I may not have known Liam very well. Hell, I may have even suspected him of being an ICM spy. But he didn’t deserve to die like that. He was scared. Cold and hurting, half out of his mind with a concussion, and there was nothing I could do to…just like Mac, there was nothing I could do to…
I drive my gaze into McKinney’s and croak out, “Go fuck yourself!”
McKinney jams the cattle prod into my chest.
And…we’re going to skip this part.
Seven or eight hours later—I lose track of time, but the dirty window tells me it’s getting dark outside—Donahue and Zhang finish kicking the crap out of me and go take a break, setting up a game of cards at a rickety table near the window. McKinney ambles back in from the front porch after Zhang calls out to him, that same gleam from this morning in his eyes. He spent the entire time he was cattle prodding me dangerously close to a cardiac incident with a calculating look on his face, like he was formulating his master plan. Or maybe his grand finale.
If I’m frustrated at his conspiratorial nonsense, he must be doubly frustrated that I won’t confirm his misplaced suspicions. Conspiracy nuts love having the tiniest tidbits of information to back up their wacko beliefs and hate being left high and dry. And I’ve given him nothing thus far.
From the beginning, it was only a matter of time until one of us…cracked.
It looks like that person might be McKinney.
Hunched over in the chair, pain radiating from places I didn’t know I had, a worrying rattle deep in my chest—cracked ribs, I think—I watch McKinney return to the duffle bag now sitting on the futon. He digs through it for longer than he ever has before, looking for something specific he hasn’t used on me yet. I can’t imagine what object could be worse than the cattle prod, or the pliers he used to pull out my teeth and nails. At least an object that would fit in a bag that size.
I apparently have a bad imagination.
Because when McKinney tugs out a set of butcher’s knives, including a menacingly large cleaver, what he meant by “moving up” clicks in my weary brain: dismemberment.
McKinney’s going to chop me into pieces.
God, maybe the suicidal tongue biting wasn’t such a bad idea.
The Wolf man examines the knives, and of course, picks the cleaver first. Grabbing it by the handle, he makes a show of swinging it through the air so fast it produces a loud whooshing sound. Sharp. Very sharp.
When McKinney knows he has my undivided (and petrified) attention, he turns toward me, a sneer cutting through his thick beard. “Sorry to say, kid, but I’m getting real tired of your zipped lips. So we’re going to up the ante now. You give me a name, I put the knife down. You refuse to give me a name, I cut off a finger. And I don’t care if I have to cut off all your fingers, and then move on to your toes—I will not stop until you talk. We run out of digits? You lose your eyes. We run out of those? I start abdominal surgery.” He raps his fingernail against the broad side of the blade. “Got it?”
Every beleaguered muscle in my body tenses up, and I struggle against my bindings for the first time in days. But the ropes don’t budge. I can’t do anything but watch as McKinney grabs the short nightstand, drags it over to my chair, yanks up my bound arm at an awkward angle that nearly snaps my wrist in half, and slams my hand, palm down, on the dusty wood. A cutting board.
McKinney looks at me expectantly. “Well? You got an answer for me, kid? Or should I start eeny meeny miny mo?”
My lungs seize, and a wet, choking sound grinds its way up my throat. Say Erica or Marcus! For fuck’s sake! They can defend themselves.
No. I can’t do that.
McKinney raises his bushy eyebrows, sets the cleaver down near my hand, then backs away, gathering up the rest of the knife set. He lays them out one at a time on the edge of the nightstand, like he’s deciding the order in which to use them. When he’s finished, he picks up the cleaver again and holds it directly over my hand. “What’ll it be? You got five seconds to make up your mind. Go.”
Five.
My heart races in my chest. Just say something.
Four.
Tears gather in my eyes. Anything, Cal!
Three.
A whimper passes through my teeth. Erica will forgive you. She’ll understand.
Two.
Bile bubbles up my throat. Spit out a name, you proud-ass moron!
One.
McKinney reels the cleaver back in a high arc.
I scream.
He swings. And—
There’s a deafening crash outside the cabin. Glass explodes. Metal shrieks. A car alarm squeals into the silent night.
The cleaver misses my finger by an inch and eats into the wood of the nightstand.
McKinney whirls toward the front door, eyes flickering between human and Wolf, an eerie reflective glow. Donahue and Zhang drop their cards and leap up, chairs grinding against the floor. There are no windows on the front of the cabin, so all three of them stand deathly still, keen ears searching for the source of the disturbance.
McKinney hisses, “There’s something out there.”
And then they move. McKinney bolts to the door, shedding clothing as he goes, his goons on his tail. He grabs the tarnished knob and yanks so hard the doorframe nearly splinters, and the door swings around and slams into the wall, leaving a sizable dent in the wood. McKinney barrels across the porch and lunges into the snow, Donahue and Zhang half a step behind, both nude already. By the time they’re halfway to where McKinney’s car was parked—but no longer is—they’ve become Wolves, massive blurs of brown and black racing through the white drifts.
The door slowly creaks back around and shuts, blocking my view.
And blocking theirs.
My eyes flick toward the knives on the nightstand. They moved closer to my hand when McKinney landed the cleaver blow.
I have no idea what’s happening outside. I have no idea where I am in relation to Aurora. I have no idea how I’m going to survive in the middle of the freezing, snow-filled woods at dusk.
And I don’t give a fuck.
I’m getting out of here, come hell or hypothermia.
Stretching my hand as far as it can go without breaking my wrist, I take hold of the small, serrated knife that bounced closest to me. Blade pinched between two fingers, it nips at my skin, beads of blood welling up—but I don’t even feel it. Pain that minor doesn’t register to me right now.
So I shimmy the knife toward me, until I can wrap my fingers around the handle. Once it’s firmly in my hand, held up at an angle, I slide my wrist off the nightstand, returning my arm to its original bound position. With the knife stuck right between the two main coils of rope that are keeping me tied to this damn chair.
I’ve never cut anything faster with a knife.
The rope falls to the floor.
I stand up on legs that wouldn’t hold me if I wasn’t hopped up on serious adrenaline. I cross the room, to the window, unlock it, and lift it as quietly as I can. I climb out the window, into the sub-zero night, the air hitting me like a brick wall. I land in the high snow next to the window, feet instantly numb. And then, with a desperate, disbelieving laugh on my tongue, I take off and sprint full speed into the dark, vast Michigan woods.
Five minutes and forty-seven seconds later, a furious howl breaks the night.
Chapter Fourteen
The first Wolf dies by fire.
After twelve minutes of running full speed with a body at less than half strength, I’m more exhausted than I have ever been in my entire life. Lungs burning, heaving air in and out. Feet numb, toes blue, heels shredded by objects hidden in the snow. Abused abdomen convulsing with each step I take, sending waves of crippling cramps through my tender muscles. Head throbbing so hard my vision whites out in time with my too-rapid heartbeat. I’m running on nothing but fumes and the quickly fading hope that I’ll come across someone or something that can help me—before the Wolves catch up and finish their dirty work.
They aren’t far behind. I can hear them gaining. Their hard steps echo in the snow. Their growls ripple around the trees. Their intermittent howls are so loud they knock snow off nearby branches.
They can see better than me in the near-black night. They can move faster than me, especially with my injuries. They can smell and hear better than me too. The physical perks of their corrupted DNA, changed forever by the lycanthropy virus that runs through their veins.
I am only human. They are so much more.
But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up without a fight.
Not after Liam.
So I barrel through the forest, zip past trees, climb over fallen trunks, jump frozen streams. Thorny vines nip at my skin, slinging blood into the snow. A sharp branch whips my face, nearly cutting my right eye. A frozen puddle I can’t see cracks underneath me, but holds long enough for me to pass without falling into oblivion. Above, through the bare-branch canopy, snowflakes flutter down from the cloudy sky, sticking to my bare arms and melting far too slow for comfort.
A yelp behind me. Thirty feet, maybe less. One of the Wolves fell into the puddle. But the others blow right past him, gaining on me even more as I struggle to tear through a row of dense bushes. I pull free, the fabric of my pants torn from the sharp, stiff leaves, and pick up the pace again.
Each of my crunching steps in the snow haunts my ears, loud, too loud, like a beacon. Second only to my heavy breathing. But I can’t step lightly or breathe softly—my body’s too battered for any sort of stealth. And if I try to change tactics now and mess up…the Wolves are crashing through the snowdrifts seconds behind me.
You’re not going to make it, says a nagging voice.
“Stick it, you little shit!” I bark back. And then realize I told myself to shut up. The voice was inside my own head.
I’m losing it. I’m too tired. My brain is starting to short-circuit from all the abuse, and if I don’t screw up by taking a faulty step and falling, or running into a tree I can’t see in the dark, then I’m inevitably going to be done in by my mind losing track of where I am or what I’m doing.
I suck in a deep, painful breath, too cold in my lungs, and swear as I release it into the freezing night.
Behind me, the third Wolf is catching up to the other two, recovered from his little trip into the puddle.
I can hear them breathing now. It sounds as if it’s in my ear. The hair on the back of my neck stands up, and a chill that is all fear builds at the base of my spine. I push harder, faster, knees struggling to hold me up with each impact against the ground. I grab skinny trees and yank my body toward them for a second of added momentum. My mouth opens wide and vacuums in as much air as my lungs can take.
Forget the pain. Concentrate. I need to—
“Who?” yells a voice, and I nearly topple right there, flying off face first into the snow. I hold it together with a couple stumbling steps—the Wolves draw closer—and then snap my head toward the source of the sound. For a second, in the darkness, I see nothing. No movement. No black figures against the shadowy backdrop. Nothing human. Or even monstrous. Or even shaped like a friendly woodland creature.
“Who?” the voice repeats.
The sound is coming from above.
I glance up at a tree twenty feet ahead.
Perched on a low-hanging branch is a large brown owl. Even though the Wolves and I are making an awful ruckus, the owl seems unaffected. It stares at my oncoming form, at the hulking masses of the Wolves behind me, ripping their way through the bushes and vines, shredding the underbrush with teeth and claws. It stares with its big, bright yellow eyes and hoots, loud and clear. Hoots like…
Yellow eyes?
The ghostly touch of déjà vu caresses my mind for a split second, and then it’s gone.
The yellow-eyed owl—no, the yellow-eyed man in owl form—peers down at me as I pass underneath his branch. He lifts a wing and points, deliberately, in a direction I think is south. And before I can get a word out, a question, a thank you, something, the owl man takes off and swoops up into the trees, disappearing into the darkness. A moment later, a faint hoot sounds off in the night sky.
I turn, sharp, to the south, bouncing off a tree hard enough to bruise so I won’t lose speed. The Wolves, unprepared, try to bank the same direction, but their own momentum trips them up. I chance a peek over my shoulder in time to watch the three beasts crash into each other and careen off a shallow hill into a snow bank. A writhing mass of limbs and panicked yips, they vanish into the white together. And for the first time in twenty minutes, the woods behind me fall silent.
This is my chance. My only chance.
I peel my eyes in the direction the owl man pointed—I’ll wonder about his identity later, when I’m not potential Wolf food—searching for anything that might help me escape from this situation. Darkness to my left. Darkness to my right. White snow at my feet. And…a light straight ahead.
The light flashes in and out of my sight as I dash forward, tree trunks in its path. But I keep track of its location—it’s static. The light from a building. A building where there might be people. A building where there might a vehicle. Or a phone. Or a computer. Or, hell, even an emergency flare. I’ll take anything I can get at this point.
Wracked with tremors head to toe, I force myself to run faster than ever before. Even as my breaths hitch, I don’t slow. Even as my heart palpitates, I don’t slow. Even as something sharp in my chest jimmies out of place and bites into my lung, I don’t slow. Even as my abdomen seizes up entirely, refusing to budge, I don’t slow. Even as my vision dims until there’s nothing but a sliver of forest in my sight, I don’t slow. I am not giving up, you stupid, failing body! Stop trying to bring me down!
I hit the edge of the woods. And pass into a muddy lot for a building under construction.
It’s abandoned this time of night—the workers must have gone home, hell, ten minutes before I made my escape—but all hope isn’t lost. There’s a gray doublewide trailer on the western edge of the site, where the foreman must manage operations during the day. It’s likely got a full office setup, complete with computers and a phone line. There’s bound to be something in there I can use to communicate with the outside world.
I fly underneath the light pole that guided me to the site and head for the trailer. The hulking steel skeleton of the building in progress looms over me on one side, a row of trucks and bulky construction equipment on the other. The ground has been cleared of most of the day’s snow, and what melted into the soil left it soggy enough to give way under the weight of the construction vehicles. Wide, crisscrossing tire tracks dot the bare earth, some of them over a foot deep. I have to carefully traverse them on my way to the trailer, so I don’t fall in and break my neck.
I make it. In one piece. Miraculously. The front steps of the trailer are ten feet in front of me. All I have to do is get inside, barricade the door, find a phone or computer, and call Riker—
A Wolf soars out from behind a bulldozer and skids across the ice in front of the trailer.
Fuck.
I stagger to a stop. My eyes dart left and right, searching for somewhere to run and hide. The Wolf sinks into an aggressive stance, about to lunge at me, teeth bared like he’s planning to rip out my throat. I make a judgment call: the unfinished building is farther away than the vehicles on my right, and one of the trucks might have keys stuffed under a sun visor or—
A shadow falls over me.
Oh. I remember this.
I duck. My knees hit the half-frozen soil a split second before three hundred pounds of werewolf fly over me, so close his claws tickle my neck. But he overcompensates on the landing—wasn’t expecting to miss—and trips over one of the deep tire tracks. His massive body flips tail over head, and he collides with his buddy guarding the trailer. Together, they crash back into the makeshift wooden steps in front of the trailer, boards splintering under their weight.
To the vehicles! I take off.
The first and second work trucks I come to are locked, but somebody left the third one open. My attention flicking back to the disoriented Wolves every few seconds, I climb inside the truck and search for the keys. My bloody, bruised fingers skim everything in the cabin—the visors, the storage bin between the seats, the glove box—but I find nothing except papers, stale snacks in plastic wrap, and a small pack of matches.
Damn.
Does anybody know how to hotwire a truck?
Because I don’t.
I pocket the matches and look at the Wolves again. There are three of them now. The third Wolf, who’s the largest (it must be McKinney), stands before the two who broke the steps. Even though he’s not making any sounds, he seems to be berating them for their screw-up. One of the subordinates has his furry head hung low, while the other is pacing back and forth, limping a bit, a back leg broken or sprained. After glaring at his goons, McKinney’s head slowly turns my way. He spies me in the truck and peels back his Wolf lips in a freakishly human manner.
I’m not sure what spurs me to do it. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s déjà vu. But something inside me knows I can’t stay in the truck. So my broken body fumbles its way out of the cabin and races across the muddy lot like it’s hopped up on serious steroids. My breath is coming in shallow pants now, which sound too wet to be healthy. My muscles have all but liquefied—and I honestly don’t know how my legs are still working. But I make it across the gap between the vehicles and the building and enter the partially built first floor just as McKinney finishes chewing out his cronies.
When I glance over my shoulder to see what the Wolves are doing, I spy McKinney jerk his head my direction. An order for his men to pursue me again. A second chance to prove they’re not complete morons.
The other two Wolves track me down with their narrow, angry eyes, glowing beacons in the night. Even from forty feet away, I witness their huge muscles coil up tight, like springs. And then they bound toward me, kicking up frozen mud in their wakes.
City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set Page 37