The Hollowing (COYWOLF Series Book 2)

by Abby Tyson

  "You'll want to watch this," Omar warned.

  Savi ignored him. It reminded her too much of her nightmares. The shrieks of pain morphed from a wolf howling to a man screaming. Peeking at the screen, she saw that the camera had panned back out, enabling full view of the last of the gray fur disappearing into the man's body. Only when he stopped crying for mercy did her mom let go, and the man collapsed onto the floor of the cage.

  But she was so confused when I told her about being veru malar, thought Savi, remembering their conversation on the way to the airport. There's no way she already knew.

  The camera zoomed in on her mom, who had turned to look directly at it, tears streaming down her cheeks. Savi caught her breath as she realized the woman in the video wasn't Chloe. The face was almost her mom's, same bright blue eyes and high cheekbones, but the lips were thinner, and the yellow hair had a slight wave to it that her mom's thin, straight hair would never hold.

  It's not possible. My mom's adopted.

  "I am Lavender, veru malar," the girl said, her voice smaller than Chloe's, "and this is the --" She looked questioningly off camera. Someone muttered something, and she continued, "-- the twelfth successful demonstration."

  Savi stared at the black screen, now showing her nothing but her own reflection. The only sound in the room was the whirring of the apheresis machine, sucking her blood like a vampire.

  "Who was that?" asked Savi.

  "Don't insult my intelligence --"

  "She looks just like my mom," Savi shouted. "Who is she?"

  Perhaps taken aback by her panic, Omar lowered his voice. "She said her name."

  "Is that my --" she stopped, unable to say it.

  Omar said it for her. "Your grandmother."

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Savi refused to say another word until Omar played the video again. Doing her best to ignore the tortured cries of the wolf and man, she kept her eyes on the screen throughout, focusing on Lavender.

  Her Grandma Claudie -- Loretta, as Savi had known her -- had always been elusive and vague about her life from before she met Savi's grandpa, saying she hadn't truly lived until she met him. Although that romantic sentiment satisfied the rest of her family, it had always left Savi wanting. Savi had never even seen a picture of her grandma from before meeting her grandpa, but Grandma Claudie's aversion to being photographed was a running gag in the family -- she'd even banned cameras at her wedding -- so at least that had made sense. Now, staring into the tearful face that was too much like her mom's to deny the lineage, Savi wondered how any of them had ever believed the lie.

  "My mom wasn't adopted." She said it to herself, coming to terms with the truth, but Omar answered.

  "Adopted?" he asked, turning the TV off.

  "That's what my grandparents told everyone. That's what my mom thinks."

  He lifted a clip board from the end of her bed and jotted something down.

  "No," he said, "the veru malar trait runs from mother to firstborn daughter. We have DNA samples from four of you now, and you and your mother are without a doubt direct descendants of Lavender and her mother Aurora."

  "Aurora," Savi whispered. The name lingered on her lips and rolled on her tongue, somehow familiar.

  "You were unaware that your grandmother was veru malar?" asked Omar, not bothering to hide his skepticism.

  "Obviously," snapped Savi, trying to follow the ghostly thread that whispered of a long-slumbering memory of her great-grandmother.

  Pursing his lips at her disdain, he said, "That video is one of fifteen that she made at our Salt Lake facility while in Zuun custody in 1967."

  His penetrating voice wouldn't let her focus, and she gave herself up to the present. "Like I'm in your custody?"

  "How do you know you're veru malar if your grandmother didn't train you?" he asked, ignoring her.

  "Train me?" Savi scoffed. "Grandma Claudie all but disowned my mom for getting pregnant with me. I hardly knew anything about her -- as you may have already surmised."

  Savi's arm twitched, and the corresponding jolt of pain fanned the flames of her anger. "Let me out of here! Get these things off of me!"

  Flinching from her loud voice in the small space, he moved to the side of her bed and lifted the blanket back from her leg.

  "What are you doing?" asked Savi, automatically recoiling from his touch, and paying for it by a shockwave of pain up her spine.

  "Inspecting Hazel's work," he said, pressing clammy hands above and below her sore knee. "Clean, precise -- you won't even be able to see the incision in a month." He replaced the cover, a corner of his mouth turned up in a smug smile. "Although you'll feel the implant every now and then -- probably when the humidity's high."

  "Implant?"

  Prep her for surgery, he'd said.

  He went back to the table and started typing at his laptop. "Lavender escaped because her keepers were too trusting," he said. "I'm not making the same mistake with you. In your knee is your shackle, in the form of a device known as a perforating gun. Larger versions are used in hydraulic fracturing, but --"

  "Fracking?!?"

  He glared at her interruption, but nodded. "This version contains microscopic explosives, and is designed to set off beneath your kneecap, rendering you incapacitated; only at my command, of course."

  Savi looked down at her knee with a sickening terror. "You're lying."

  "Please, test it."

  It was almost hard to take him seriously as he spoke. He seemed too young to be talking about such gruesome things. But when he turned those icy, heartless eyes on her, Savi didn't doubt that he was speaking the truth.

  "You're too valuable to kill," he said, "but you'd be a lot easier to handle with only one leg."

  "You can't do this to people," she said, becoming more agitated with every word. "You can't just shoot people and lock them up and put a bomb in them! You can't do this!"

  "We have to do this," he said, "it's a moral imperative."

  Great, another psycho zealot convinced he's doing the right thing. What is wrong with these people?!?

  "Now," he said, "answer my question: How do you know you're a hollow one?"

  Savi lay her head back with a frustrated moan, trying to calm herself. She needed to get out of these cuffs. She couldn't do anything until she was free, and they certainly weren't going to let her go if she kept acting like a caged animal.

  "I didn't know anything about werewolves or being a hollow one until a week and a half ago when a group of Alters kidnapped me. They forced me to succumb to a werewolf's bite. I didn't alter, but the wolf was hollowed."

  "Where was this?"

  Savi let out a steadying breath, still teetering on the edge of losing her temper. "In Massachusetts, right next to October Mountain State Forest."

  His head snapped up from the screen. "The Solas compound?" he asked, his voice nearly squeaking with eagerness.

  "Marcia, yeah, but from what I understand, she's since moved."

  With a grin he began typing, and Savi took advantage of the break.

  "So what are the Zuun?" she asked. "What does that symbol on your jacket mean?"

  "The symbol is an obsolete holdover from the dogma of the Zuun founders," he said, venom dripping from every word.

  Sensitive topic much?

  "What do the Zuun do?" she asked.

  Other than kidnap, murder, and maim people, that is.

  "Our purpose is identical to yours," he said. "We eliminate the unnatural, working in direct opposition to groups like the Alters," he sneered with disgust, "which would kill humanity in its blind efforts to save it. With your help, we will take down the Alters, and provide those whom they've sentenced to death a fresh start."

  The memory of Omar dropping Kofi's arm like it was moldy garbage, and the way he kept referring to Ren as it, made Savi doubt he was interested in saving anyone but humans.

  "We've successfully dismantled several Alters facilities," he continued, "but like the vermin they are,
they simply reappear elsewhere. In fact, the Zuun owe you a debt of gratitude." His cold, unsmiling expression gave no indication of thankfulness. "We've been trying to cripple Marcia's base for some time. It may appear to be a tiny, family-run operation, but behind that quaint barn and all the others like it is one man with a lot of power and a lot of money -- someone you and your mother are already acquainted with." He gave Savi a knowing look.

  "Berto," she whispered.

  He nodded, getting up to slowly pace the tiny room. "Herberto Almeida has connections to governments and criminal organizations in this country and abroad. He funds about sixty percent of the budgets of all of the Alters facilities in the United States. If he goes down, his entire network goes down with him." Staring down at her, he added, "And now the male coywolf tells me that's where you're headed."

  Savi didn't like where this was going. "I thought you said Ren was sedated."

  "We were able to retrieve some useful information from it between blackouts," he said ominously. "The veru malar and the Zuun are natural allies, both born to set the skewed scales of unnaturals and humanity aright."

  He went back to pacing, no longer talking to her, his passion and inner thoughts overwhelming him. "The veru malar holds a sacred place in the Zuun mythos, misguided and distracting as it is. You will bring our factions together, unite us in the common dream of using science to eliminate the scourge. You will be the key to our victory."

  The room was filled by a heavy silence, drawing Omar out of himself. He turned to the apheresis machine as if it had betrayed him. "The process is complete," he said, switching it off and pulling the needles out of her arm.

  Leaning over her and pushing up his slipping glasses, he said, "We can help each other."

  Trying not to squirm at his nearness, she asked, "How can you help me?"

  "The Alters are not the only ones with a long reach. Not only could we help extract your mother, Dr. Khan, and Karis from the Den, but you and your mother -- and Dr. Khan as well, if he wished -- would have your pick of any Zuun location around the world, far out of reach of any renegade werewolves."

  How about just letting us go?

  "In exchange for what?" she asked.

  Omar wet his lips. "A few hours every few months, giving more blood for my experiments, helping me find a cure for those victims of Anwi's curse."

  Savi may have been tempted to agree to his terms, had she not seen the cruel indifference with which the Zuun treated those victims. And the fact that they had implanted a bomb in her knee as assurance of her cooperation made it clear that he wasn't actually giving her a choice at all.

  But if she was going to get out of there, she needed to play along, so she said, "I have to talk to my mom about it."

  Shutting his mouth, which had been hanging open slightly throughout their conversation, he walked over to the door and knocked. Sunlight streamed in as two guards entered, and Savi realized for the first time that the room she was in was windowless.

  "What's going on?" asked Savi, seeing the wheelchair the guards rolled over to the bed.

  The guards began unbuckling the cuffs on her wrists and ankles as Omar packed up his computer.

  "We're going to conduct an experiment," he said.

  "On me?"

  "No, no," said Omar as the guards lifted her into the wheelchair, "on the coywolves."

  The experiment turned out to be harmless, with Savi attempting to unalter an unconscious Lila by touch while she was human. Although Savi had touched Marley plenty of times and he remained very much a coywolf, after seeing her grandmother hollow without being bitten, Savi was worried that somehow she had been successful. Savi didn't know Lila at all, but if Ren and Marley were any indication, Lila valued her coywolf identity, and having that part of her ripped away would be almost as painful as Nissa losing her wolf half.

  Her fears were allayed, however, when one of the guards who stood outside her door at all times brought in her dinner. He gave her a message from Omar, saying that the experiment had failed, and Savi was to review the videos of all of Lavender's demonstrations in anticipation of the next phase of the test. Although the temptation to see her young grandmother again was strong, she didn't have the will to endure more tortured screams. So, despite knowing that it was a waste of time, Savi searched for a way to escape. Even if she did somehow find a way out of the trailer, she wouldn't get very far with a leg she couldn't put any weight on. And attempted escape would definitely be at the top of Omar's list of reasons to blow her kneecap off. In the end it didn't matter; the walls were airtight, the only opening in them a shoebox-sized vent. There were no windows and no way of getting out.

  The only constructive part of the trips to the lab was getting a better idea of where she was. When they wheeled her out of her room, she discovered that hers was one of about a dozen trailers scattered across a large sandy lot. Most of the cars parked in the lot were far away, but one was close enough for Savi to distinguish the Virginia plates. A long dirt road led to another road up on a hill, on which tractor trailer trucks rumbled to and fro. Although the trees that surrounded the lot blocked her view of where the main road led, in the distance she had seen the tips of metal towers jutting above the woods in both directions.

  Savi made her way back across the room. Her own clothes had been taken from her, and she'd been wearing nothing but a hospital gown all day. Feeling even more like their prisoner, Savi painfully put on the baggy pajama shorts and t-shirt that had been provided for her in the dresser. The medical bed had been removed and switched with a regular twin bed during the second experiment, but she couldn't help imagining cuffs appearing magically to trap her the minute she lay down. Tentatively she sat on the edge, then gingerly lifted her legs up. When nothing sprang out to restrain her, she put her head on the pillow.

  At least Nissa isn't here to make me turn off the light.

  Watching the second hands tick by on the wall clock, she thought about her mom, and how worried she probably was. Savi had missed two check-ins, and her mom definitely would have called Marley by now. There was no way he could keep the fact that Savi was missing from her. What would she do?

  What about Marley himself? Was he okay? He hadn't shown up with the rest of the coywolves. Had he simply lost his way again overnight? A shudder ran through Savi as she considered the possibility that he had been captured too. Who said the Zuun had to keep all the coywolves in the same place? Could Marley be in one of the other trailers? Savi's mom would be even more panicked if she couldn't reach Marley either.

  Savi thought of the long conversation she and Marley had shared on the way to Roanoke. It had felt so good, so natural, just talking to him, without any of the pressure of getting physical. She had tried to focus the conversation on him, but he kept asking her questions about her childhood and her mom and Hettie, as if her mundane life as a regular human were as fascinating to him as his superhero coywolf existence was to her.

  It was nearly midnight when the door to her trailer opened. Savi expected to see Omar, but instead Hazel was slipping through with the wheelchair. Someone -- it must have been one of the guards -- reached in and closed the door softly behind her.

  "Don't you think it's a little late for another experiment?" asked Savi.

  Hazel quickly rolled the wheelchair to Savi's bedside. "Sit up," she said, reaching down for Savi's arm. "I'm getting you out of here."

  "What?" Savi jerked her arm away, and was surprised to see Hazel flinch. "You're the one who brought me here."

  "I didn't know it was you," she said, strangely apologetic. "If I had known back in Pennsylvania that you were the veru malar," she lowered her eyes as she said the words, "I could have avoided all of this. Not that I'm blaming you," she added quickly.

  Savi was as confused by Hazel's sudden deferential manner as she was by her rescue attempt. "Will you take me back to Roanoke?"

  "We'll talk about it after," she said, this time offering her arm instead of grabbing Savi's. "We'll get caught
if we don't go now."

  "What about the explosives in my leg?"

  "I would never do that to you," Hazel said, making what Savi would have called a slight bow if that weren't too ridiculous of a thing for Hazel to do. "I made the incision, but that was only to fool Omar. I didn't actually implant anything. You're not our prisoner, I know that."

  Still unsettled by Hazel's behavior, Savi didn't entirely believe her about the explosives, but if this was her best shot to escape, she was going to take it. She put her arm around Hazel's shoulders and lowered herself into the wheelchair. Hazel knocked softly, and the door opened. Only one of the guards stood outside, helping to lower Savi to the ground.

  "What about the coywolves?" asked Savi. "Are Ren and Lila the only ones here? Are there others in any of these trailers?"

  "The three with you in the lab were the only ones we brought here," whispered Hazel as she closed the door behind them.

  "We have to get Ren and Lila out," said Savi. The guard tilted the chair back and they started racing across the lot. "I won't leave without them," she added, raising her voice when neither of them replied.

  Hazel hushed her. "Omar's in there with them," she said, running along beside Savi's chair. "He'll be in there for hours, but the rest of the guards will be back soon. I sent them to the other side of the site."

  "Perfect," said Savi. "Then you can take Omar out and we'll get the coywolves and go."

  "We don't have time," Hazel snapped, sounding more like her regular self. Immediately she cast frightened eyes on Savi and said, "My apologies. What I mean is we need to go now if we're going to get you to safety."

  They were already halfway across the lot. The only windows in the lab where Ren and Lila were being held were the skylights, and an eerie glow floated above the trailer. Omar was in there, conducting who knew what type of dreadful experiments on Ren and Lila. Savi couldn't abandon them.