“Eventually someone is going to notice the key is missing, and lucky for us those someones are the most lethal in the pack.” Stellar. “Even luckier still we have to get through the secured area housing a couple of armed guards, because apparently being a werewolf isn’t weapon enough around here, and then waltz out the back door of the compound.”
“So when are you going to get to the bad news?” I asked with every ounce of sarcasm I had left in me. He just smiled.
“I thought you’d never ask. The best part of all this is that if we live to breathe the outside air again, we then have to run through woods which are peppered with Watchers, those that keep the property under surveillance. They’re in constant communication with the Alpha. We’ll never see them. If, or perhaps better stated, when they see us, they’ll send for reinforcements. You’re probably too weak to Change and I can’t fight them all alone. We’ll be no match for them.”
I gulped back the bile that surged into my mouth.
“What will happen if they catch us?” I asked meekly.
“You will be returned to your current accommodations. I will be dealt with, so to speak.”
I knew instantly what was on the line for both of us. Both my freedom and his life depended on this plan going exponentially well. That was the understatement of the century.
“How far?” I asked.
“What?”
“You never said how far we had to go to be…well…wherever it is we’re going.”
”Twelve miles. We have to run through twelve miles of guarded woods, cross a river, and then be exposed through one large clearing before we’re in town.”
I thought I was going to choke. Twelve miles? I felt defeated before we even started our little suicide mission. The logistics were grim to say the least. I was weak, hungry and dehydrated. I would slow us terribly. He was one wolf against an entire pack, the cavalry. Though I didn’t doubt his abilities or strength, the math just wasn’t working out in our favor.
He could see me working through the scenario in my head, my face clearly displaying my anxieties. His expression softened as he erected his posture and squared his shoulders.
“I’ve made arrangements, Ruby. If we can get there in one piece, the rest will seem like shooting fish in a barrel.” Though I was completely unfamiliar with the saying, I took it to mean that the remainder of our plan was relatively simple if we lived to see it. What is it with men and fishing?
I scrounged up what scraps of courage I could find. If I was going to follow through with this plan, I knew I had two potential outcomes: freedom or death. I would not return to that subterranean hell. That was not living.
No more cages.
“So, partner, when does the tour begin?” I asked, trying to look as enthusiastic as possible given the scenario.
“Cooper. My name is Cooper,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. Apparently we shared the same need to find shreds of humor in the most dire situations.
“OK, Cooper,” I said, returning his smile. “When does the tour begin?”
A man of more action than words, he grabbed my hand and led me to the only door in the cell. It was still slightly ajar from when he came in, shedding the faintest but most welcome light into the room. When he stood in the sliver of illumination I saw how truly beautiful he was. His face had delicate, but manly features and his skin was sun-kissed. The wavy hair I had seen was the most golden blond. His eyes were a strange mix of hazel and green, and were painfully honest, with pale eyelashes to frame them.
His build was deceiving. I had first thought him to be thin, but with the light highlighting his definition, he looked like a yoga instructor or surfer, lean but powerful and defined. His unassuming, laid-back posture and demeanor were misleading, and I could see why people underestimated him. I would not.
Not realizing that I was completely staring at his naked torso, my gaze shot to his face only to find that he was equally assessing me, probably trying to figure out what all the fuss was about. I wondered that a lot myself. I knew I wasn’t looking my personal best, having lived virtually naked on a dirt floor and not showering for God only knew how long. I was sure it did amazing things for my general appearance.
“I can see it,” he said. His eyebrow perked up ever so slightly.
See what?
Completely at a loss for what he was talking about, I raised my hands in a questioning gesture and gave him my very best ”what the crap” face. He laughed - really laughed.
“Why they wanted you so badly. You’ve got a caged beast in you somewhere. You just don’t know how to let it out yet.”
“Yet?” I asked, looking past him to the hallway I wanted to sprint down.
“Hmm. So pretty, but so ignorant. You really have no idea what you are or what you can do, do you?” I thought that was relatively obvious by that point, but I played along.
“Nope. ‘Parently not. Please feel free to learn me somethin’ new then,” I said with my best southern, backwoods accent.
“So much protective sarcasm. Someone really did a number on you, didn’t they?” he observed, his eyes sympathetic. “Your defenses are always up.”
The truth really hurt, especially when I was slapped in the face with it by a complete stranger who had figured me out in about five minutes flat. That stung even worse.
“Then enlighten me,” I demanded quietly.
“Now isn’t the time,” he said, grabbing my hand. “We’ve gotta move. Now.”
With that we burst into the hallway.
29
I welcomed the light in the corridor at first, though my eyes burned for a few moments, having not been exposed to it for a long time. Cooper waited patiently while I adapted. When my squinting lessened he seemed satisfied and led the way down the hall. There was stone everywhere: above, below, beside, around. It was like being in a secret underground passageway from castles of old, or at least how Hollywood portrayed them. The tunnel of limestone seemed to go on forever, and was completely monotonous. There were no doors, no hallways, no electricity, just stone and torches. The ceiling clearance was maybe six feet, which made Cooper taller than that. His shoulders were slouched and head angled forward to avoid scraping.
We were silent while we walked, though it made little difference. If someone had been up ahead, they would have heard the echo of our footsteps coming long before we arrived. A stealth mission it was not. I was becoming increasingly annoyed with our lack of conversing as time passed, even though we must have been walking for at least fifteen minutes without a break in scenery or direction.
“Where are we exactly?” I inquired.
“We’re under the lawn of the compound. The cells are kept away from the main house for numerous reasons, the primary being that it’s easy to forget about things that you can’t see or hear,” he said matter-of-factly.
“How long before we get to the guards, or anybody else for that matter?”
“It’ll be another mile at least,” he replied, still moving forward.
“Can you please tell me about what I am? Please? I know I’m some aberration, or abomination depending on who you ask, but I don’t know anything else,” I pleaded, grabbing his elbow.
He stopped and turned to see the pain on my face. I’d never had a strong sense of self. Gaining vision had complicated that at first but was starting to help in the long run, that is until I found out about my not-so-human status. I was desperate to understand even the smallest thing about my new identity: what it meant, what I could do, how to control it. I needed just a tiny thread to hold on to while everything else around me unraveled.
“I’ll tell you what I know, but it isn’t much. Before you came there were rumors of your existence, and our potential acquisition of you. I kept my ears open and my head down. I also went into the archives to dig up what little had been recorded in the past, though it was all legend and conjecture,” he said looking professorial. “Exactly what do you know?”
“I know I’m Rouge et Bla
nc. I know that we were thought to be extinct. I know that we were the most ruthless killers of our kind and were taken out after our first Change to protect both humans and weres alike,” I admitted. “I also know the PC has been told about me; they’ll have to kill me. I can never go home.”
He looked at me with pity in his eyes, but also understanding. He could never go home again either. We were kindred spirits in so many ways. He beckoned me forward and started to pick up the pace. I hurried to keep up with his long strides.
“OK, so that’s what I know. Time for you to fill in some blanks, Coop,” I said.
“I don’t know too much more than you. The pack was speculating about mating. They seemed to believe that there was the possibility of carriers in the pack. They believed that if you were put into close contact with them that your wolf would recognize the RB genes and bond with that male.”
“So they wanted to breed me?” I asked, furious with the idea.
“Yes, but that’s not all they wanted. They knew that if the rumors and stories were true, that you’d be the greatest weapon the pack could ever have. It’s been said that the RB could take out entire villages without being seen or stopped. Nobody knows exactly how your powers work; they were just banking on you having them.”
“But that’s the thing. I don’t know how to use my powers either. I don’t think I have any. The only times I’ve Changed have been out of sheer terror. I black out and come to later without any recollection of what happened.”
He looked at me curiously before a laugh broke free. After a moment or two, it was all I could do to get him to stop. He nearly fell down to the pavers in a heap, convulsing from his hysterics.
The first kick didn’t seem to do much, but the second appeared to snap him out of his comedic breakdown.
“What the hell is so funny?” I yelled.
“What’s funny is the irony. You’ve had the answer the whole time and didn’t know it. You can control your Change, Ruby,” he said. ”And you kick like a girl.”
“Care to share the big secret then?’ I asked in annoyance, ignoring his last remark.
“To force your Change you must dull your surroundings, block out all sensory stimulation. Your blackouts have been blocking things out, out of necessity. Had you learned to “black out” the things around you before and focus, you’d have been in control a long time ago. You never would have ended up here,” he said softly.
Never would have ended up here? The fact that that was even potentially true burned me to the core. If only I’d known, none of this would have happened.
I sat in silence for a moment and stewed about my new-found information. I needed to blame someone, anyone. And Cooper would do. Just as I readied myself for an epic screaming match we heard a sound from deep in the corridor, right where we were headed. Cooper’s hand shot to my mouth and covered it, or smothered it, however you cared to look at it. He didn’t seem to think my breathing was necessary at that point in time. I was starting to question it myself.
Another sound, louder than the first, echoed through the hall. Then another, and another. All were gaining in strength and volume. Footsteps.
I pinched Cooper hard to get him to release my face. I really was in no hurry to draw any more attention to us than he was, so there was no need for my muzzle. We looked at each other, desperately seeking knowledge of what to do in the other one’s face. We needed a game plan and we were both coming up short. I looked down the hall to see if there was some other way out, or to get a glimpse of what was coming for us. I could see neither, just an ever darkening void as the approaching body blocked out the light behind it. Our circumstances were not encouraging.
When the darkness was only a few yards away, a voice came from it. A low, evil, don’t-want-to meet-you-in-a-back-alley (or corridor) kind of voice.
“Thinking of taking the prize for yourself are you, Cooper?” the voice said. “I don’t sense an unbreakable bond, or that there’s even been a mating. I’m curious, my friend, as to what exactly you think you’re doing?”
Cooper became instantly rigid. I was slammed with a tsunami of fear coming straight from him, which did little to boost my morale. I surmised that the new guy was one of the few who knew where the key was, “the most lethal in the pack”, Cooper had called them. Not good. So not good.
“And you, my little Ruby, leaving so soon? We haven’t all had our chance to play yet. I haven’t had my chance to play yet.” His tone went from civil to lustful. It was so not an improvement.
“I think I’m all done with play time for now,” I said shakily. “I never was big on it.”
From out of the shadows stepped a man as big as an oak tree, both in height and girth. All of my false bravado washed away as my own little wave of fear crashed through the hall.
He laughed.
“Maybe you weren’t playing with big enough toys.”
I’d so like a do-over right now. Now, now, now, now.
As my fear worsened by the second, Cooper seemed to gain some sort of testicular second-wind. He stepped in front of me, shielding me from the Oak-man’s view.
“What do you want, Nicholas?” Cooper demanded in an authoritative tone I didn’t know he was capable of.
“What we all want, Cooper. The Rouge,” he said nonchalantly. “It’s my turn, though I’m now curious as to why you’ve let her out of her cage. You wouldn’t be trying to free our new pet, would you?”
“I’m nobody’s fuck-”
I was violently shoved before I knew what had happened. Apparently my limbs didn’t know what was occurring and were ill-prepared to stop my body from being smashed into the ground. I cracked my head hard on the wall and must have been knocked out. When I came to, Cooper stood above me, covered in blood. The barely recognizable remnants of Nicholas were laying at our feet.
I looked up again at Cooper and saw wildness in his eyes as he stared into mine. I tried to slowly get up and reached for his hand to gain some leverage; he backed away from me slowly, never unlocking his gaze from mine. I assumed he was a little shell-shocked from what had happened while I was in la-la land, so I tried to pull myself up on the wall. My hand instantly slipped and I wound up plastered to the ground again. When I looked at myself I realized that I too was covered in blood.
Far more than Cooper.
It wasn’t until I saw the bits of flesh and questionable matter clinging to my arms and under my fingernails that I began screaming. Since Cooper still seemed a bit gun shy around me, it went on for a good couple of minutes. He must have been getting concerned about the potential for alarming the guards or his auditory health, because he finally came over to snap me out of it, with a backhand across the face. It was painful, but highly effective. I stopped immediately. The wildness in his eyes was gone and the warmth had returned.
“I’m sorry,” he said, wincing at his actions. “I had to do it.”
“It’s OK…I’m sorry. I don’t know…I didn’t expect to…what the hell happened?”
He quickly relayed the events as they had occurred, though I was certain he’d done some Hollywood editing to make the story more ”PG 13” than ”R”. Apparently in my attempt to verbally attack the tree-named-Nicholas, the tree became unamused with the entire situation. He lunged at me and Cooper threw me, literally, out of the way. I did hit my head and it did stun me, but I wasn’t knocked out. Nicholas was distracted enough by Cooper to take the bait for awhile.
“You just sat there, slumped against the wall, looking at me while he was choking me. His back was to you. You must have known on some level what was happening, because the rage that crossed your face was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and that’s when it happened. I don’t know if your concussed state was the perfect amount of forced blackout or what, but you Changed right then,” he said, looking distant. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It was beautiful and horrifying at the same time. And the speed with which you Change…it’s unnatural.”
“Isn’t the
fact that I do it at all unnatural?” I joked, trying to again make light of something decidedly not. It wasn’t well received in that instant. He was really freaked out.
“My humor isn’t only a defense mechanism, Coop. It’s handy when I’m scared or about to lose my shit.”
At that he smiled.
“My sense of humor has never abandoned me before now,” he replied. Silence hung between us for the briefest of moments.
“What happened after I Changed?”
“You tore through Nicholas like a sword through paper. I just stood there while you made minced meat out of him in about five seconds. Maybe six.”
“So I did that?” I said, dubiously pointing at the pile of Nicholas on the floor.
“Yup.”
“Huh. And you didn’t help at all?”
“I was too busy trying to stay out of the way. Smart people don’t jump in front of freight trains.”
A wave of nausea surged through me with the most horrific thought.
“I didn’t eat him, did I?”
“No,” he said, choking on a laugh. “Just diced him up, walked over to where you are now and laid down like you were going to take a nap. A couple of minutes later you morphed back into human form and woke up instantly.”
“So I never went after you?” I asked.
“I don’t think you even knew I was there. You were on a mission with a one track mind: kill Nicky.”
“Where did all your blood come from then?”
“Are you kidding me? That attack was as messy as turning on a blender without the lid on. CSI techs would have a field day with this mess.”
A huge smile slowly spread across my face.
“Ahhh, and the humor returns.”
30
I learned a valuable lesson that day: you can trick your mind into believing or not believing just about anything, so long as you don’t really have to face it. I knew what I was, and what I had done in the woods to my attackers the night of my Change. What I didn’t realize, really realize, was that I was a cold-blooded killer - efficient and effective. Apparently, lying covered in another man’s blood corrected that erroneous neural pathway. I couldn’t rationalize, lie, or evade my way out of that, nor could I spin it in my imagination to be anything other than what it was. My shirt was a shredded, blood-spattered reminder. I had to get it off. Immediately.
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