by Mary Lindsey
Merrick cringed. “Kurt let me out.” When Klaus’s eyes narrowed, the boy continued. “I was kind of freaking out.”
“Imagine that. Ulrich is still inside?”
“Yeah. Kurt only let me out,” he lied.
“Where is Kurt now?” The gun was pointed right at Merrick’s face.
“O-Out rounding up the others. He…” Rain could tell the kid wasn’t used to covering or lying. “He told me to wait here…alone.”
Rain almost rolled his eyes at the awful tells from the boy, complete with the inability to meet the man’s gaze directly.
“You’re alone except for Friederike.”
Merrick’s eyes widened, totally giving him away. Rain scanned the room for Freddie, cursing his weak human senses. Her scent had hit him like a head-on collision when he’d entered the room in his wolf skin. Now he was clueless as to whether she was nearby or not.
“Come out, Friederike! I saw you sneak around the back of the building. Naturally, you were ordered to stay with your weakling cousin in the only room safe from the pack.” In a lightning-fast move, he grabbed Merrick by the back of the neck and threw him facedown on the concrete floor, then ground his heel into the boy’s thin spine. “But it didn’t protect you from me, did it, Friederike?” He twisted his bare heel, and Merrick groaned in pain. “Come out or I’ll break your precious little cousin. Show yourself and we can cut a deal.”
“Don’t do it, Freddie,” Merrick choked out.
Rain had never felt this helpless. Twisting his wrists in his bonds, he glanced down at his leg. Blood was seeping out, and it hurt like hell, but the wound wasn’t life-threatening—at least not immediately. If only he could get the bonds loose…or shift. He could wiggle loose if he had long, slender wolf legs again. He focused on his mind’s image of Freddie, willing his body to change shape, but nothing happened.
Klaus yanked Merrick to his feet and pointed the gun at his head while forcing him toward one of the waist-high stainless machines Rain had been told were stem removers the night he’d drunk the wine. “I’ll hurt him if you don’t come out.” With his much larger body, Klaus trapped Merrick against the machine and flipped on the switch. The workings whirred to life with a rhythmic hum.
Rain closed his eyes and played the same thoughts of Freddie that had worked before to help him shift, but the struggle next to him made it impossible to focus.
“Ah, God. No!” Merrick rasped as Klaus, gun arm wrapped around his chest, grabbed the squirming boy’s arm with his free hand and held it over a spinning thing that looked like a corkscrew on its side that fed into another chamber.
Change, change, change, Rain willed his body.
“Come out, Friederike!” Klaus shouted, lowering Merrick’s hand close enough to the spinning blade he could have touched it if his fingers weren’t balled into a fist.
Holy shit. The bastard was going to grind the kid’s hand off.
“As you know, the purpose of this machine is to separate the grapes from the stems. I wonder if it will separate flesh from bone… If you come out, Friederike, we’ll never know.”
“No, Freddie. Don’t,” Merrick squeaked. Rain was amazed he was still hanging tough. He had a lot more strength and loyalty than he let on. Fighting against the ropes, Rain gritted his teeth, willing his body to shift to wolf form and praying Klaus didn’t go through with it.
“Last chance!” Klaus called to the huge room. There was no answer over the hum of the machine and Merrick’s wheezing breaths.
“Hey, asshole!” Rain growled, trying to incite him to let the boy go or distract him enough for Merrick to twist out of his grip. “Come untie me and let’s see who ends up as hamburger.”
Klaus’s only answer was a lift of one dark eyebrow before he shoved the boy’s hand into the de-stemmer. The calm whir of the machine motor choked and was replace by a wet, grinding sound, barely audible over Merrick’s agonized screams.
Rain fought his bindings as the machine struggled to chew Merrick’s bones, which were much stouter than grape stems. Rain prayed the machine would jam. From the far end of the long metal device, blood dripped in a slow, steady stream to the floor, and Rain fought the urge to scream himself.
“Stop!” Freddie was louder than Merrick at this point because the poor guy had gone limp and was most likely in shock. Rain’s entire body went numb with dread.
Immediately, Klaus turned off the machine and stepped away from Merrick, who collapsed in a ball on the floor, wrapped around his injured arm.
“He needs help,” Freddie said, stepping out from behind one of the tanks.
A puddle of blood oozed from under the curled-up boy, and Rain shuddered.
Freddie limped closer, wearing the same kind of scrub pants Klaus had thrown Rain. Obviously, her broken bones from the vineyard weren’t fully healed. Her long, tangled hair covered her top half, and Rain’s throat tightened at the sight of her troubled face as she watched her cousin writhe in pain. If only he’d been stronger or had shifted, he could have prevented this. If only…
“Get him help and I’ll do whatever you ask,” she said.
Klaus remained perfectly still.
“At least let me take him outside so he can shift to heal. He’s going to die.”
“Yes, he is. And so are you once Charles Ericksen gets here to execute the kill order on your entire family—unless you do as I say.”
Her eyes widened for only a moment, then flitted back to her cousin as the pool of blood on the floor continued to spread. “Let me get him outside.”
“In time,” Klaus said.
“He doesn’t have time,” Rain said. Freddie met his gaze and shook her head. Like hell he was going to stay out of it. “He’s bleeding out. She said she’d do what you say. What more do you want?”
“You dead.” Klaus leveled the gun at Rain’s head, and he gritted his teeth in preparation for the pain, but none happened. Instead, Klaus grabbed Freddie by the hair and placed the gun to her temple and pulled her toward the cellar. “You can wait with your uncle for the coven leaders to arrive while your boyfriend and I have a chat.”
Freddie put up no resistance, perhaps because she was unnerved by the gun, or most likely because she knew her uncle was not in the cellar.
“What? No plea for your boyfriend?” the man taunted.
She glanced at Rain over her shoulder with an unreadable expression, then sneered at Klaus. “Not my boyfriend, asshole. Not even close. Do whatever you want to him.”
For a brief moment, Rain’s heart stopped dead in his chest. Then, he realized she was playing Klaus—diminishing Rain’s value so the guy wouldn’t kill him, right? Because if she didn’t want him, he wasn’t a threat. His heart stuttered, then kicked back up as his vision blurred a bit. Surely that’s what was going on.
“Okay, I’ll play along.” Klaus shoved Freddie away but kept the gun aimed at her. “Untie him and do as I say, and I’ll let you take Merrick outside to heal.” His gun was steady as he scanned the room, as if looking for something. Then, a horrible grin stretched his lips. “Hurry up.”
Freddie’s breath fanned across the back of Rain’s neck as she struggled with the knots in the rope. “They’re too tight.”
“That’s a shame,” Klaus called from the other side of the room. “Merrick isn’t looking so good.”
Freddie tugged the ropes at his wrists, leaning down behind his back so that Klaus couldn’t see her. “Shift. Ulrich said the wards don’t work on you,” she whispered almost inaudibly.
“Can’t.”
“Shit.”
No kidding. Again, Rain closed his eyes and focused on her sounds as she struggled with the impossibly tight knots.
“I need a knife,” she said.
“Too bad,” Klaus replied, leaning against the cellar door. “Better hurry if you’re going to save your cousin.”
Then she crouched and pulled on the rope with her teeth. Her breath puffed hot on his wrists and he felt a faint shudder in
his bones, like his wolf was waking a little bit. The rope loosened, and his fingers throbbed, then stung, as blood began to circulate through them.
“When you have him untied, I want both of you to climb the steps to the landing of the first fermenting tank,” Klaus said, still smirking at whatever plan he’d concocted in his screwed-up brain.
The rope on Rain’s wrists finally fell away, and it was all he could do to not reach around and pull Freddie to him. The sound of her bones breaking in the vineyard had played through his mind a million times, and what he wanted more than anything right now was affirmation she was whole and alive. That he was truly alive. When his throat had been ripped out, he thought he’d never see her again. But here she was, close but untouchable—like the life he’d dared to dream of only days ago.
Untying the bond on his ankles took less time, and soon Rain found himself stepping out of a nest of coiled rope.
With his first step, the pain in his wounded leg almost sent him to the ground. If he hadn’t caught a bullet, he might try to find a way to maneuver closer to Klaus and then lunge. As he took another step, it was clear that walking was almost impossible and lunging was totally out of the question. Better to just go along with the asshole’s orders and see if he could figure a way out.
Leading each step with his good leg, he’d climbed only three steps up by the time Freddie had made the landing way above his head at the top of the gigantic stainless steel tank.
“Move it, Ryland. The boy’s life is leaking out while you dillydally.”
Dillydally. When he got his hands on Klaus Weigl, he’d make sure his life didn’t leak out. It would gush like Niagara Falls.
Rain gritted his teeth and struggled up to the landing, not able to bring himself to look down at Merrick. No matter how much his leg hurt, he was sure it couldn’t hold a candle to what having a hand ground off felt like.
“Now what?” Freddie shouted, helping Rain to the rail on the landing.
“Now he goes in the tank, of course,” Klaus answered.
Of course.
Freddie tensed, but before she could say anything, Rain whispered, “Go with it.”
“Take as long as you like for your sorrowful good-byes,” Klaus called before giving a pointed look in Merrick’s direction.
Rain made the mistake of looking straight down. The landing surface was made of a ridged, open metal grid, and the sight of Merrick’s blood on the concrete below made him light-headed.
“You’ll die in there,” she whispered.
He gestured to Merrick with his chin and whispered into her hair. “He’ll die down there, and so will you if we don’t go along with this. I have a plan.”
“What kind of plan could you possibly have that—”
“Hurry up!” Klaus shouted.
“Go get Merrick outside,” Rain whispered.
“You’re gonna die.” Her voice broke. “You’re gonna die for…” She blinked a couple of times. “You’re stupid, you know that?”
“I’ve been told that on more than one occasion.”
“Are you done yet?” Klaus called.
“I’m going in this tank, but you’re going to let Freddie get Merrick outside first.”
“You don’t trust I’ll keep my end of the bargain, Ryland?”
“Not a chance,” Rain answered.
“You’re right.” And faster than Rain could process what was happening, Klaus aimed and fired, knocking him off balance into the guard rail and sending a trail of searing heat through his right shoulder that nearly drove him to his knees.
Freddie’s scream ricocheted through Rain’s skull, and he grabbed her shoulders, scanning her to be sure she hadn’t been hit, too, then he pulled her against him, reveling in her smell and the feel of her hard muscles as she clung to him. This. This was what he’d lived for. What he’d willingly die for… Unless his plan worked, and the tank held the Full Moon wine that would help him transform into his wolf so that he could heal.
“Believe in me,” he whispered in her ear. “Like I believe in you. Don’t give in. Lead.”
“Lead?” she choked out. “I won’t even live through this.”
“Fight to live. Like I’m doing.” Struggling to breathe through the pain, he tugged the handle on a door that looked like a submarine hatch but couldn’t manage to open it. He knew if he looked down, he’d see his own blood splattering the floor below as it ran through the grated surface of the landing. “Help me.”
“Help you die? No.”
“I’m going to die anyway.” He gestured to the gaping wound under his clavicle, just inside his armpit. No doubt this injury would kill him if he didn’t do something quick. “Open the hatch, Freddie. I have a plan.”
“Your plans suck, Sprinkles,” she said as she twisted the latch and popped open the door.
“You’ve said that before.” Leaning over, he cleared his head, balancing his hands on either side of the wide opening at the top of the tank. “And I plan to make you take it back when this is over.” He knew that he might not get that chance if the wine didn’t work. If it was the Hair of the Dog wine, he wasn’t coming out of that tank on his own feet…or paws. “You need to go save Merrick. There’s nothing you can do for me here, except know one thing.” Looking through the grates, he could see Merrick’s chest rise and fall with life. “Know that you matter. That you mattered to your dad. You matter to your cousins and your pack.”
Tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks, and his heart pinched. Her lips moved, but no sound came out as she touched his face.
“And know this, Freddie. You matter to me. More than anything in the world. I…” He had always sworn, even before he’d ever heard of New Wurzburg or Ruby Ryland, or Freddie Burkhart, that he’d die without a single misgiving. No regrets. He swung his legs into the round opening, balancing on the edge. “Even if this doesn’t work, know that you’ve made my life better than I’d ever expected. More than I’ve wished for. I love you, Friederike Burkhart.”
Before she could respond and without looking back, he drew a final breath and pushed off the edge into the tank, falling a short distance, then sinking below the surface into total blackness.
Forty-Four
It struck Rain that life had never been as precious as it was when he was dying. And death was certain if he didn’t get his shit together and luck didn’t cooperate. Eyes squeezed shut against the harsh wine, he concentrated on the direction his body was floating to determine which way was up, then with a kick, he broke the surface of the muck in the tank, spitting out debris and liquid. After several harsh coughs, he fought for focus in the absolute darkness, concentrating on the sharp pain slicing through his leg and upper body to ground him in reality—and at that moment, reality sucked.
Every time he moved his arms or kicked to keep his head above the surface, Rain thought he might pass out from the pain, which wouldn’t have mattered a month ago. A month ago, he didn’t have Ruby, or the boys, or Freddie. Hell, he didn’t even have a life. But now he did, and he’d be damned if he’d drown in a slog of nasty-tasting almost-wine and grape rinds.
He took a small gulp of the brew, hoping it was fermented enough or whatever it took in order to help him shift into his wolf form, which was the only way he’d make it through this alive. He shuddered as the bitter swallow of the wine went down and groaned at the pain in his shoulder from the movement.
The blackness in the tank was overwhelming. When he looked up, he couldn’t even see where the hatch was. Klaus must have forced Freddie to close it. Shit. He hadn’t counted on that. He tamped down the terror rising in his gut but couldn’t slow his frantic fears. What if the wine didn’t work? What if the hatch was locked and he couldn’t get out? What if Freddie was dead?
“Oh, hell no,” he growled, wincing as he reached out to locate the wall. The wine level was about five feet from the top of the tank, Hopefully, he’d find something to climb to get to the top. He regretted not paying attention when he slid in.
Kicking with his non-injured leg, he made his way along the wall of the tank, feeling for anything to hold on to. The problem was, he’d been distracted when he slid down into the tank. He’d just told Freddie he loved her, and instead of looking for a way out of this damned metal tomb, he’d focused on her instead.
Stupid.
No, not stupid. She was the least stupid thing in his life, and he planned to keep her in his life—which meant he had to fight to survive.
His hand hit a rail, and then another. Yes! A ladder. Gasping for breath, hoping his dizziness was from the wine and not blood loss, he hung on and imagined Freddie like he had before, willing his body to change. He didn’t feel anything, but if it worked and he could shift, he’d need to get to the top of the ladder before he changed fully and couldn’t climb. There was a lot to be said for human hands—especially Freddie’s hands. He relaxed against the ladder, letting his body float in the cool muck, imagining the things she could do with those hands, and his heart rate slowed, along with his breathing, in a moment of blissful calm.
There was no sound in the tank except a soft hum and the liquid lapping the edges because of his earlier struggle. In the pitch-black, he took a deep breath and buzzed with an odd numbness, letting his body submerge up to his chin, wanting nothing more than to rest…to sleep.
With a splash, he kicked upright, pain searing his leg and shoulder. “No!” His voice bounced off the metal walls like thunder. He shouldn’t be calm. Couldn’t be calm. “It’s not blood loss,” he told the blackness. He shook his head to clear it. “Focus, Ryland.”
He couldn’t die. Not now. Not after finding home…finding her.
After another gulp of the nasty mush, he grabbed a rung of the ladder well above the liquid line, then felt around with his bare feet to find a rung. He ran a hand over his face—his still regrettably human face—to clear away the pieces of grape pulp. Maybe it just took time for the wine to work.
Or maybe it was the wrong wine, and he was truly and totally screwed.