“Silence!”
I was slightly more frightened, especially when I saw the glow from the naked lightbulb above my head reflecting off the blade that Chief Oliver held in front of my nose. I recognized the quartz crystal and the jeweled handle immediately.
“That’s the Sword of Bethesda.”
The chief grinned down at me. “Well, Sophie Lawson. Aren’t you the smart one? Glad you’re awake and welcome to the party.”
Chief Oliver raised his arms and a glimmer of hope sliced through me—maybe this has all been for a wild surprise party? Maybe?
Nothing happened, and I felt a cold bead of sweat run between my breasts. “Can’t you do something?” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth to Sampson.
Chief Oliver grinned. “No,” he said, answering me, “he can’t do anything. He won’t be able to do much of anything ever again.” The chief’s eyes slid to the tiny sliver of window close to the ceiling of our little dungeon. “Two more sunsets and good ol’ Sampson here will be nothing more than what he’s always been—a common dog. That is”—the chief twisted the sword in his hand, so the light glinted off the narrow blade—“if he makes it through this.”
“You’re crazy, Oliver,” Sampson said through gritted teeth, the chain coiled around his neck pulled taut.
Chief Oliver swung his head from side to side, his dark eyes glittering and set on Sampson’s. “A common dog.”
Sampson gritted his teeth. “To think I used to envy you, Oliver.”
Chief Oliver’s eyebrows rose, and I swung my head to Mr. Sampson. “Envy him?”
“Trying to butter me up won’t work at this point, Sampson, but okay, whatever. I’ll bite. Why did you envy me?”
Mr. Sampson swallowed hard; I watched his Adam’s apple bobbing through the thick tuft of werewolf fur curling out from his collar. “Back when we were in college. I hadn’t been changed yet. We’d spend our nights at the Grog, trolling for coeds, heading home at dawn. We’d make it to a couple of classes, and then when the sun set we’d do it all over again.”
I thought I saw a hint of a nostalgic smile cross the chief’s puckered face. “Those were pretty good days.”
“One night you took off with that engineering student from Berkeley—remember her? I left, took the long way around Lone Mountain to give you guys some privacy.”
My stomach churned as I heard the chief chuckle. “Doreen. She was a pretty little thing.”
“Out there behind Lone Mountain was when I was bitten. The wolf came out of the woods. For some reason, I wasn’t frightened. It was like I knew it was supposed to happen to me. I was bitten, my blood intermingled with the werewolf’s saliva, and from that night on I knew nothing would ever be the same for me. Nothing would ever be normal for me again.”
“Oh, Sampson, that’s so sad,” I mumbled.
“Yeah,” Chief Oliver said disgustedly, “I really feel for you.”
“I envied you because you still had your entire normal life ahead of you. You could do anything, go anywhere at any time. You could graduate, get married, have kids. And here I was, trapped. Chained”—Sampson raised his arms, the heavy chains rattling—“to an alter ego that I couldn’t control.”
“Chained to a power that was all consuming,” the chief spat. “Didn’t you know that I could see what was happening to you? I saw the changes, saw the hungry way you looked at people—because you were no longer like them. You wanted them. Wanted their flesh.”
“I wanted to be like them again. That was it.”
The chief gritted his teeth. “And when I asked you to change me, you wouldn’t.”
Mr. Sampson bit out his words. “You were my best friend. I wasn’t going to do that to you. This is not a life I would have chosen for myself; I wouldn’t choose this life for anyone.”
“What? Immortality? Superhuman strength?” The chief’s eyes were hard.
“Loneliness. A body and spirit that betrays you with the changes of the moon.”
“No. You wanted the power for yourself, Sampson. That was obvious. You couldn’t take anyone challenging you, challenging your power or your precious Underworld.”
“That wasn’t it. I was trying to protect you. I only wanted to protect you.”
“Well, aren’t you the saint, Pete?”
I sucked in a breath. “So the paw prints, the scratches that the police found around the first body. Was it—were they—?” I looked at Sampson, at his chained hands.
“You thought it was me.”
“No, I—” I spun around, looking at the chief. “You framed him. You wanted me to think it was Mr. Sampson so I wouldn’t trust him.”