Fire Of Love

by Preston Walker

  “I’m sorry I have to do this,” Arlo whispered. The duct tape made those piercing sounds that only tape can make when stretched. Pressure wreathed around Moody’s wrists, tangled his fingers up in odd, immobile positions. The pressure crawled a good distance up his arm, almost to his elbow, before stopping. “You really, really weren’t supposed to be part of this. You should’ve just stayed behind.”

  “Fuck you,” Moody said, this time out loud. He slid his eyes in the direction of his arms. All wrapped up, like a fly in a spider’s web.

  Twitching a little, Arlo walked awkwardly on his knees a foot or two to the side. The tape stretched again, the sound jabbing like needles into Moody’s eardrums, and then he felt his legs being given the same treatment as his arms.

  “It, um, it’s just the way it has to be. Okay? I didn’t mean for this to happen. It got out of control. So this is just damage control. I have to get everything back into proper shape.”

  “And what happens after this?” Moody growled.

  The tape went stretch, and Moody’s mouth was covered. Then, his eyes.

  His heart lurched in his chest, skipping beats. Dizziness wavered through him, a twisting sensation mostly located in his stomach. His breath came faster and faster, explosive, gusty pants through his nose. Too much leaving, not enough entering.

  This couldn’t be happening now, goddammit. There was too much at stake to give in to his fear, even though this was a moment when it was probably acceptable to do so.

  Arlo hadn’t covered his ears. Moody strained to listen beyond the terrified rebellion of his own body.

  More tape, presumably being wound around Isaac. On and on and on, stretch, silence, stretch, silence, repeat. They were taking no chances with him.

  That’s a little bit insulting.

  If he could have laughed, if he was capable of doing so, he would have. As it was, a little snort emerged from his nose. The break in his rapid breathing caused his lungs to ache, his heart to skip. Then, incredibly, his heartbeat slowed. Not by much, but to a noticeable degree, at least.

  How strange, the way hate wrapped around all experiences, giving them a smooth surface and pointed edge. Hate sliced through the fear, offered reflection in a way no other emotion really could.

  At last, the taping sounds stopped. Not more than a minute could have passed, though each second felt more like a minute in and of itself to Moody.

  “We’re all out.” The speaker was unfamiliar, their voice a smoker’s rasp. “You got anymore in your car?”

  Ponderous, bouncing steps, as Arlo went over to investigate the handiwork done on Isaac. “No. I, uh, I think he’s good. No way he’s breaking out of that.”

  Which meant Isaac probably looked like a mummy.

  “So, what now?” Another stranger’s voice, one of Arlo’s wolves. There was a sort of deference in the alpha’s voice, as if he was being deliberately submissive to the omega.

  Arlo responded firmly, presumably having worked his way back around to a part of this plan that he’d had a chance to rehearse. “We take them to the spot. You know where. Don’t say it out loud. Load them up in the back of the car. Do it fast. We’re lucky no one has come by already, and we don’t want to push it.”

  Several voices gave assent. Then there was a series of groans and grunts, effortful gasps, mingled with a periodic scraping noise. Then, a thump. A sound like a little car—a Ferrari, perhaps—groaning as a weight was tossed inside. A door slammed.

  “Car’s too small, boss,” one of Arlo’s wolves said, sounding apologetic. “The little one isn’t going to fit unless we pile them on top of each other.”

  Little one, Moody mused. How insulting.

  There was a brief silence while Arlo weighed the pros and cons of this plan. Finally, he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Well, unless you want the little guy up in the passenger seat…”

  “Put him in the trunk. He’ll be fine until we can get to the place.”

  A single set of footsteps approached Moody. One pair of arms wrapped around his immobile body, lifting him like he was a sack of potatoes. He wriggled, found that this assailant was even less bothered by his struggles than the last one, and gave up.

  Someone popped the trunk, and Moody felt himself become weightless for a fraction of an instant as he was dropped inside. Then, he hit the bottom of the trunk and pain shot through his head, a monster wrapping grimy claws around his skull and squeezing. He breathed faster, but only because it was the only thing he could do. He couldn’t sit up or hold his head or do anything else, so he just breathed.

  “Maybe be a little more gentle next time?” Arlo suggested.

  “Won’t matter soon anyway,” an alpha grunted from nearby. Then he added, “Sorry, boss.”

  “I guess you’re right. Anyway. Shut him in and follow me to the place.”

  The trunk slammed shut with a distinctive latching sound that Moody knew well, though it had never been so loud in his ears before. Everything was magnified in this tiny space. The sound of the engine roaring, firing up. His breathing, rapid and pained. The thump of his heartbeat.

  The Ferrari started moving, a low sense of motion that gave no hint as to direction or destination. Turns were made, not that he could accurately guess when or why. He was lost, adrift in darkness, knowing nothing.

  Was this what it was like to be an unborn child, aware of sensation and not understanding what any of it meant?

  The one thing he did know was that it was growing rapidly humid here in the trunk, as he took up oxygen and replaced it with carbon dioxide. Would he run out of air? But trunks weren’t airtight, were they?

  He supposed that he would just have to find out.

  While he waited, being taken to some unknown destination, an unknown fate, he wiggled. He worked his arms, up and down, together and apart. He squirmed his legs, repeating the same process with them. He tried to open and close his mouth, working his jaw from side to side.

  The tape didn’t seem to be loosening.

  He did it anyway.

  He tried shifting at one point, but the tape refused to give even when his body was rearranging itself. His skin was compressed, his joints twisted so harshly into odd positions that he felt as if he would literally dislocate something if he kept trying. Even when he strained, struggling to burst out, the tape held fast.

  In the end, there was nothing to do but wait.

  And wiggle.

  9

  After an eternity of driving, the Ferrari finally came to a stop.

  Moody hardly noticed at first, because he thought he had just reached a breakthrough. He had switched to a wiggling process that involved only his arms, having decided those were going to be his most important assets right about now. If he freed his legs, he could run. But if he freed his arms, he could get the rest of the duct tape off, scream for help, see where he was going, and run, all at the same glorious time.

  He lifted one arm, while pushing down with the other as hard as possible, until it felt like he was about to strain something inside him. Then, he switched, over and over and over throughout the entire journey of which he was an unwilling passenger.

  And just now he had felt the tape shift on his arms, a sudden loosening, followed by fierce burning as the powerful adhesive took his arm hair with it. But, it had loosened. He wasn’t crazy. It hadn’t been a phantom sensation caused by the engine hitching or the wheels hitting a bump.

  Car doors thumped. Muted grunts, presumably as Arlo’s wolves dragged Isaac out of the Ferrari and took him to wherever it was they wanted him to be.

  A murmuring voice grew closer to the trunk. A latch was popped, and dull light filtered in. He couldn’t actually see the light, but he could detect the difference through the duct tape covering his eyes.

  “Be more careful with him, okay?” Arlo said, sounding as if he was standing off to the side, watching the procedure without getting his hands dirty.

  A pair of arms wrapped
around Moody. He held still, pretending to be exhausted and terrified—and his acting would have won him an award, partly because he wasn’t pretending—and let himself be carted over to a place that he couldn’t see or understand. The Alabama breeze, which could sometimes seem so clammy, had never felt better.

  The breeze was replaced by a damp, musty cold that filled his sinuses with dust. Moody coughed. It made no sound, trapped behind the duct tape, but his chest convulsed with the motion. The alpha holding onto him gripped him tighter, expecting a struggle.

  Moody still didn’t struggle. He was descending, he could tell, the alpha’s body dropping in rhythm as he descended a set of stairs. A basement of some kind?

  His suspicions were confirmed when he was set down on bare, freezing concrete. He started shivering immediately.

  No one said anything, not even Arlo, who had thus far shown a need to fill silence with words. Footsteps receded. Going back up the stairs. A door was shut, and the sound of locks being turned echoed through the quiet.

  Not quite quiet. Moody could hear breathing. Isaac, somewhere off to his side. He breathed slow and even, having obviously given himself up to whatever fate awaited them.

  And another sound, distinctive and familiar. Living in a parking garage, a person became very familiarized with the sound of something failing to work. As valiantly as Destiny worked to make the garage a real home, it just wasn’t a house. It wasn’t an apartment complex. It was really nothing but a shell, not meant for all the different amenities he forced upon it. So, things broke quite often and when they did, there were sounds like this one.

  Dripping.

  Normally, the dripping signified a broken pipe.

  That didn’t tell him much about where they were. So many places, basement or not, had pipes. However, it did tell him that there was liquid nearby.

  Moody flashed back to his childhood. God, it was almost like he was really there. In this space of sensory deprivation, there was nothing to interfere with the imagination. He could smell the green scent of fresh-cut grass, taste the clashing perfume of honeysuckle and mint and wild green onion. Dull blades of greenery beneath his feet as he ran down the front lawn, arms held out to his side. Pretending to be an airplane, looking up at the wide blue sky, feeling the breeze against his arms, ruffling his clothes. He really could have believed he was flying in that moment, especially during the brief moments when his feet left the ground together and he was weightless.

  Someone had yelled, “Watch out!”

  And at the last minute, he opened his eyes, saw an older boy flying towards him on a scooter, back when scooters had still been a thing. Real scooters, the ones powered by feet and not by battery, before this age of drones and hoverboards and electric, lazy propulsion.

  They collided. Moody remembered not being able to remember exactly what happened, except that after the collision he was several feet away from where he had started, dragged there by the momentum of the kid on the scooter. And the kid was nowhere to be seen, having left the scene as fast as he could.

  Moody’s ankle was bleeding, his elbows scraped. So much blood for a little omega boy, one who didn’t yet know a greater pain than being knocked into while he was trying to have fun.

  He was a crashed airplane, the easy dreaming of the past few moments shoved away by pain.

  In the nature of little boys, he wailed for his mother.

  Thinking of her now, in that dark basement, hurt a whole hell of a lot. He nearly lost his train of thought, especially when he became aware of the sounds of Isaac’s struggles.

  But, as much as it made him ache from the inside out, Moody let himself sink back into the memories. He was onto something here. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He needed to keep going, to work his way there instead of jumping to the conclusion.

  His father hadn’t wanted to baby him, didn’t want to kiss his ouchies and put a bandage on them. He wanted a tough son, a rough son who could keep up with the alphas.

  But his mother ignored her husband, carried Moody inside and gently cleaned up his scratches. Then she dried them with a soft washcloth, informing him, “If your skin is wet, the Band-aid won’t hold on.”

  This was a phenomenon he witnessed for himself not much later, when he went to a friend’s birthday party at the pool. He felt his Band-aids loosen, saw them drifting away across the blue water like sea slugs.

  Now that he was older, he knew it had to do with the adhesive not being able to bind to a wet surface.

  If something was dripping down here, there was moisture.

  And what was duct tape but an industrial bandage?

  Moody lifted his head a little, tilting his ears this way and that to locate what direction the dripping sound was coming from. It was difficult, what with the disorienting way things echoed down here in this subterranean room. At least he assumed they were below ground. Eventually, he managed to determine that the dripping came from a place far in the front of him, and slightly to the left.

  Now, the problem of getting there.

  A problem that was solved easily, though not gracefully.

  Rolling over onto his side by pushing at the ground in unison with his bound arms and legs, Moody wiggled. He bucked his hips up, slammed his shoulder down. He inch-wormed, scrunching up and kicking out. He squirmed. He did anything and everything he could to move, though he wasn’t able to break his own momentum whenever he came slapping down against the concrete. Pain exploded through his head repeatedly, making him feel sick, but he kept at it. Inches of forward motion at a time, a fragmented journey. He kept having to stop to listen, waiting for the sickening pain in his bashed head to quiet down.

  At last, at long last, the dripping was right nearby. Another wiggle, a stretch, and his hair went into the wetness.

  Something seemed weird about this, however. There was a lot of water.

  Moody pulled back a little bit, then experimentally stuck out his taped arms. With some careful wriggling and readjusting, he discovered that he was able to submerge his hands up to the wrist in a puddle.

  There was a hole here in the floor, for whatever reason. A pipe from above was dripping, or maybe it was only natural condensation. Either way, something was dripping water and had filled up this hole to make a very, very convenient basin.

  Moody kept his wrists in the hole, letting the water soak the tape, get under the folds. He struggled after a minute or so of soaking.

  Nothing. No give.

  Frustration opening up inside his stomach. He pulled in a deep breath and stuck his hands back in. He was so cold, and the water was pretty much freezing. He shivered, chills racing up and down his spine. His fingers went numb. He could no longer tell what was skin and what was tape. All of it just felt like a block of ice attached to his arms.

  He repeated the process again, and by then he felt as if he would never again know what it was like to be warm.

  Pulling his arms up out of the water, Moody pulled in a deep breath. He thought of Arlo, felt the frozen, black, bruised tendrils of hate start to wreath around his mind, sinking into the folds and crevasses of his brain.

  Bracing himself, tightening every muscle he had, he squeezed his arms together as close as they could get. Then, he started to pull them apart. He went at it steadily, like a man with every intention of winning a game of Tug O’ War. He didn’t yank. Didn’t jerk. Just pulled, straining.

  Nothing and nothing. Painful pressure around his arms. His fingers felt like they were being bent in all sorts of wrong angles.

  Gritting his teeth, Moody struggled through the pain.

  Then, he heard it.

  A sound for which there was no real equivalent. Sodden tape, lifting up. Stretching in reverse.

  Gave up the fucking ghost, didn’t you, you bastard, Moody thought, grinning in his mind, since the tape on his mouth wouldn’t move. Satisfaction curled through his entire body. He kept going, kept struggling, straining, and pulling. He did the same thing now with his hands
, pulling them as hard and steadily apart as he could.

  More strained sounds from the tape, sticky little groans.

  And that was all Moody could take.

  Breathless, gasping, he relaxed. He waited for some strength to flood back into his system, then assessed his progress by wiggling his arms around.

  The tape was loose. Whenever he moved, he could feel several loose ends flopping around. The more he struggled, wiggling his fingers, moving his arms, the looser the tape seemed to be.

  Which meant phase two could begin. Dunking his arms in a puddle was just not the same thing as swimming in a pool wearing Band-aids. The water couldn’t penetrate to the deepest layers of tape, which were what he really needed to focus on.

  Wriggling and squirming across the ground, Moody managed to brace himself against the nearby wall. Taking a deep breath, he placed his taped arms against the concrete. Rough and scraggly. Exactly as he’d been hoping for. Pressing against the wall with the full weight of his body, Moody also yanked down as fast as he could.

  Concrete ripped across the patches of his bare skin, and also scraped at several loose ends of tape. Something tore.

  Fuck yes!

  Panting, Moody allowed himself a brief moment of hope. Then, he got to work, scraping and pressing and yanking. Tape ripped. So did his skin, his arms growing sore and then bloody. Heated trickles seeped down to his elbows, then cooled rapidly. His shifter healing abilities closed the scrapes almost as soon as they opened, though this wasn’t very effective when he was constantly reopening them.

  One last time!

  Moody scraped his taped arms against the concrete. Tape tore, a loose end catching perfectly on the wall and ripping upward. At the same time, sharp needles of pain trailed across his skin in the wake of the tape.

  The pain faded rapidly, mellowing into a stinging sensation. All that had happened was he had torn his arm hair out by the roots. And now he loved the pain, because it meant he was nearly free. The lowest layer of tape had been breached.