"It will be useful to you. I promise," Wilmos said. "You'll feel better."
He turned off the force field. Sean stepped forward, pulled off his shirt, and touched the shiny scales. The metal melted, wrapping around his fingers. Thin streaks of gray slid around his arm like metal snakes, over his shoulders, over his chest... The metal expanded, coating him, and broke apart into a thousand tiny metal dots. For a second nothing happened, then the dots moved as one, piercing Sean's skin.
He screamed, a guttural, brutal shout that turned into a roar.
His back arched, his shoulders gaining bulk. His flesh whipped around him in a furry whirlwind and a huge werewolf stood in Sean's place. I had forgotten how big he was.
Wilmos blinked. "That's one hell of a wetwork shape."
Werewolf-Sean growled, displaying huge teeth.
"Feel the armor move through you," Wilmos said. "Let it bond. It will make you stronger. You should feel some feedback right away, but the complete merger will take time. Give it twenty-four hours and it will be in your bones."
Sean turned. Armored plates formed under his skin on his chest, guarding his pectorals and the flat ridges of his stomach. The armor melted and the bulk of it shifted to his shoulders, forming pauldrons. His neck thickened. He snarled. The fur vanished, his body slimmed down in a blink, and human Sean was back. Swirls of dark blue-gray pigment crisscrossed his chest and stomach like tiger stripes. He looked down at himself. The pigment moved.
"That's it," Wilmos said. "Shape it."
The pigment melted and turned into a tribal design that covered most of Sean's torso. It wrapped around his ribs, flowed onto his back, and settled.
Sean exhaled.
"And now you're ready for battle. Good luck, soldier."
Chapter Sixteen
When we came back, Arland was waiting for us in the kitchen. He'd found the guest laptop I'd left in the room for his convenience and was reading something on the screen. A cup of tea with small roses on it sat next to him. The air smelled like mint. Even in a white T-shirt and jeans, Arland didn't fit into the kitchen. It was like walking into your room and finding a medieval knight with the face of a superstar casually sipping tea from your flowery porcelain cup.
The vampire saw Sean. His eyes narrowed. "Did something happen?"
"No," Sean told him.
Arland studied him. "You look different. You look larger." He inhaled. "And your scent has changed. Something did happen."
Something happened all right. Sean hadn't said a word after we left the shop. He did look larger, better defined, as if he'd gained about ten pounds of muscle and it all went to the right places. His eyes, more golden than amber now, looked into the distance. He was wandering somewhere inside his head, and antagonizing him right now wasn't wise. Somehow I didn't think that he'd respond with werewolf poetry. He kept shrugging his shoulders as if he wanted to test them out.
"What are you reading?" I asked.
"Just some minor social research," Arland said.
Okay. "Did the battlefield meet with your approval?"
"It will suffice. Have you acquired your weapons?"
"Yes," I said.
"I'm going to go for a run." Sean opened the back door and went outside.
I moved to the window. He was standing in the grass, looking up at the sky.
Arland's eyebrows crept together. "Should I be concerned?"
"Probably not." I had no idea. I was concerned. In my book, putting on alien suits that bonded with your body wasn't wise. But Sean was a grown man, and there wasn't anything I could've done about it. I had no idea what side effects this stunt could have.
Sean shrugged his shoulders again and took off, dashing into the trees. A moment and he vanished completely from view.
Here's hoping he came back in one piece.
"Lady Dina," Arland said.
I turned to him. "Dina, please."
"Dina." Arland leaned back and presented me with a dazzling smile, his fangs on display.
Uh-oh. Perhaps keeping "lady" in front of my name would've been a better strategy.
He rose and walked over to me. I used to read an action series about a former military detective who was almost six and a half feet tall. I'd never quite comprehended how tall that was, but Arland had just given me a very good idea.
"Do you need to make any preparations?" Arland stopped next to me and leaned his forearm against the wall, looking out of the window. "If so, how long they will take?"
"About seven hours, give or take a few minutes depending on temperature," I said. That was the average time it took the pearls to mature once planted.
"Will you be comfortable with fighting tonight?" he asked.
"Yes." This was the weirdest conversation.
Arland nodded. "Dina..."