by A. J. Downey
Ava growled, a sound worthy of any wolf-kind, and surged forward, hand darting beneath her Joe Rocket jacket but Mathias’ hand shot out, quick as a snake and grabbed her by the shoulder, yanking her back to stand next to him.
“Touched a nerve, did I?” I taunted and winked at her causing her cold mask to crack with unadulterated fury.
“Leave him,” he ordered. “I’ll come back later, Remus. Perhaps then you will be more willing to discuss your future with us.”
I glared at him as he turned and left without another word, Ava following sullenly behind him. Before she left, she shot a glare at me over her shoulder; her eyes burning with the kind of hatred I had only ever seen before in the gaze of my brother Romulus.
The door shut behind them and I sank to the ground, sitting cross legged with my elbows on my knees. My leg protested the action and I held back the pained groan that wanted to escape me. There was no way in hell I would let on how much I hurt. My leg throbbed and burned, my stomach growled ceaselessly and I could feel myself slowly growing weaker from it. At my best guess, it had been roughly twenty-four hours since I last ate anything, maybe a little less.
I wouldn’t last for much longer without turning feral and getting crazed. Was that his plan? Did he want to drive me to starvation so the wolf would come out? Why? It didn’t make sense. Unless he wanted to use that as some sort of proof to his hunters that I was the dangerous animal they thought me to be.
That still didn’t seem to fit though. It was too straight forward, too simple a thought for what I knew of Mathias Young. His actions always held deeper meaning. Plans within plans, hidden behind layers of agendas and everything he did was shrouded with misdirection. I was never much of a chess player, but Mathias seemed to be a master of the game.
I felt, though, that I might just have a possibility open to me. A weakness in the Hunters’ armor. For a moment. Just a moment, when Mathias grabbed Ava by the shoulder, I saw a look of open revulsion cross her face. Naked hatred and disgust. Before her poker face slid back into place and she was able to hide the seething turmoil I now knew raged beneath. If at all possible, I needed to try to use that because it told me one important thing.
Ava hated Mathias. Almost as much as I did, and the enemy of my enemy might just be my only friend if I could spin it right. If not I was as good as dead.
I looked around the room, taking in as much as I could. Dark stone walls surrounded me, and the interior was lit by way of recessed lighting in the ceiling behind round panels of, what looked like, bullet proof glass. The room was square and at my best guess, roughly fifty feet by fifty feet. In the center of it, a single steel cage open on all four sides, the bars thicker around than my wrist.
That struck me as interesting. Even as thick as the bars were it wouldn’t be impossible for me to break free. I would be able to tear my way through with a minute or two’s worth of work, even injured and half-starved. So what the hell was going on? What good was a cage that I could escape?
I jerked up and winced at the throbbing stab of pain that ripped through my thigh at the sudden action when a scraping sound caught my ear. The door leading into the stone room containing my private cell was heavy wood with metal bars blocking a small window in the center at about head height. I lifted my head and sniffed at the air as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to give anything away.
Two guards, at least. Standing outside the door in the hall. I could smell the scent of gun oil on both of them. That explained it. If I tried to escape there was no way I would be able to without making a significant amount of noise. Those guards probably had orders to turn me into Swiss cheese if I tried it. So, they put me in a cage I can escape but leave the guards to encourage me to be a good little doggie and sit in my time out. That or they thought to tempt me to try to escape, just so they’d have an excuse to shoot me. In self-defense, of course, but in all reality, for their own amusement. These bastards were special, for sure.
I thought about it some more and finally had to shake my head. Sick motherfuckers, every last one of them. Even her, especially her… Even if she was a stone-cold fox.
“A trap within a trap, within a dungeon,” I muttered and leaned back against the bars behind me. I groaned and stretched my leg out in front of me, feeling the unaccustomed weakness and pain in my limb. For a man that has never suffered injury for more than a few hours before healing up entirely, this was absolute torture. I wondered briefly how humans put up with it without going crazy.
I looked down at the ground and snorted at the irony. There, on the floor was a single red cross with equidistant arms on a perfectly square background of pristine white.
“Alright,” I sighed and looked up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the burning agony in my leg that I could feel expanding through my body. “We’ve always wanted to know where it was the Hunters originated from. If you survive this, Remus, you just might have something to bring back to your little brother. If he doesn’t kill you just for showing your mug.”
***
“Look alive, you son of a bitch!”
I jerked awake and the motion sent shards of pain ripping through my body, a wave of nausea following right on its heels. I moaned and my eyes flickered open. Hunger gnawed at my belly just as exhaustion gripped me and tried to smother me beneath its weight.
“To what do I owe this great pleasure?” I grunted and pushed myself up to a sitting position. At some point I had fallen asleep and slumped over onto my side.
“Mathias says you need to eat something,” Ava sneered and dropped a metal tray laden with food heavily to the floor. Half of it splattered onto the ground and even more slopped over the edge when she kicked it forward and it slid through a slot at the bottom of the bars. “Personally I think you should starve to death. It would be entertaining to see you suffer.”
I ignored the food despite my nose doing its best effort to overwhelm my mind with the enticing aromas of meat, potatoes and creamed corn. “Oh.” I sighed. “You really wouldn’t want to see that,” I drawled with as much casual laziness as I could muster. “There aren’t many things more frightening than a wolf-kind in a state of feral hunger.” I caught her eyes with an intent gaze of my own and let that steep for a moment before I continued.
“You are right about one thing, Babycakes,” I said and winked at her which only caused her to scowl further. “Monsters we aren’t, but we are animals. And when you starve an animal it becomes mad with hunger, and even more dangerous. You wouldn’t want me out of my mind with hunger and rage. It would only end with blood... probably yours.”
She glared at me a moment longer before she turned and stalked out of the room, the sound of her boots striking the stone floor was drowned out entirely by the door slamming shut behind her. I waited until her footfalls had receded into the distance before I dove on the food, scooping up all I could and even reaching through the bars as far as I could reach to collect that which had spilled on the floor, desperate to ease the yawning ache of hunger.
Chapter 8
Ava
“Play it again.”
“Ava…” Mason’s voice was full of uneasy chiding as he drew out my name, but I really didn’t give a shit.
“Again!” I snapped.
Lines appeared on the screen as he wound the footage back and instead of lunging forward for the food splattered across the floor, the monster lurched back. I watched myself enter the room and the footage stopped and began to roll forward again. There was no sound, I didn’t need to hear what was being said. I was there and it replayed in my mind’s eye over and over again.
“This ain’t going to bring James back, you know.” Mason said softly. I brought my arm up, bent it at the elbow and snapped it back and felt it connect solidly with Mason’s nose. I felt a satisfying pop through my thick jacket sleeve. Mace yowled, his hands flying off the control panel to cover his face.
“Goddamn it, Ava!”
I glanced back over my shoulder at him and raised an ey
ebrow, keeping the rest of my expression cold and flat. No one knew better than I did that James wasn’t coming back. Mace’s eyes watered and he pulled his hands away from his face to see them stained with blood. Of course all I could see when I looked at my own hands was my brother’s blood from where I had tried to press his insides back where they’d belonged.
I turned back to the monitor, jaw set in grim resignation. I wanted to kill it. I wanted to kill it so badly, but Mathias stood in my way, and truthfully I wanted to kill him too, for sending James practically solo, after those mad dogs.
“Leave us,” his rich, melodic voice wafted over from the control room’s doorway. Speak of the devil, or in this case, think of him…
Mason pushed back from the desk and sniffed, glaring at me contritely. I gave him blank face; gave him nothing. Sometimes, like now, I felt a little bad for being so rough on them but it was for their own damn good. So they wouldn’t end up like so many of the others who’d gone before. So they wouldn’t end up like James…
“Resent me all you like, Ava. You know I did what I thought was best.”
Don’t trust Mathias, Baby Sis. Something’s up. I can feel it.
I pressed my lips into a grim line and tried to school my face into a neutral expression.
“I don’t,” I lied, and at the angry expression on the older man’s face I quickly changed tact… “I mean, I do… he was my twin brother, my only blood and family I had left, I understand but…” I crumbled a little on the inside and went for broke, and told the truth.
The truth will set you free, little sister…
“I miss him.” I whispered into the lengthy silence and felt the tears spill hot and salty slick down my face. Mathias’ face hardened.
“I have a job for you,” he said imperiously and I nodded once sharply. I hardened my heart, drew it all in and stuffed it down. Locking my emotions back in the deep, dark footlocker in the deepest recesses of my soul where no one, not even Mathias Young with his prying eyes and manipulations could reach.
“Sir, yes sir.” I said calmly.
“There are reports that one of them has gone rogue in New Hampshire, I want you to follow up. Find out if there’s any truth to the rumors, and if there is, take care of it.”
“As soon as I can conceivably muster the team.” Mathias gave me a pointed look, but I didn’t break stride or falter in my speech patterns at all. “The hunt for this last one took a lot out of them. I would like to be here for whatever you have in store for the bastard. I think I’ve more than…” he cut me off, expression stern.
“You leave tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest. With no delays, am I understood?” he demanded.
Why the rush, you old buzzard? I thought to myself.
“Sir, yes sir,” I uttered again. You didn’t defy Mathias Young to his face and get away with it unscathed. There were a lot of rumors where the old man was concerned, the thing was, I knew they weren’t just tales. Mathias Young was the definition of ruthless.
If he were feeling generous, you’d live… minus a few parts, but you’d live. Rarely, if ever, was Mathias Young generous. I’d been one of his prize foot soldiers. My brother had been too before he’d become a prized pain in the ass. That had eventually lost James the pinky and ring finger of his left hand. Mathias had taken them a year or two before James had died… That was when I’d started to nurture a dislike, if not a downright hatred for the old bastard.
James hadn’t questioned Mathias’ orders again. He’d done what he was told. Ever since the night Mathias had maimed him, James had looked at me different. With a glint of something undefinable. I was sure some kind of threat had been made against me, but James would never speak on it. I couldn’t deny the effectiveness of the tactic. Had our roles been reversed, had it been I who had been threatened with James’ well-being? I would have folded like cheap origami.
Mathias looked me up and down, a calculating glint in his eyes before nodding once, as if to himself and grating out: “Dismissed.”
I snapped to attention, saluted and made to go past him when he caught my sleeve. Jesus for a man his age he’s unnaturally fast. I looked him eye to eye from inches away and kept my stoic mask in place.
“Do as I ask, Ava,” Mathias said to me but it was what he said without words, what he said with his intense gaze that got my attention and sent a tingle of fear down my spine. His eyes held a weighted ‘or else’ as well as a myriad of other unspoken horrors in their steely depths.
“Of course,” I murmured and nodded. Mathias forced a smile and leaned forward, placing a kiss on the crown of my head.
“I miss him too, Child,” he lied, but it was too late to placate me. He’d pushed too hard. I bowed my head so he wouldn’t see my rage. I closed my eyes so he wouldn’t see the fire in them and I did my level best to nod solemnly.
That one little white lie sealed the deal for me. Utterly. Completely. Fuck him. Fuck Mathias Young and his bullshit wild goose chase in New Hampshire. I was suddenly like one of the things we hunted. I was on the scent. Mathias was hiding something and I was going to find out what it was.
“Go on, now,” he said and released my sleeve. I nodded and attempted to look sufficiently cowed, before slipping out of the control room and up the dimly lit hallway to the knight’s quarters.
For a quasi-military organization, we didn’t have barracks precisely. The underground rooms were small, but comfortable. Simple. No more than cells, really, that locked from the inside rather than the outside. The underground facility was old, very old, but had undergone a series of retrofits throughout the intervening years to make it both more habitable as well as more functional to our cause. Hence, what had once been cells to hold prisoners for interrogation, had been refashioned into quarters for the men and women dedicated to eradicating these demon spawned creatures.
This far underground, there were no windows or really any ability to tell what time of day it was. We relied on artificial lighting to keep us up on what was arcing across the sky up top. That was why the halls were so dimly lit now. It was deepest night, almost edging on towards dawn and I was feeling it, even this far removed from the sky. The lighted strips along the floors and ceilings would begin to lighten with the press of real dawn outside. I felt it in the form of a slight burning at the backs of my eyes. In the way of a bone deep weary that settled over my shoulders like an old cloak.
Mathias was a tough bastard that expected the rest of us to be just as tough, but at the end of the day, we were all simply human. In need of food, in need of rest, or we would make mistakes and making a mistake, out there, with them… often a mistake made under those circumstances was the last mistake any number of us could or would ever make.
I wasn’t about to lose any of my team to some stupid, half assed mistake that was made because one of us was tired when we’d had the opportunity to rest. So when I slipped into the rec room to find the majority of my team lounging and awaiting the next set of orders or dismissal to their bunks, there wasn’t any real decision to be made.
“Rest up, get a full eight hours, then gear up.” I ground my teeth and willingly defied Mathias Young, “We leave tomorrow afternoon. Mathias wants us to check out reports of a feral rogue in New Hampshire.”
My crew dragged themselves wearily to their feet. I glanced at Mace who glared back, not that I could really blame him.
“Did I break it?”
“No,” he said, eyes sliding to the side and away from me. I fixed him with my gaze and he shifted uncomfortably as the rest of the team filed out around me.
“Good. You were right, and I’m sorry about that.”
“You get more like the Hangman every day,” he said with a one shouldered shrug and I flinched inwardly at that, though I refused to give any outward appearance.
“Dismissed,” I said simply and he pushed past me and out the door. I closed my eyes and sighed out, softly swearing at the empty room.
I went over and fixed a cup of hot tea in t
he small kitchenette in the corner. It was just enough to make a drink; the mess hall was down the corridor and to the left in the sprawling complex. I wasn’t really hungry. I wasn’t even really all that thirsty to be honest, right now I needed something for my hands to do while my brother’s nagging doubts and odd behavior played out in my mind.
James had found something out, something that had shaken his faith in the Order. He’d become agitated, withdrawn, then he’d become almost defiant… angry with the Order’s council. Mathias being the head of that council didn’t help. He’d begun to openly question things and finally had begun to openly question the missions that he and his team were being sent on.
It had become increasingly rare for James and me to be teamed together in the last year or so of his life. I had climbed ranks, come into my own, been entrusted with my own team, which seemed to rankle my older brother, who was only older by virtue of nine minutes. The joke between us was that he would always and forever be the one to lead the way. Which had been the case, for the most part until he’d found whatever he’d found.
My brother had become cagey. Dropping hints and whispers, never being forthright, but my loyalty lay with him. Had always lain with him, and even after death would continue to lay with his bones. James and I were the only thing either of us had had the entire time we were growing up and now… now I was alone and it was all because of that son of a bitch Mathias and the brother of the fucking animal we had caged in the lower levels.
I jerked my hand back and dropped the paper cup overflowing with hot water.
“Shit!”
I shook out my hand and gave it a cursory once over. Red and angry, I thought it would be fine, I ran it under cold water from the small sink anyways, the cool water soothing the sting of the scald.
I couldn’t go out like this. I needed some sleep. I needed to regroup. I needed to know what the fuck was going on. Why Mathias was so keen on getting me out of the facility and back into the field. While quick turnarounds weren’t unheard of, they certainly weren’t commonplace.