Hunted (Riley Cray)

by A. J. Colby

  “Suck it...mother...fucker,” I wheezed, my head swimming with the effort of speaking.

  A sharp stab of pain in my ass made me yelp. Looking up through the tangle of my hair, now matted with God knows what, I saw Johnson stuffing an empty syringe in the pocket of his coat, he’s eyes alight with satisfaction.

  Oh, that can’t be good, I thought as my mind began to grow foggy.

  “Ow!” I exclaimed belatedly. “You stabbed ‘ee. In the ash. Joo...tool!” I growled, or at least tried to, my lips moving sluggishly. “Wha did joo gib ‘ee?” I slurred, my mouth refusing to cooperate.

  “Wolfsbane. Just enough to keep the wolf at bay,” he said. “Though I wonder if I gave you too much,” he added as an afterthought, tapping my cheek hard enough to bruise.

  “You’re sush a dou...” I continued to rant, my voice suddenly giving way to a piercing scream of pure agony.

  Collapsing to the pavement, I curled up like a spider set to a match, the muscles in my limbs contracting painfully. It felt like my blood was boiling in my veins, setting every nerve ending and synapse on fire. I’d never experienced such searing agony before. Even the pain of Samson ripping into the soft meat of my belly paled in comparison to the agony coursing through my body now.

  Through the haze of tears I saw Johnson coming at me and tried to roll away from him, but the crippling pain kept me from doing anything more than rolling onto my side. Rough hands grabbed me by the hair, turning my face towards him. A rag smelling of gasoline and oil was wedged into my mouth, cutting off my scream to leave me moaning helplessly as tears streamed down my face. The next few minutes were a jumble of flickering images as fire raced through my body, burning me up from the inside.

  I couldn’t do anything except whimper and mewl like a helpless puppy as Johnson bound my wrists with a zip tie, pulling the plastic tight until it bit into my skin. He grabbed me under the arms and dragged me down the alley, the heels of my boots bouncing along the asphalt and ice. I tried to struggle, to twist in his grip or kick out, but the Wolfsbane seemed to have paralyzed me. I fought to stay conscious but time was starting to come in disconnected pieces like a movie skipping frames.

  A white car sat idling at the end of the alleyway, and I knew what Johnson planned to do even before he propped me against a nearby dumpster to pop the trunk open. Listing sideways I hoped to use my momentum to escape, but before I knew it Johnson was back, his hands maneuvering me roughly, tossing me about like a sack of potatoes as he dumped me into the trunk. The edge of a tire iron dug into my shoulder, but the drugs pulsing through me made me too weak to make any use of it. I cried out in a wordless plea for mercy as he reached to close the trunk.

  God no, please don’t lock me in here! Please don’t! I wailed internally, trying to express my terror around the oily rag that made me gag, but pity was not something he appeared to be acquainted with.

  “Shut up, bitch. You’ll have plenty to scream about later,” he said, his beady eyes gleaming with sadistic glee.

  I let out another plaintive wail but it was no use, the drugs left me paralyzed, unable to kick out at him, or stop him from closing the trunk. As I watched the sliver of grey clouds shrinking I wondered if I’d ever see daylight again.

  * * *

  Sensation slowly trickled into my awareness as I drifted back up to consciousness, struggling through the cobwebs in my mind to make sense of what was happening. My head felt heavy and fuzzy, as though it had been packed with cotton. There was a faint ringing in my ears that, combined with the stab of pain that shot through my skull when I tried to open my eyes, made me think I probably had a concussion. Nausea twisted in my gut, and I decided that perhaps it was best to just keep my eyes closed for a while.

  What the hell is going on?

  My tongue moved clumsily as I licked my lips, my hiss of pain at the burning throb in my lower lip coming out more as a wheeze. Probing the wound with the tip of my tongue, I tasted blood, knowing it should mean something but not sure what, my thoughts sluggish and muddled. My chin rested heavily on my chest, the muscles in my neck aching from the awkward position but seemingly unable to lift my head more than an inch or two. The effort of trying to raise my head left me dizzy and exhausted, pushing me back down into the murky waters of unconsciousness.

  * * *

  A soft scraping noise cut through the darkness, rousing me from dreamless sleep. I couldn’t tell if I had been out for only a few minutes or several hours, time having lost all meaning in the haze of unconsciousness. Gritting my teeth in anticipation, I dared to crack my eyes open, relieved when the wave of nausea that hit didn’t instantly knock my ass out again. I took several shallow breaths and pushed through the dizziness, having to swallow several times to keep from puking all over myself.

  Yay me!

  I concentrated on focusing my vision, the pounding in my head making it hard to bring my eyes into focus. I had to blink a few times before I was able to make the blur of blue directly in front of me resolve into the shape of my legs, the knees of my jeans torn and covered in dirt. Trying to flex my legs I discovered that my ankles were bound to the legs of the chair, the position spreading my knees wide in some sick facsimile of a strip tease. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I should’ve been panicking, but I was too dazed to care. An attempt to move my arms found them similarly secured to the arms of the chair with thick white zip ties.

  A prepared kidnapper, just my luck.

  Looking past my knees I saw a patch of concrete floor, layered with dust and debris. Scrabbling through the detritus was the source of the noise that had woken me, a mangy, skinny rat searching for some scrap of food. If the abandoned atmosphere I was picking up was any indication, I didn’t think he was going to have much luck.

  I guess that’s why he’s skinny.

  Of course, that also meant help wasn’t likely to be close at hand.

  I reached down inside to where the wolf slumbered and found her disturbingly absent. There was an aching hollowness in my middle as if a piece of me had been ripped out and cast away. Panic tore through me with enough force to make my already throbbing head swim. Nausea burned in my throat while my hands trembled where they were tied to the chair. I hadn’t been so alone in my body for almost a decade, and as many times as I had wished I’d never met Samson, I found myself filled with terror at the thought that the wolf might be gone.

  “No, no, no,” I sobbed, digging deeper into the hollow in my middle where the wolf resided. I envisioned questing fingers scrabbling in the darkness, pawing through inky mire and filth in search of a precious diamond. The more time that passed the greater my panic became, tears blurring my vision until, nearly at the far reaches of hope I finally felt something. It was little more a whisper, weak and muddled, but she was there. A relieved sob rose in my throat, and I swore that I’d never again wish for the wolf’s absence.

  My head still felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, but bolstered by the reassurance that she was still there I managed to lift it enough to get a better view of my surroundings. They weren’t much more impressive than my friend, the emaciated rat. I appeared to be in the basement of someone’s house, but it didn’t look like anyone had been living there in a very long time. Water stains dappled the bare concrete walls and ceiling, the black smears blooming on the damp surface no doubt the beginnings of mold.

  Classy joint.

  A long wooden workbench ran along the length of the wall on the opposite side of the room, the top covered in a haphazard pile of rusting tools and trash, all of it overlaid with a thick coating of dust and grime. I could see several items in the clutter that would have cut through the zip ties binding my hands and ankles, but I had no way of retrieving any of them. Impotent rage burned in my gut.

  How dare he do this to me! What is that sick prick planning to do, anyway?

  I shuddered at the thoughts that sprang to mind. It was all too easy to envision several very nasty things he might have in store for me. Desperate for so
mething to distract me from the horrifying images dancing through my mind, I looked around the room some more, hoping to see something that might give me a clue as to where I was, or better yet, a way out of this mess.

  A small window above the workbench had a broken pane that let in gusts of cold air and the occasional dusting of snow. Except for the window and the stairs leading upwards, there didn’t appear to be any other ways out of the basement. Struggling in the chair I tried to look behind me, but my attempts halted at the sound of the door opening at the top of the stairs. A weak shaft of light spilled down the wooden steps, eclipsed a second later as someone stepped into the doorway.

  Johnson’s staggering steps thumped down the stairs, raining clouds of dust and rat shit. I smelled the booze wafting off him before he even reached the bottom step.

  Drunk and crazy. Always a great combination, I thought bitterly, a snarl already curling my lip as he lurched to a stop with a bottle of Jack in his hand, and turned to look at me.

  “‘Bout time you woke up,” he slurred, surveying me with bloodshot eyes. It looked like he’d been drinking for a while, and I was struck by his transformation. The professional and tightly wound FBI agent had been replaced by a slovenly, wild-eyed drunk. Either he was an excellent actor, and had fooled everyone, including me, into thinking he was just a normal guy, or something had happened to make him lose his shit.

  “‘Bout time you got your drunk ass down here. I’m bored. Entertain me.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of fun planned for us,” he said, his lips twisting into a cruel smile. The menace contained in that one look was enough to make me shrink back in the chair and shudder.

  Taking a long swig from the bottle he ambled towards me, looking more disheveled than ever with his shirt unbuttoned and untucked to reveal the sweat stained, white t-shirt beneath.

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” I said, baring my teeth in a sneer. “It smells like a vampire’s asshole.”

  A muscle jumped in his cheek, his fever bright eyes narrowing, but he didn’t strike me like I expected.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to the smell. After all, you’re going to be here for a while.”

  Dread settled, heavy and cold, in my gut, making me shudder. I was in deep shit, and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of there in anything other than a body bag.

  “What’s your deal anyway? Butt hurt that I wasn’t won over by your dazzling charm? Or maybe you’re just mad because you knew I wouldn’t be interested in your tiny pecker?”

  That time he did swing at me.

  I’d never noticed how big Johnson’s hands were, his thick fingers curling into fists easily twice the size of mine. One monstrous fist swung at my face, connecting with my right cheek, making my teeth rattle in my skull. He was just human, but he still packed a hell of a wallop. Pain exploded beneath my eye, the deep burn enveloping the right side of my face making me wonder if he’d broken my cheek bone. I tasted blood as the inside of my cheek ground against my teeth. Infuriated, I tried to spit the blood in his face, but instead only managed to drool on myself.

  “Hit on a sore spot, huh? So that’s it, you’re a little lacking in the manhood department, eh?”

  “Shut up, bitch.”

  “You seriously need some new material. Let me give you some pointers. Twat waffle. Douche nozzle. Cock holster. Dick hole. Should I keep going?”

  “I. Said. Shut. Up. Bitch,” he snarled, punctuating his words with shots to my face.

  “Dickless wonder,” I added as a last insult, spitting blood.

  I knew the punch was going to hurt, bad, even before he began to swing, the gleam in his eyes switching from drunken fury to murderous.

  Damn, maybe I went too far that time, I thought a second before it landed, the impact snapping my head back.

  I caught a glimpse of the ceiling as my head rolled backwards, my eyes dancing over a disgusting proliferation of cobwebs stretching between the floor joists overhead.

  Spiders. Why did it have to be spiders? I wondered distantly, and then my eyes slid shut.

  * * *

  Cold water struck me in the face, the shock of it expelling the air from my lungs in a startled gasp. The icy water plastered my loose hair to my face, streaming from my chin to drench my shirt. Choking, I shook water out of my eyes, the motion making my head swim, and nausea reignite in my stomach. By some small miracle I managed not to puke on myself.

  “Rise and shine,” Johnson crooned, all signs of his earlier drunken slur gone.

  Looking up through the wet tangle of my hair I found him standing in front of me with an empty bucket in one hand and a wicked looked knife in the other. Noticing the bright white stubble on his chin, I wondered how long I’d been out. I could smell the oily stink of the metal from a few feet away, a shudder of revulsion rippling through me as I tried to recoil from it. Silver. The damn bastard had a silver knife.

  So, this isn’t just some random, spur of the moment kidnapping and torture session then.

  “Five more minutes, Mom,” I said, yawning wide.

  “God, you think you’re so damn smart, don’t you?” he asked with a growl, dropping the bucket on the floor and stepping close to me.

  Pressing back into the chair I tried to put as much space between me and the knife as I could, but the zip ties didn’t allow for much movement. Most of the stuff Hollywood spouts about garlic and vampires, weres and howling at the moon, is absolute tripe, but as they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day. All that talk about weres and silver? Unfortunately, that’s true. There’s not much you can do to a were that they can’t heal eventually, but inflicting a wound with silver is one of those things. A wound from silver will blister and burn, and in some rare, horrific, cases, fester and rot resulting in permanent damage. Needless to say, I did not want that knife anywhere near me.

  “I thought leaving that deer carcass in Holbrook’s room would make him see you for the filthy animal you are, but I guess he’s almost as dumb as you,” Johnson mused, testing the sharpness of the blade against the flat of his thumb.

  Dumbstruck, I momentarily forgot the danger looming so close. All pithy come backs fled from my mind at the revelation.

  “That was you?”

  I’d spent the last few days thinking that Samson was close, had watched me sleep in the woods, and had taken the remains of my kill as a sign that he was watching me. Learning that it had been Johnson was something of a relief, but at the same time opened up a whole other realm of problems. He seriously had it out for me, and I had no idea why.

  “What is it about you weres anyway? Why can’t anyone else seem to keep their hands off you?”

  “Just our winning personalities I guess,” I replied, rewarded a second later with a backhand to the mouth.

  I tasted blood again and made a show of licking it from my lip before spitting it at him. I missed, but I didn’t care. I was testing his mental faculties, and judging by the faraway look in his eyes he wasn’t really seeing me. I couldn’t smell the booze on him like before, but there was still something going on that made his eyes distant and his attention wander.

  “You all think you’re so smart don’t you? He thought he was hot shit too,” he said, his eyes focused on some distant spot behind me. “That bastard isn’t laughing now.”

  What the fuck?

  “Who’s not laughing?” I asked, not really sure I wanted to know the answer.

  “She’s not laughing anymore either. Serves that dirty cunt right,” he said, ignoring me. His gaze continued to dance around the room, unable to settle on anything for more than a few seconds before moving on to something else. “I do miss her though, my darling Cheryl,” he went on, seemingly oblivious to my presence. “But she shouldn’t have done it, not that. She should’ve known better. She knew I hated those filthy beasts. She shouldn’t have done it.”

  He was quickly coming unhinged. It made him a hundred times more dangerous than before, he was unpr
edictable now, but it also made him sloppy, and I thought I just might be able to use that to my advantage, provided that I lived long enough of course.

  “Who’s Cheryl? Who’s not laughing? What did you do?” I asked, though I was beginning to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I already knew the answer.

  Instead of answering me, he crossed the room in a couple quick strides and gripped the edge of my chair. The legs of the chair grated on the rough concrete floor as he whipped me around to face the wall behind me. Vomit rose in my throat as I stared at the gruesome trophy nailed to the wall. I wanted to look away, wanted to scream, but my horror left me frozen and unable to do anything but stare at the bloody pelt.

  It was obvious that Johnson had no experience skinning an animal, but despite his shoddy attempt there was no mistaking what the creature had once been. I was sure that at one point the fur had been thick and beautiful, silken to the touch, but now it was matted with blood, dirt, and gore. Tears began to track down my cheeks, hot and salty, they stung as they dripped over my split lip before falling to my shirt, tinged pink.

  “You sick bastard,” I said, my voice weak, little more than a whisper.

  “She was mine!” he thundered. “My wife! He had no right, no right to put his disgusting were hands on her. He ruined her!”

  “Where is she? What did you do to her?” I demanded, struggling against the ties that secured me to the chair.

  “Cheryl?” he answered distantly. “She’s sleeping.” His eyes drifted to the large freezer against the wall. A smear of blood was stark on the white top and handle.

  He’s totally lost it, gone completely fucking mad, I thought, lightheaded.

  “Oh God. What have you done?” I asked, tears wetting my eyes.

  In a brief moment of numb horror I thought it almost funny that I should weep for Johnson’s dead wife, reduced to dead meat piled up inside the freezer. Would I end up the same way? Or would Johnson mount me on the wall as another gruesome trophy?