He woke in a cage. Raving and furious. He threw himself at the bars even though he knew—with that tiny human part of him—that he was hurting only himself and that there was no way out.
Someone turned a hose on him, hitting him with icy spray, the water like needles. He rammed the bars again, and the cage shook with the strike. And again and again. With each blow his body came away more bruised. He heard/felt/smelled the bone in his right arm break, and the added pain sent him to the corner of his cage to whimper and lick his wounds.
He smelled vamp and age and bricks weeping with the Mississippi. Mold and sickness and blood rode the other scents like the top note of a really expensive but foul perfume. It was the smell of blood that brought him back. Beef blood. Steak so rare it would grunt if you kicked it was piled on a plate, steaming hot, thin blood pooling on white china.
He caught himself. Found himself. Remembered who he was and what he was. And he saw the red fletching on the dart sticking out of his butt. They had drugged him, tranqed him. With an old-fashioned tranquilizer dart. Like a wild animal.
Forcing his fingers to bend in ways that paws would not have, he reached back and gripped the dart. Slid it from his flesh. Tossed it out of the cage. The drug was running through his veins like good bourbon, pushing back the pain, pushing back reality. He blinked, shook the wet hair out of his eyes, and focused on the room.
He was underground with no way out. The windows were small, arched on the top, set high and barred; the door was barred; the cage they had put him in was eight feet by eight feet, with bars for walls and a barred ceiling. And all those steel bars were set into stone. The stone smelled of old water and mold and had been in place for centuries. At the far end of the room, watching him, was Jane.
She was sitting on a tall, backless stool, her leather-clad legs loose and relaxed, one booted foot on a rung, the other on the floor. Her arms were back, elbows resting on a tall table pushed against the wall behind her, and her leather jacket hung open, revealing a thin, skintight knit Lycra T, the lines of the black bra under it barely visible. She smelled like sex and craving, and his body responded, growing hard and ready.
She tilted her head, her long, straight black hair falling in a slide that shushed as it slithered to the side as if alive. “Do you know where you are?” she asked, sounding lazy.
He thought about that for a moment. Or an hour. Time was doing crazy shit, and he wasn’t sure. He finally forced the words out. “Warehouse? In the Warehoush Dishtrick? The Nunnery?”
She nodded once, a single dip and lift of her chin. “In a temporary holding cell for young rogues. They’ll let me keep you here for the three nights of the full moon. I couldn’t take the chance that you might lose control and infect someone. I’m sorry.”
He touched his jaw. “You hit like a guy.”
She chuckled. “Thanks.”
The three nights of the full moon. Yeah, right. He was less than a third of the way through this torture. But with the drugs circulating through him, holding the pain at bay, he at least remembered that he had once been human. He worked his jaw, and it felt normal. This time when he spoke, the words came out properly. “They let you keep me here?”
“Leo.”
“Mmm.” He thought about that for a while as water dripped and ran across the stone. He’d hurt Leo. Raising his hand, he curled his fingers into a fist. Already he was healing, his bruises fading. And the arm bone he had broken on the cell attack was little more than a bump that ached when he touched it. His skin felt hot, and the water was drying on his body more quickly than normal. Part of the benefits of the furry life: quick healing and a higher-than-human body temp. If not for the moon-change pain that fought the drugs in his system, he might have laughed. “What’d you have to promise Leo to get him to let you use this cage?”
“Nothing. Oddly. He called me on my cell just after I took you down, and offered. He’s upstairs, and he’s not his usual unruffled public self. His shirt is bloody.” Her lips tilted up on one side. “Your work?”
“Probably.”
“You took down a vamp,” she deadpanned.
“I got the drop on him. Even vamps can be sucker punched.” He shrugged. “And you took me down.” He was suddenly conscious of being naked and aroused, sitting on a cool stone floor. And he was thirsty and more hungry than he’d ever been. He nodded to the food. “That mine?”
Jane uncoiled from her perch and sauntered to the plate. With the toe of her boot, she pushed it through a small space between the lower bar and the floor. She hooked a finger around a tall, narrow thermos with a built-in straw, like a kid’s sippy cup, and passed it through too.