was resting his forehead.

Jenna uttered something undecipherable as the thing in the cell stared back at them through terrified green eyes the same color as his own. As what had once been a young woman opened her mouth, exposing a set of newly formed, razor- sharp teeth, as if pleading with him to intervene.

Like calling to like.

Beast recognizing beast.

Through a two-foot-thick padded door.

Shit. Hell. No! Matt's blood began to sprint hotly through his veins. His fingers started to tingle—always the first sign in a mounting crescendo of dubious signals.

Darkness poured in suddenly from the periphery. From out of that darkness, and up from his gut, something unwelcome came tumbling. A unique presence. A horrifying one.

Needing to protest this dark entity's progress, assuming this was being caused by his empathy for the poor, freaked-out woman in the cell, Matt let loose of the howl he'd been holding—a howl that tore from his throat as a reciprocal cry.

Chapter Two

Jenna tumbled backward, slamming her spine hard against the opposite wall of the corridor, gasping with fear. She fought to breathe, then struggled with the uncertainty of whether the man over there could have been kidding. Whether this could have been some particularly nasty form of male humor.

The psychiatrist part of her voted for the joke. Her woman's intuition screamed that something truly odd and completely earnest had happened here—of which she wasn't a part and hadn't a clue.

Matt had howled. Like a wolf. Like a lunatic.

"Matt?" Shaky voice. She tried again. "Matt? What was that?"

The man who knew every inch of her body, inside and out, turned toward her, his face a mask of regret and, she thought, sorrow. Though he struggled to speak, he eventually said, "You have to get her out of here. Right now. If you don't, she'll die in another couple of hours."

Jenna stared at him for a full minute more. "What are you talking about?"

"She will die if you don't get her outside, into the open."

Fighting the instinct to laugh, Jenna smiled nervously. "Right. Let her loose. In the open. And you would prescribe this because…?"

"I know what's wrong with her. I've seen this before."

"What are you talking about?" she repeated, at a higher decibel.

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