The Hollowing (COYWOLF Series Book 2)

by Abby Tyson

  With the cries from her dream echoing in her ears, Savi's mind traveled backwards, to the last time she was bound this way.

  Jameson will be here soon, she thought. Maybe I can stop him this time.

  "Marcia!" she screamed, her voice hoarse and her tongue heavy. "Marcia!"

  "Savi!"

  The same voice from my dream. Marley's come back to save me!

  As the room around her became less hazy, however, it didn't match her memory. Although this room was about the same size as the basement had been, the walls were white sheetrock, not gray cement. While Marcia's lab had been dedicated to scientific research, this was definitely a medical ward, filled with beds rather than steel tables.

  "Savi."

  And that wasn't Marley's voice calling to her.

  "Ren?" she croaked.

  He was also bound, trapped in the bed beside her. Although he was only a few feet away, she was finding it difficult to focus on him. Alternating between widening and narrowing her eyes, she saw a tube filled with a pale brown liquid running from a machine that was mounted on the wall into his arm. As she peered at him, she saw that he, too, was trying to focus on her, and his furrowed brow and puckered lips made her burst out laughing. He giggled, then shushed her, trying to look stern.

  Doing her best to match Ren's expression, she tried to say, "Break the cuffs and get us out of here." What she actually said, however, was, "Bark and muffins."

  The two of them let out loud guffaws of laughter. Savi liked Ren better when he was laughing, and tried to tell him, but all she could say was, "Laughing!" over and over, which made them cackle even louder.

  "Whatsa funny?" came a drawling voice.

  Savi lifted her head, straining to see a girl in another bed on the other side of Ren. Her long black braids spilled off the bed as she leaned over as far as she could towards Ren. "Whereza muffins?" she asked, her voice lazy and drunk.

  Her slurred question sent Ren and Savi into another fit of laughter, which the girl couldn't help but join.

  "Ah, I see you three have joined us," said a high, sharp voice.

  Savi, Ren, and the girl tried to stifle their giggles as four people in long white lab coats entered the room. The man who had spoken came to stand beside Savi. He moved around too much for her to be able to see anything through the blur hovering over his face other than his black-rimmed glasses. A snicker escaped Savi's lips when she noticed a big yellow mustard stain on his lab coat.

  "Which have trackers?" he asked the room.

  "One and three," said one of the other doctors.

  The man nodded and reached over Savi's head, and she saw for the first time that she, too, was attached to a machine on the wall.

  "That should do it," he said, as the beige fluid stopped pumping into her arm. "What is your name?"

  Savi's nose wrinkled at the stench of vinegar that hung about him. "What's your name?" she asked, spitting with uncontrollable laughter.

  The doctor recoiled, mumbling something about side effects, when a voice called, "Doctor!"

  "Yes?"

  "Number one didn't make it."

  Savi recognized the speaker as the same white-haired woman who had ambushed them. She was standing beside a fourth bed, on the other side of the girl with the black braids, in which an old man lay unmoving.

  "At its age that's to be expected," the doctor said, crossing the room.

  "Kofizeer," slurred the girl. "See? Eez righteer."

  "Psst," hissed Savi, getting Ren's attention. Nodding at the girl, she asked, "Who's that?"

  Ren smacked his lips and said, "Lila. She's one of --" He stopped himself and glared at Savi, like she had been trying to trick him into saying something.

  "Kofi?" Lila called.

  The doctor plucked the old man's limp wrist from the woman's hand and held it for a moment, then let it drop. It bounced off the bed and hung there. As he started walking back towards Savi, he called over his shoulder, "Don't forget to remove its tracker."

  Staring at the thin arm dangling beside the bed, Savi's hysterics faded. She closed her eyes and turned away, willing herself to shrink into oblivion.

  The smell of vinegar invaded her senses. "Let's try this again," the doctor said, once again by her side. "Your name?"

  "Kofi?" Lila called again as two of the other doctors began wheeling the dead old man out of the room. "Bring him back!" she screamed. "Kofi!"

  She started jerking her arms against her restraints. Her speech was clearing up, but her movements were still erratic, and she obviously wasn't able to call on her full strength.

  "Sedate number two," the doctor said, his voice flat and dull.

  The woman with the white hair went to Lila's monitor and pushed some buttons, then stood beside the doctor, holding a clip board with the number four on the back. She was taller than the doctor, and Savi thought she noticed him straighten up at her presence.

  "Is she okay?" asked Savi, when Lila finally went silent.

  "It's fine," snapped the doctor. "Now, tell me your full name."

  Before Savi could even think it, she said, "Savannah Arcene Claudie."

  The woman's mouth opened slightly, her eyes widening, but in the next breath she was writing Savi's name on the clip board, her expression flat and uninterested. The doctor hadn't looked away from the monitor once yet, so he missed the woman's reaction. Savi tried unsuccessfully to clear her mind, a thick cloud floating between her thoughts and reality.

  "What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you?" Despite the intimate, probing nature of his question, the doctor sounded bored, staring at the screen displaying her vital signs as if that were going to answer instead of her.

  Savi considered the two memories vying for prominence. Although she had no intention of sharing either, she heard her voice saying, "When I was hunted in a basement by a psychopath, and when the most popular kid in school tried to rape me."

  Why did I say that? The words had formed in her mouth without consent. Her insides twisted with fear, sending bolts of panic through her body.

  The thought of Jameson jogged another memory. "Where is he? Where's Jameson?" she asked, frantically searching the room.

  Still studying her vitals, the doctor said, "I know no one by that name."

  "He was with her," said Savi, glaring at the woman, "in the parking lot, when you shot us."

  "I heard you saying that name in your sleep on the way here," the woman said, "but there's no Jameson on our team."

  Was he just a dream?

  Savi's vision was sharpening, and looking at the two of them now, she could see that what she had thought was a mustard stain was actually an embroidered insignia on the breast pockets of their lab coats. A flaming orange sword, its blade piercing through an upside down black crescent moon, sat in the center of a fiery yellow sun. Taller than the image and stitched behind it was a large golden Z.

  Where am I?

  "Enough of that," said the doctor. "We've established a baseline. Let's commence." Meeting Savi's eyes for the first time, he asked, "Are you a coywolf?"

  "No." Once again the word popped out of her mouth without her even thinking about it.

  "Why are you with coywolves then?"

  "Protection." What is wrong with me?

  "From whom?"

  Savi could feel the answer trying to escape, and did her best to hold it in, but the word pried itself out of her lips.

  "Werewolves."

  "Why do you need protection from werewolves?" asked the doctor.

  "Stop, Savi!" Ren cried. She met his wild eyes, willing herself not to speak.

  "They think I know where the torra are." With a cry Savi clamped her eyes shut. Picturing her poetry books at home, she tried to remember the most recent one she'd memorized. It was before she started reading Dickinson...

  "Torra are a myth," the doctor sneered, but then, begrudgingly, he added, "aren't they?"

  "Weary of myself," she began, fighting for control over her speech, "
and sick --"

  "Are torra real?" the doctor demanded. "Are origins real?"

  "-- of asking -- yes." She winced as the word snuck out.

  "Interesting," he said, once again watching the monitor. "Do you know where they are?"

  She began the poem again, yelling the words, trying to drown out his voice. "Weary of myself, and sick of asking what I am, and what I ought to be --"

  "Do you know where the origins are?" the doctor shouted over her.

  "Yes!" her mouth cried.

  The doctor's small, thin lips twisted into an eager smile, and his eyes, unnaturally large through the thick glasses, narrowed. "You've brought us something very interesting indeed, Hazel," he said. The woman beside him nodded, though her face was pale.

  "What did you do to me?" Savi cried, banging her head on the pillow.

  "How is it that you know so much?" the doctor muttered, speaking as if he didn't expect an answer, as if he were asking an inanimate object to reveal its secrets.

  Savi again sought her poem for protection. "Sick of asking what I am, and what I ought to be, at this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea."

  "Poetry," the doctor spat, as if it were a curse word.

  "Want me to take over?" asked Hazel.

  Waving the woman's question away, he said, "Tell me how you come to know about coywolves, werewolves, and origins." He gripped the metal rail that Savi was cuffed to, leaning over her. "What are you?"

  "And a look --" Savi's recitation was cut short as the part of her brain that wanted to comply took over. "What do you mean?"

  Scowling, he asked, "Are you human? Werewolf?"

  "Human," said Savi, although there was more pushing against her teeth, and the doctor knew it.

  "What else?" he cried, his knuckles whitening. "What are you?"

  Savi gave up trying to say the whole poem, jumping ahead to her favorite part. "And with joy the stars perform their shining, and the sea its long moon-silver'd roll; For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting all the fever of some differing soul."

  Triumphant, Savi met the doctor's furious gaze. But she was too confident, relaxing her guard too much.

  "Veru malar."

  The doctor froze, his rage fading into confusion, then shock. "You are a hollow one?" he whispered, almost reverent.

  Savi tried to say no, but "Yes" came out instead.

  Jerking his head up to check the monitor, he let out a single burst of laughter. When he looked back down at her, however, his jubilation had melted into something much more sinister.

  "Prep her for surgery," he said to Hazel.

  "Surgery?" asked Savi.

  Ignoring her question, he asked, "Have you donated blood within the last two months?"

  "No, but --"

  "We'll start right away then," he said, rubbing his hands together and almost skipping to Ren's bed.

  "Start what?" she shouted. "What surgery? Tell me!"

  Hazel pushed some buttons on the monitor, and a clear liquid spurted down the tube, into Savi's arm.

  "I can do his after, if you like," said the woman, watching as the doctor removed Ren's clip board from the wall.

  "No, no," he said. "If he's traveling with a hollow one, I want to hear everything he has to say."

  Ren had been trying to break his bonds ever since Savi started confessing their secrets, but hadn't been able to do more than halfheartedly yank on them in an uncoordinated way. At the man's menacing tone, however, he doubled his efforts. Veins bulging, he strained against his cuffs. Savi thought of Marley lifting Amber's car by himself, and wondered what these people could have done to make Ren so weak.

  "What is your full name?" the doctor asked.

  "Ren Estlin Bolden," he growled.

  Estlin? Savi recognized the name, but her brain was already shutting down.

  The doctor seemed as fascinated by Ren's name as Savi was. "Bolden?" he whispered. "What is your father's name?"

  A bead of sweat trickled down Ren's face. "Ezekiel Warren Bolden."

  Warren's his dad's middle name?

  The doctor leaned over the bed rail, a hunger in his face that made even Savi's fading consciousness fearful. Wetting his lips, he asked, "What is your grandfather's name?"

  One of Ren's hands broke free at last and went straight for the doctor's neck.

  "Omar!" Hazel cried. She slammed her hand on an alarm, filling the lab with a grating buzzing sound. Running over to Ren's monitor, she sent a clear liquid surging into his remaining bound arm.

  Savi struggled to keep the curtain of black from falling over her. "Run," she called to Ren, but all that came out was a weak cry.

  The scene before her dimmed as two muscular men dressed in burnt orange uniforms ran into the room. She kept calling to Ren, urging him to escape, but the more she spoke, the weaker and softer it became, until she was screaming only in her dreams, in the dark.

  A droning hum filled Savi's ears as she clawed her way back to consciousness. The vague fear from her nightmares lingered, but the images and sounds themselves were lost in the low light of the room she woke up in. Her body was completely covered in a beige fleece blanket, but she could feel the padded restraints around her wrists and ankles. She pulled against them and cried out as sharp pain from her knee and both forearms shocked through her body.

  "The knee will be tender for about a week."

  At the other side of the room, the doctor sat at a table, the white glow from his laptop casting his smooth, round face in a ghostly light. Hardly bigger than her own bedroom at home, this room was a stark contrast to the medical ward she had been in before. Dimly lit, and furnished with a bureau, mini-fridge, and TV, it would have been an ordinary trailer home if it weren't for the strange white, boxy machine by her bed that looked like it belonged in a hospital.

  Nearly as tall as the room, the top half of the machine consisted of a single metal bar, serving as a hanging rack for four IV bags. Two of the bags held clear liquids: one nearly full, and the other about half-full. The third bag was filled halfway with a yellow fluid, and the final bag was full about a quarter of the way with blood. The blood was traveling a dizzying path from the bag, down through a series of thin tubes and dials that were connected to the face of the machine. Thick red, yellow, blue, and green lines charted the path of each tube, reminding Savi of a map of the Boston subway. The humming sound that had woken her was originating from this unit, caused by a single black turnstile spinning on top like a record player.

  As she followed the course of the tubes, she realized two went under the blanket. She wiggled her arms, once again feeling the stinging pain.

  "What are you doing to me?" she cried, then grimaced at the nasty metallic taste in her mouth.

  "Nothing life-threatening, I assure you," said the doctor, though there was nothing reassuring about the man. He picked up a glass of water with a straw in it and walked over, bringing with him the scent of vinegar. Her stomach churned, and she fought the urge to throw up.

  "Drink," he said. He held the straw in front of her lips, and once again Savi flashed back to Marcia's experiments.

  "Where's Ren?" she asked between sips. "Is he okay?"

  The doctor absentmindedly stretched his neck. "It's sedated."

  It. That didn't sound promising.

  As Savi washed the taste of pennies out of her mouth, the doctor gestured to the machine she was attached to. "This is an apheresis machine. It separates and removes certain components from your blood. It's a routine procedure, used all over the world; nothing to be concerned about."

  Perhaps because of the drugs they injected her with, Savi hadn't noticed in the ward how small and high his voice was. If someone were to hear his voice only, they would likely identify him as a preadolescent, struggling with his changing body. In fact, he looked like a child, with his small frame, sloping shoulders, and comically thick glasses. His eyes, however, gave him away. When he turned those swollen, distorted orbs on
her, even when he forced a smile, there was no innocence, no youth in them -- only hunger, malevolent and blood-curdling.

  "What do you want with my blood?" she asked.

  "As many of your questions can be answered will be," he said, "but first I must know: How does it work?"

  "How does what work?"

  His nose twitched as he shed the faint pretense of geniality he had worn since she woke up. He put the water down on the table behind him. "Wasting my time is unwise, veru malar. How does the hollowing work?"

  "Tell me where I am first," demanded Savi, "and who you are."

  Glowering, he said, "You are at a Zuun research facility. My name is Dr. Omar Temple."

  "Zuun?"

  "Answers, not questions," Omar snapped.

  "I don't know how it works," she said. "A werewolf bites me and they might unalter. That's it."

  "Might?" he said with a sneer.

  "I guess it depends on how long they were a werewolf before they bit me."

  "Stop talking about being bitten," he snarled. "How do you do it by touch?"

  "It doesn't work that way." Clenching her fists, the needles stabbed her from beneath her skin. "It only works by bite."

  He smiled, a faint, sinister grimace. "Now I know you're lying."

  "I'm not!"

  "Then explain this." The satisfaction in his tone made Savi shiver. Turning on the TV and DVD player mounted on the wall, he stood below it, watching Savi.

  A grainy color image of a small room, empty except for a covered cage, slid onto the screen. A running time stamp in the corner indicated that it was 11:36 PM. A door opened and a girl wearing a "Make Love Not War" t-shirt walked in. Savi gasped.

  It was her mom.

  The girl walking across the room was identical to the young Chloe in the photo of her and Monty on Savi's grandparents' porch. Her long blonde hair was tied back in a tight braid, same as when Savi had last seen her.

  Slowly removing the thin blanket that covered the cage, her mom revealed a muddy gray wolf beneath. The wolf jumped up and started growling, but the cage was too small for it to turn around. She started whispering to the wolf, her soft words lost under its rumbling growl.

  The camera zoomed in on her hands as she reached out and placed one on either side of the wolf's spine. The wolf tried to recoil, but there was nowhere to go. It jumped up and down, trying to shake off her touch, but the close up confirmed that her mom's hands remained nestled deep in its fur. The wolf started howling in pain. Savi turned away, but she couldn't block out the sounds.