chapter Twenty-Five
One day, provided I lived long enough, I was going to make a list of the top-ten worst experiences of my life. Being dragged by my hair through the mucky, disgusting swamp underbrush while listening to a pack of feral werewolves talk about who would rape me first was a sure contender for the number-six spot on that list.
Number five if they let the one who kept talking about giving it to me up the ass got first crack.
Considering a vampire sadist had once gotten his jollies by sticking a finger in my open neck wound, it took a lot to break into the top five. Not to mention, if any of these Mad Maxian savages so much as pulled out their dick in my presence, they wouldn’t get it back.
They could kill me—or they could try—but I would make the Loups-Garous a pack of eunuchs before I let them go balls deep.
“She’s scrappy,” Dreadlocks said.
“She’s trouble. We’re leaving her for Carn.”
Carn? What the f*ck was that short for? Carnie? Carnivore? Carnal? “I hope Carn likes it rough,” I snapped, my fangs showing. Mohawk and Dreadlocks exchanged looks, but the guy dragging me couldn’t see my mouth and kept right on ripping my hair out by its ends.
I’d been able to partially shift myself once before. How had I done it? I tried to concentrate on the shape and configuration of my bones. Could thought alone help me twist and change myself into some half-wolf abomination? Last time it had happened my life had been in immediate danger.
I don’t think my brain understood that this situation was as bad—if not worse—than having an overweight Greek vampire going for my carotid. I stretched my fingers, envisioning them bursting into claws. My muscles twinged with the effort and my face felt hot from struggling, but nothing happened. Unless breaking a sweat counted.
“Take them to the pit. We’ll let Carn sort them out.”
“But I want to touch her,” one of the other wolves whined.
Mohawk backhanded him. Even if he wasn’t the leader, it was obvious the spiky-haired bastard was high in their ranks. I should have shot him when I had the chance, but now my gun was tucked in the front of his jeans.
Good luck, buddy. I turned the safety off. I hope you blow your nuts to pulp.
Apparently my telekinetic powers were as rusty as my shifting was because the gun did not fire even though I was giving it the evil eye with all my might. Where were my hereditary witch skills?
The wolf dragging me pulled me over a crop of sharp rocks. To show my appreciation, I pushed off the ground with both feet. Had I not been tethered to someone by my hair I could have done a nice kick up onto my feet, but his hold would just drag me down. Instead I put too much weight into it so my legs went right over my head and connected hard with his skull.
He dropped me. “Son of a bitch,” he screamed. The hand that had once been in my hair flew up to cradle his injured noggin.
I straightened into a standing position and dusted the moss and mud off my jacket casually, like nothing had happened. “My legs work. I can walk.”
The wolf I’d kicked made to grab my hair again, and my elbow flew back, breaking his nose.
“I said I can walk.”
Mohawk stared at me. “You think you can do it without breaking any more bones?”
“That depends. Do you think your puppies can keep their paws to themselves the rest of the way?”
The group who had been bartering with each other about who would ride first suddenly didn’t seem quite so interested. I wasn’t stupid enough to think they wouldn’t still try, but for now I wasn’t as inviting as I’d once been.
“I make no promises,” Mohawk said.
“Then neither do I.”
We arrived in a small encampment about fifteen minutes later, having never left the island. The place was much bigger than I’d anticipated, making me wonder if the Loups-Garous were the only inhabitants. I wanted to believe someone out there might be able to save us, but who was I kidding? Who could stand against a pack of feral wolves almost as large as Callum’s whole crew?
Small campfires littered the main living area and little wooden shacks appeared to be the sole form of shelter. A woman heavy with pregnancy stepped out of one shed and caught my eye. I didn’t miss the flash of pity in her face. She rubbed her big belly, and a small child dashed out from behind her. They both looked wild, hair sticking up, rigid with muck.
The child was barely six, but the smell of wolf was unmistakable.
They were changing the children.
Changing children before they came of age was forbidden by werewolf law. Most children couldn’t handle the change at an early age, and the transformation into wolf form would more often than not kill them. This was why born werewolves were so rare and why seeing one in adulthood was almost unheard of.
It took a really sick animal to turn a child, and I was surrounded by a whole pack of them.
Another woman—hardly old enough to be called an adult—was sitting next to a fire. She scampered out of the way when the men arrived back in the camp. Her belly, too, was large.
Jesus Christ. They kidnapped women and made them into living breeding machines so they could expand their pack through the offspring. This was what they had planned for me.
As it turned out, the pit wasn’t a cheeky nickname for anything. It was literally a giant f*cking hole in the ground, about fifteen feet deep and just as wide across. Mohawk let the wolf with a broken nose and a goose egg on the back of his head have the pleasure of shoving me into it. Holden was tossed in next, and his bulk landing on top of me sucked worse than my fall.
I grunted and shoved him off me. The wolves dragged two sheets of plywood over the mouth of the hole, and Holden and I were cast into total darkness. It didn’t matter, there wasn’t much I wanted to look at in the pit anyway, and I could see Holden well enough since he was right next to me.
“So…” he started, but couldn’t find anything else to say.
“Yeah. I want to say something clever, make this whole thing a big laugh, but it’s kind of hard when a bunch of savages want to turn me into their incubator right after they eat you.”
“Look on the bright side,” he suggested.
“There’s a bright side?”
“Sure. Daylight is coming. Maybe they’ll lift up the roof and we’ll just be burned to death.”
He was right, I could feel sunrise coming. It whispered in my ear and tugged at my eyelids. “Maybe we can dig into the side of the hole?” I paced our prison, testing the walls. The dirt was wet, and though it would be easy enough to dig into, I didn’t know how far we’d get before water from the swamp started filling the pit. If we didn’t drown, it would force us into the sunlight where we’d die anyway. He would turn to ash within minutes, whereas my skin would bubble and burst, covered with agonizing burns until the pain did me in.
Boy did I like our odds.
I sat next to Holden and rested my head on his shoulder. He’d removed his jacket, and now that I was close, he laid it across my lap as a makeshift blanket.
“I won’t let them touch you,” he promised.
“I know.” I looped my arm under his and breathed in the familiar scent of his skin. “And if there’s a way out of this, I swear we’ll find it.”
“I know.”
The lies people tell each other when hope runs out are the easiest to believe. If words are all you have, what else can you do but hang on to them?
Sunrise came, and I felt Holden sag under my touch, now unreachable as he slept the worry-free sleep of the dead. I brushed his hair back from his forehead and placed a kiss in the wake of my fingers. It had been at least twenty-four hours since I’d fed, maybe more. If you could count the rabbits and possums I’d fed on in the woods during my walks a real meal. A year ago there would have been no way for me to fight the daylight sleep without a bellyful of fresh blood.
But I was Tribunal now.
I was so exhausted my bones felt like they’d turned to liquid. If forced to fight in this condition, I could do about as much damage as a rabid chipmunk. Sleep wasn’t an option, though. Sleeping would leave Holden defenseless, and if I awoke at dusk to find him gone—killed during the daylight hours while I slept—I would never forgive myself.
I pulled him flush to me, letting his cheek rest against my breasts, nearer than I would have ever let him get under normal circumstances. Right now it was different, though, since he was dead to the world and it made me feel better to have him close.
Day burned bright, and the sounds of the camp filtered down to me. I listened while I rubbed my thumbnail into the shortened lifeline on my left hand, cursing Fate out loud for not letting me make my own choice.
I waited. For death, for freedom, I wasn’t sure. All I could do was wait for the nightmare to end.