Spooks & Specters: A San DeLain Short Story Collection

Chapter One

RAISED VOICES. The hurried squeaks of steel-toed boots against concrete floors. The clang of metal doors retracting as bodies rushed through.

Shit.

It was enough to drag Axel out of his restless sleep. Why did they always come at night? If he didn’t know better, he’d think the damn doctors were vampires. But they weren’t. At least the doctors weren’t. He wasn’t entirely sure what the guards were, but they were definitely not human. They were much too strong, and some even smelled like wolf.

But their scent was off. Wrong. Unnatural. In the beginning he hadn’t known what was going on, but unfortunately, now he was afraid he did… and wished like hell he didn’t.

Shoving all thoughts out of his head, Axel prepared himself. He’d done this song and dance enough to know what the hurried steps and low voices meant. Rolling off his cot, he surged to his feet, fists up, ready. Someone in another cell whimpered.

Axel’s stomach dropped at the sound.

“Let’s move. Go! Go! Go!”

Men in personal armor, wearing riot helmets and holding batons and riot shields, surged down the hallway as screams and cries from the surrounding cells rose in volume.

When there were this many guards, it was usually for an extraction. If these assholes were there to harass certain prisoners, only a few showed up, and definitely not in riot gear. Axel had no idea who they were coming for this time. It could be him, or it could be another prisoner. Or it could be that several of them were about to be dragged out for… tests.

Tests. Right. More like fucking experiments.

Axel took a deep breath and let it out slowly as the guards lined up outside of his cell. “Yeah, let’s go,”

he taunted. “Open the damn door. I dare you.”

“Back! Move back! Now!”

the guard at the front of the line screamed at Axel.

“Make me.”

Axel knew how this was going to end, of course. It was the same way it always ended—him getting his ass kicked. This wasn’t a battle he could win, not when he was outnumbered and so damn weak.

Didn’t matter.

He had no idea how many times they’d done this. It was years, though. Many, many, many years. Time had ceased to have any meaning. He couldn’t remember the last time he shifted, thanks to whatever they injected him with.

He was losing his wolf. All he wanted was the peace of eternal sleep, but even though he couldn’t shift, his damn wolf refused to let him give up. To pass on. There were those here who were weaker than him who needed help.

Could he stop the experiments? No. Could he sometimes distract the guards when they came to play with prisoners? Yes—by drawing their attention to him.

Him. Fighting for weaker paranormals. Who would’ve believed him capable of such?

“Turn around and kneel!”

“Suck my dick.”

His cell door flew open, and the line of guards flooded into his room. Here we go. His heart pounded as his adrenaline spiked. For the briefest of moments, he felt his wolf stir under his skin. Power rose in him, and he gloried in it.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to help him shift, and he knew it wouldn’t last. It never did. It couldn’t.

The riot shield hit him square in the chest, knocking the breath out of him, and he flew backwards. But that wasn’t enough to keep him down long. He might not be the alpha werewolf he used to be, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.

Since he was already on the floor, he grabbed the guard by the legs, knocking him off balance, then managed to slam his head into the nearest wall. That one was down for the count. Staggering to his feet, Axel grabbed the second guard by the neck as the guard rushed him. Stupid of him to let Axel get his hands on him. Axel twisted, and there was a satisfying pop.

Axel smiled as he dropped the dead guard.

He was still smiling when a bat slammed into his stomach. Bent over, a knee connected with his jaw, and he saw stars. Pain arrowed through his body, and he stumbled back into the wall, head spinning.

Stupid guard followed him. Grabbing the asshole by the arm, Axel bent it back the wrong way until it broke. Throwing his head back, he roared out his victory as the guard’s screams echoed around him. Then the small burst of power drained out of him.

“Taser, taser, taser!”

Oh shit. It appeared he’d pissed the guards off as his muscles locked up. Every nerve ending lit on fire as intense electrical pain shot through his body. Down he went, screaming through his clenched jaw.

“Fucker killed the new guy!”

Good. One less asshole to deal with.

He was still convulsing on the ground from the electrical shocks when someone stabbed a needle into his neck.

AXEL LURCHED up in bed. Panic swirled in his brain as phantom pain screamed through him. Every instinct he had screamed to fight.

That he was in danger.

That he had to do something.

Chest heaving, he stared wildly around the room. Where were the guards? The doctors? Why wasn’t that big bright light not shining down into his eyes? After the needle in the neck, he always woke up to that bright light blinding him.

Frantically he looked around again. Wait. Wait. Something wasn’t right. Where was the lab equipment? There was no equipment. And, and… he wasn’t restrained.

They always restrained him because they knew he’d do his dead level best to kill anyone he got his hands on. Even though he was shaking like an addict in withdrawal, he raised one of his wrists and stared at it. There were no cuffs. And he wasn’t wearing that hideous gray jumpsuit prisoners were required to wear.

This wasn’t the lab.

His breathing slowed. Being in the lab meant being in pain. Although being in the cell also meant being in pain, and speaking of that, where were the bars? There were always bars. And why wasn’t he hearing whimpering and crying? There was always whimpering and crying. Confusion swept through him, filling his head. Where was he?

He looked at the bedding—it was actual bedding and not a thin, raggedy blanket. And whatever he was sitting on was soft, which was a definite improvement over that cheap mattress on his bunk in his cell.

This was not his cell.

His gaze swept the room. His heart rate spiked when he finally noticed that there actually was equipment in the room, but it was equipment found in a… hospital room. Not a lab.

“Oh fuck.”

A nightmare. He’d been having a damn nightmare. Again. Axel dropped his head into his hands as it all came roaring back once more. He’d been saved, and by none other than Kage, his ex-boyfriend. Of all the unlikely scenarios.

The trembling in his limbs slowly receded as his breathing settled. Safe. He was safe. Well, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d go that far. But at least he was out of that cell. His nose started to burn as his eyes watered. He wasn’t going to die in that damn cell, something that he’d not only accepted but had been waiting for.

A hundred years.

He had lost a hundred years to the hunters. The conversation he’d had with Kage replayed in his mind. Kage. The man that he had loved at one time had moved on and found the love of his life.

Tears leaked through Axel’s fingers, but he didn’t cry because he’d lost Kage. Axel had sabotaged that relationship all on his own. No one else. Everything that had happened to Axel over the last hundred years directly corresponded to that last fight, which Axel had started.

Had he ever truly loved Kage? He honestly didn’t know, looking back on it. If Axel was honest with himself—and he had learned how to be over the last fifty or so years—he questioned if he’d even been capable of love back then.

The man that Axel used to be…. Well, that man probably was not capable of love. If anything, the only person he’d loved had been himself. Had he blamed Kage for abandoning him on the other side of the world with nothing but the clothes on his back?

Yes, but Axel had brought it on himself. Axel had beat the male he was supposed to have loved. It was safe to say Kage most likely wouldn’t have left him there if Axel hadn’t attacked him.

So the person to blame was himself. It had taken Axel a long time to admit that, but he finally had.

There had been compatibility between them, but Axel had known Kage wasn’t his fated mate. Fated mate. Axel snorted. He knew perfectly damn well a lot of shifters never found their fated mate, and he had used that as an excuse to not commit fully to Kage. Gods above, he had been arrogant back then.

He certainly wasn’t arrogant now.

He had nothing, absolutely nothing, and the reason he wasn’t out on the streets was due to Kage. After all Axel had done, Kage had provided treatment for him. Honestly, he was surprised Kage hadn’t just dumped him in the middle of San DeLain and let the two werewolf packs there take care of him. It was what he deserved.

And speaking of the werewolf packs of San DeLain, he was going to have one targeting him since they thought he was their alpha. Of course, everybody knew now that Nox had been impersonating Axel, but werewolves gave new meaning to the word arrogance. His past self was a perfect example.

The Crimson Fangs would be after his blood because they hadn’t realized their alpha had been a mimic and not actually Axel. In their mind, the only way to redeem themselves was to kill Axel.

Axel was almost tempted to let them, but his stupid wolf refused to give up and let them die. Sighing, he looked at the clock on the table next to his bed. Gods, Kage would be here soon.

It had been a little over a week since Axel’s rescue, and he was stronger. Good food, rest, and no beatings had certainly helped his recovery. So did not being injected with whatever they’d used to suppress his wolf.

In fact, he had told Terry that he wanted to try and shift today, which was the reason why Kage was stopping by. Axel was both nervous and excited. He snorted softly. Nervous because it’d been so long since he’d shifted. He had no idea if he could.

And he was excited. It wasn’t Kage he was excited at seeing, though. Oh no, it was Doctor Terry Sanchez, a daemon of Kage’s clan. The good doctor had been reserved at first, which Axel didn’t blame him for.

Terry had been around when Axel and Kage had dated, after all. He might not know exactly what happened between Kage and Axel, but he had certainly been around all the other times Axel had acted like an ass toward Kage. And basically anyone else who wasn’t a werewolf, something he was greatly ashamed of now.

Terry had slowly defrosted toward Axel over the last week, and he was so pitifully grateful that there was actually someone who gave a damn whether he lived or died, Axel didn’t know how to act. Terry’s kindness had helped Axel more than he could say.

So, was he thrilled about trying to shift today? Yes. But he was more excited about getting to see Terry.