Alpha Blood Box Set(31)

“Oh no you don’t. You’re in no condition to-” He grabbed the chest bandages in one hand and tore them off to reveal perfectly healthy skin. “Or maybe you are.”

“I must warn Luke right away about the danger. Alston may try again-” he insisted.

“He did last night. Alston ended up leaving through the balcony window in your room,” I told him. “Besides, I don’t know where Luke went. He and Stacy were going to check out the voting with Burnbaum to make sure everything was legal.”

Alistair frowned, and brushed off my hands. “That is exactly why I must find him. I will follow his scent.”

“Then I’ll go with you,” I offered.

He stood and shook his head. “The voting will have made the halls an invitation to kidnap you, and I can not allow that to happen,” he argued.

I rolled my eyes. “I know, I know, because I’m so important to Luke.”

“That is not the entire reason.”

I paused and blinked. “Huh?”

Alistair’s face held an expression of sincerity and regret. “I must apologize for my cold attitude toward you. I admit I was jealous of Luke’s attentions toward you, and disgusted by your ignorance toward our culture. I have been too long without the company of humans to have seen my own prejudice toward them.”

I looked him over with a careful eye. “How hard did they knock you on the head?” I asked him.

He smiled. “Hard enough to make me see the error of my ways.”

I sighed and shook my head. “It’s all right. Not like you didn’t protect me when you protected Luke,” I pointed out.

Alistair whipped his face over to the door. “And I must continue to protect him, and ensure that you remain safe here.”

“Then stop blabbing and get to finding Luke. I’ll be all right here,” I assured him.

“Very well.” He dressed himself in a clean shirt and rushed out of the room.

I was left sitting on my chair with my patient run off and the halls outside the room a noisy mess of talking and yelling. Things got even more complicated with a knock on the door. Considering last night’s fun I crept over and peeked through the keyhole. I could make out two pairs of legs on the other side. “Yes?” I called out.

“Is Mr. Alistair here?” came Mr. Stewart’s voice. I opened the door to reveal the distraught man himself with his equally frantic wife. Abby wasn’t with them, and for very good reason. “Abby’s missing and she’s covered her trail so that we need help finding her,” he pleaded. I cringed. She’d put to bad use the skills her own father taught her.

“But I don’t know where he is,” I told them. I waved my hand at the controlled chaos on either side of them. “He’s in that mess somewhere.”

“Then we’ll go find him. Would you please try to look for her yourself?” Stewart begged me.

I furrowed my brow and glanced over my shoulder to the empty room. With my patient gone I was useless here. I turned back to them and nodded. “All right, I’ll go see if she’s around the dining hall.

Mrs. Stewart smiled and clasped my hand. “Thank you so much.” The pair rushed off to follow Mr. Stewart’s nose to Luke.

I put on my coat, stuffed my pawed hand into the deepest pocket, and hurried out into the busy halls. The people in the same district scurried from one hall to the other in deep discussions of political pros and cons while the ballot takers with boxes in hand were at the beck and call of anyone with a finished ballot. After three hundred years you would have thought they’d have this down to an art that didn’t imitate the famous Scream portrait.

I was jostled and shoved into doorways, down halls, and almost down the stairs before I reached the ground floor. A nearby exit onto the deck provided me with relief from the noisy yelling and running, and I breathed a breath of fresh air. Then I glanced around and realized I stood near the entrance doors to the dining hall. I stepped up to the windows and glanced inside. There wasn’t a sign of Abby anywhere, and my amateur sniffer didn’t pick up anything but food.

I sighed and leaned back against the wall. This was like looking for a needle in a haystack. My head snapped up when I recalled a particular memory. Maybe it wasn’t in a haystack, but in a rock pile! Abby said she loved the rocks, and I promised to return with her to them yesterday. Maybe she was waiting for me so she could show me what small pebble or neat plant she found!

I bit my lip and looked between the dining hall doors and the steps. Two choices presented themselves to me. I could roam the halls for all eternity searching for them, or I could make a quick trip out to the rocks and be back because anyone knew I was gone. It’d probably be safe heading that way. After all, our enemies always made trouble or gone toward the station platform. Besides, what trouble could there be around a few rocks?

I ran to the rocks with all the speed my limited werewolf abilities gave me, and made it there in record time and without any air left in my lungs. I leaned against one of the rocks and looked around. “Abby!” I wheezed. “Abby!”

“Becky!” came the excited reply. Abby peeked her head out of the crack she’d earlier wanted me to enter. “Come see what I found! There’s even more stuff here!”

“Abby, I don’t think that’s-” Her head slipped back inside and I groaned. I had no other choice but to follow her whims and catch her unawares. I slipped into the crack, or rather squirmed, wiggled, and sucked in my gut to get between the immovable boulders. The space beyond the crack was pitch black but for the light behind me, but my eyes adjusted more than I expected. Must have been my wolfing showing. I spotted Abby standing beside an opening that led deeper into the cave system. “Abby, get back here this-” And she was gone, slipped into the opening with a smile and a giggle. Damn, but she was cute when she was evil.

I sighed, rolled my eyes, and adjusted my headlights to go deeper into the depths of this granite whale. I dove into the cave only to trip over something laying on the ground. My momentum caused me to stumble farther into what turned out to be a large room. I fell to the dirt ground and coughed as a cloud sprang up. A small pair of feet stepped up beside me, and I glanced up to see Abby kneeling beside me with a concerned look on her face.

“Are you all right?” Abby asked me.

“Yeah, just dandy.” I sat up and looked around. My weak eyes could make out six short, wide wooden boxes that leaned against the walls. One of them was open behind Abby, and she had a blocky item in her hand. “What’s that?” I wondered.

She giggled and held it out to me. “It’s putty!” I took it and looked it over. It was a brick of gray putty with a box strapped to the top. A few wires came out of the box and stuck into the putty. There was also a short piece of string that led to the metal mechanism and could be lit with a lighter. I’d seen enough action movies to realize I didn’t want to be in a room with boxes of these things. I yelped, grabbed Abby and pulled her to the entrance. “Hey! What are you doing!” she protested.

“That’s not putty, it’s plastic explosives!” I told her. She stopped struggling and we reached the opening only to hear the sounds of voices coming toward us. My eyes widened, and I pulled Abby against the wall to the side of the entrance.

“What time does this need to be done?” a rough male voice asked someone. It sounded like the thug who’d provoked Burnbaum the day before.

“One o’clock,” came the brisk reply. I recognized that voice as being that of Alston.

“So an hour after voting closes?” the first man replied.

“Yes, and no earlier. We don’t want to doubt the integrity of the election, just frame the Lone Wolf party for the explosions,” Alston told him. At that comment my heart skipped a minute’s worth of beating. “How much of the explosives have you placed?”

“Nearly done, but it’s been slow going. Those tunnels aren’t so easy getting through because they haven’t been used in so long.”

Alston scoffed. “Perhaps if you hadn’t been occupied in the cells yesterday the job would be finished,” he scolded the man.

“How was I to know that Protector wasn’t like the other Brier?” the man argued. “Besides, if you were doing your job of protecting us we wouldn’t have been in that cell-”

“Quiet.” I heard a nose sniff the air and hugged Abby against myself. The poor girl shook like a leaf. “Someone’s been in here.” The other man sniffed the air.

“Yeah, and recently.” Their footsteps followed my trail to the entrance, and the first man from the conversation stuck his head inside the room. It was the man from the brawl, and his eyes scanned the dark room. His gaze fell on us and his eyes widened in surprise. “You-” I gripped the block of plastic explosive in my clawed hand and brought it down atop his head. The putty cushioned the blow, but it was enough to knock him off balance. He fell to the ground in a cloud of obscuring dust, and I dragged Abby out of there.

Unfortunately, Alston stood in our path, and I didn’t like the grin on his face when he recognized me. “Well, good morning to you,” he greeted. I picked up Abby and tried to dodge around him, but he stepped in my way. Behind me I heard the man stumble out of the room. We were trapped.