The Hollowing (COYWOLF Series Book 2)

by Abby Tyson

  "Where are we?" she asked.

  "The utility room," said Hettie. "I know you're dealing with a lot right now, but I need your help finding where this cartridge goes. Can you help me find the main water pipe? Baxter said there should be some sort of device installed especially for this."

  "Where's my mom?" asked Savi, her breath coming fast and shallow.

  "Baxter's bringing her outside. Now focus, please, your plan to take Berto down depends on us. Can you help me?"

  Savi stared at her best friend. Hettie's face was red and wet with sweat. In the orange light that bathed everything around them, Hettie's hair was the only thing that looked like it should.

  I'm not alone. Hettie's here. I'm not alone.

  "Main water pipe," she said, nodding, "yes."

  They both started searching the myriad pipes until they found the largest one. They followed it deep into the back of the utility room, where the main pipe ended and began feeding into several smaller pipes. Above the junction where the small pipes began was a small contraption, made conspicuous by its glimmering cleanliness in the otherwise dull and dusty space. Hettie leaned over to get a better look at the mount, inadvertently blocking Savi's view. Savi began stepping over the main pipe, reaching out to steady herself against the wall. With a sharp cry, she immediately pulled her hand back.

  "What happened?" asked Hettie.

  "I almost put my hand on that pipe."

  They both read the bright yellow and red Warning! HOT WATER! Do not touch! sticker running up the length of the pipe. "Don't say it, please," said Savi.

  "I would never," she said, with just a hint of laughter in her eyes.

  Savi tried again, successfully making it to the other side of the main water pipe, and they both studied the mount. It looked simple enough, a metal rectangular frame with a short and thin spike poking out of its center, connected to a metal strap wrapped around the pipe. Judging from the set of wrenches on the floor, it had only been installed recently.

  "This must be where the cartridge goes," said Hettie, pointing to the frame. "The spike pierces it, and..." She peered straight down onto the mount, then below it. "...and the liquid must drip into the water supply through that rubber tube underneath."

  Hettie looked at Savi and gave a weak laugh. "It must be really weird that this is your blood," she said, holding the cartridge up.

  Savi felt the absurdity of it, but she couldn't bring herself to laugh, even weakly. "Very."

  Hettie's expression darkened as she studied the cartridge. It was a miniature version of a hard plastic storage crate, holding a thick plastic bag of Savi's blood inside.

  Except, the blood wasn't red -- it was a strange silver-green.

  "That doesn't look like blood," said Savi.

  "It's not," said Hettie, her voice ominous. "That's the silverblood -- your blood mixed with silver."

  "But that won't unalter the werewolves..." said Savi.

  "It will kill them," finished Hettie.

  They both started at the sound of footsteps running towards them. The room was too open to hide, so Hettie hopped over the pipe and crouched beside Savi.

  "Where's the gun?" whispered Savi. "Didn't Baxter give you a gun?"

  Hettie picked up a wrench and gave another to Savi. "I dropped it somewhere in the halls. It was empty anyway."

  Savi only had a moment to imagine what Hettie had protected her from in those deadly prison corridors before Second appeared. With her disheveled hair, bloody clothes, and fraught expression, Savi almost didn't recognize her. She regained a fraction of her composure when she saw them behind the pipe, though her smile was far from its bright self when she said, "Thank goodness you two are alright. What are you doing in here?"

  Although her motives were far from pure, Second could at least be counted on to want to protect the werewolves at the Den. Savi took the cartridge from Hettie and stood up, holding it out for Second to see.

  "The Zuun created a serum to kill werewolves," she said. "We need to destroy it."

  Second's mouth twitched as she raised her gun straight at Hettie. "We will do no such thing."

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Marley ran out of the elevator and back through the control room. As he threw the door open that led into the prison, he nearly knocked someone over on the other side.

  "Glenn!" he called.

  Glenn, who had spun around in retreat, looked over his shoulder. "Oh, good," he said, coming back over to Marley. "You made it to Berto's office?"

  "Yeah. Karis is still in her cell -- number 64, at the back end. Her wolf half is dead though."

  "Where's Lila?" Glenn asked.

  Marley didn't want to tell him about the necklace, but he also didn't want to paint Lila as a deserter. "Chasing Berto," he said. "Did you know that Savi and her mom are down here?"

  "No," said Glenn, his face grim. "That wasn't part of the plan."

  "I saw them with Baxter near the training room. I'll go there and you get Karis."

  Holding his hand out to stop Marley from leaving, Glenn said, "If they're with Baxter, then they're okay."

  "Are you serious? He's an Alter. I don't trust him."

  "I value Savi and Chloe's lives more than my own. Baxter has my full confidence."

  "I don't trust you either," said Marley, trying once more to get around him.

  Glenn blocked his way again. "I need your help getting Karis. The hollowing took a lot out of me. I'm stronger than I was, but there's no way I'll be able to carry her out of here, at least not by myself."

  When Marley took another step past him, Glenn said, "If you don't come with me, then all of this will have been for nothing."

  Marley spun around to face him. "If I don't save Savi, she and her mom could die!"

  "Baxter will get them out!" Glenn shouted back, losing his calm. "He's been a part of the plan from the beginning. He was the one who found the Zuun for us. Savi trusts him. If you don't trust him, or me, trust Savi."

  Do I trust Savi? Marley pushed away the question, not wanting to confront the answer.

  "Fine," he said, stepping right up to Glenn, "but if she dies, you die."

  Sadness washed over Glenn's face. "She's the most important thing in my life."

  The two of them darted into the maze of cell blocks, making their way as quietly and as quickly as they could into the prison's depths. The halls were littered with dead bodies of wolves and people -- both Zuun and Alter, but the dim corridors still sang out with gunshots and wolves howling, making it clear that their path to Karis would be far from easy.

  They tried to keep as straight a course as they could, going around cell blocks and finding a hall that seemed to correspond with the one that had been interrupted by the cells, but when a firefight erupted in front of them, they had to veer off course, and then a werewolf chased them down another path. They ended up by the outside perimeter of the prison, but unsure of which side.

  "Maybe we should split up," said Marley.

  Glenn shook his head. "We should stick together. Otherwise one of us could find her and the other wouldn't know."

  A group of Zuun soldiers appeared around a corner, stopping almost in front of the corridor Marley and Glenn were hiding in. The two of them started to creep away, when a woman's voice cut through the sound of distant gunfire.

  "Where is Sargent Boothby?" Second demanded.

  Why is Second talking to the Zuun guards like she's their commander?

  Marley put his hand on Glenn's arm to stop him from leaving. The Zuun were all quiet, but Marley could see their shadows looking around. "She's not here, Ma'am," one of them said.

  "I didn't ask where she isn't, I asked, where is she?"

  How Marley had grown to loathe that voice. Always so precise with her language, always so calm, with an edge of condescension. Just hearing it made his skin prickle with fear.

  "She must have fallen," said a guard.

  A crack of gunfire echoed through the hallway, and the Zuun guard's
shadow fell to the ground.

  "Boothby had our plan A," said Second, her voice smooth as ever. "Not that plan A was going particularly well, what with the idiot Alters opening the cells, but she was tasked with its most important component, and failed. So it's on to plan B. Less sophisticated, but effective."

  The Zuun shadows began removing their packs, but Marley couldn't tell what they were taking out, and he didn't dare peer around the corner.

  Second continued giving orders. "You, go get the girl in cell 64, back near the utility room. Team two was supposed to get her, but they've gone silent. We may have lost the coywolves, but we can still use her as leverage."

  Marley looked back at Glenn. He nodded, and they sneaked back around the cell to follow the footsteps that would lead them to Karis. As they crept past the group of Zuun, Marley saw what they had taken out of their packs.

  Dynamite.

  They followed the guards to the back of the prison, pulling guns off dead bodies on the way. Karis sat in her cell, miraculously unharmed by the chaos that surrounded her. As soon as the guards were about to step in, Marley and Glenn shot them both.

  Karis was sitting on her bed, uninterested in the men who had just fallen outside her cell. She continued rocking back and forth, and didn't even acknowledge Marley when he knelt in front of her. He could see her lips moving, but no sound was coming out.

  "I'm here to bring you to Nissa," he said.

  The girl closed her eyes and kept rocking and whispering. Marley leaned in to try and hear what she was saying, and then wished he hadn't.

  Over and over, she was saying, "I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead." Her face was lined with pain and trauma that didn't belong on a child.

  Glenn put a hand on Marley's shoulder. "Keep an eye out?" he said softly, taking Marley's place in front of Karis. Marley moved to the cell door, peering into the hall.

  "Karis," said Glenn, his voice was calm, and kind. "Karis, I'm a friend of Nissa. She misses you. Do you remember Nissa?"

  "Dead," said the girl's scratchy voice.

  "No," said Glenn. "She's alive. She's outside, right up there," he pointed at the ceiling, "waiting to be with you. She never gave up on you. Will you come with us to see her? To be with her again?"

  Marley thought he saw shadows moving down the hall. "Glenn," he warned.

  "Here, Marley." He turned to see Karis holding her arms out. He took her on his back and they all ran out of the cell.

  Instead of trying to chart a straight course through the zig-zag halls of the prison, they stayed as close to the perimeter as possible, knowing eventually it would lead to the main exit. The halls were quieter now, and though that meant they were less likely to run into crossfire, they also had to tread more lightly to avoid being detected by the Zuun guards setting explosives along the main perimeter corridors.

  They were close to the main door when they came upon a figure dragging a body. Marley started to circumvent the movement, but Glenn froze in front of him and started running towards it. The figure darted behind a cell block.

  "Baxter!" Glenn called, his voice bouncing off the metal walls.

  A head peered around the corner and a voice called back in a loud whisper, "Glenn?"

  Glenn disappeared, and when Marley caught up, he saw the two men in a warm embrace.

  "Oh my god," said Marley, seeing the body at their feet. "That's Savi's mom."

  "Chloe," Glenn gasped, crouching beside her and taking her pulse.

  "What happened to her?" Marley demanded, not bothering to hide his accusation.

  "She got shot, didn't she?" Baxter snapped. "The door in the training room was locked -- I don't know why if the graduates went up that way -- but we were going back to the main entrance and..." He trailed off, gesturing to her. "I swore to Savi I'd get her up top."

  "She's alive," Glenn said, pressing his hand to her clammy cheek, "barely."

  "She's a fighter," said Baxter. "I gotta get her past all these Zuun. Did ya see they're planting bombs all over? I almost went back for Savi and Hettie, but --"

  "Where's Savi?" Marley asked.

  "She and her friend are bringin' the vaccine to the utility room. I found it on a dead Zuun and was gonna do it myself when this happened." He gestured to Chloe. "The girls were stuck on the wrong side of a firefight, so I gave it to them, told 'em where to go, and started gettin' us outta here."

  All of them started at the sound of footsteps in a nearby hallway, but luckily they were moving farther away, not closer. Baxter bent over, tucking his hands under Chloe's arms again. "We gotta quit chit-chattin' and get outta this hell-hole."

  Marley knelt down and slid Karis off of his back. Turning to Glenn, he said, "I'm going back for Savi. You take her."

  Baxter hadn't noticed the girl until then. "Ya found the kid, eh? Good, good," he said.

  Glenn hesitated, but then he nodded and turned to Baxter. "Can you help get her on?"

  As Marley turned and started to run, Baxter called after him, "Bring her home, Steroids. She's one of the good ones."

  She's not just good, Marley thought, forcing the image of Savi and Ren from his mind, she's my soulmate.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Savi stared at the gun in Second's hand.

  "But this will kill werewolves," Hettie repeated.

  "I understand that," said Second. "Install it. Now."

  The pieces clicked together in Savi's mind. Her mom's blood sample... Omar's familiarity with Berto's operation... the Zuun's intimate knowledge of the underground prison.

  "You're the Zuun agent," said Savi.

  "Double agent, to be exact. There it is!" she laughed, pointing at Savi, "my favorite thing: people's expressions when they discover they're wrong."

  "So you're with the Zuun... and the Alters?" asked Hettie.

  "Miss Rosa, you're supposed to be smart. Which side does it look like I'm on right now?"

  Savi flashed back to before she'd been imprisoned, when she told Berto about the mole in his organization. "You were playing Berto," she said. "He thought you were double crossing the Zuun, but it's the other way around."

  "And even if he managed to get out of here alive, he's ruined after tonight." Second grinned, clearly relishing the idea. Cocking her gun, she said, "I won't ask again. Install the cartridge."

  "But you can't kill them!" cried Hettie. "They're people."

  Second fired a shot above their heads, making both Savi and Hettie dive back behind the pipe. A small jet of steam poured into the room from the burst pipe, giving Savi an idea.

  "They're abominations!" spat Second, looking uglier than Savi ever thought possible. "I've been living among these filthy unnaturals long enough."

  Half-hidden behind the large pipe, Savi gave Hettie a pointed look, eyeing the hot water pipe that she'd burned her hand on before. Hettie's eyes widened in fear, but then she nodded.

  "You have five seconds, and then I'm killing Miss Rosa," said Second. "One..."

  "Okay, I'm doing it," said Savi, praying that this worked. Considering how valuable the veru malar was to the Zuun, she was fairly certain Second wouldn't kill her, but Hettie could easily pay the price if Savi failed to get them out of there.

  "Two," said Second.

  Giving Hettie a nudge with her shoulder, she said, "Out of my way."

  "Three..."

  With Second's gun trained on her, Hettie slowly stepped over the pipe and stood beside the hot water valve. Savi, still holding a wrench, knelt and worked the cartridge into its mount, pressing hard against the spike inside.

  "Four..."

  Sending one more silent plea into the universe, Savi pulled the cartridge back out of the mount and whipped it at Second.

  "No!" cried Second, diving for the silverblood just as Savi hoped she would. Leaping over the pipe, Savi hammered down on the hot water valve with the wrench, sending a deadly jet of blistering water and steam between them and Second.

  As they ran for the exit, a gunshot went off behind them, and
a searing pain cut into Savi's shoulder, making her stumble. Hettie dragged her back up, and they made it out of the utility room, slamming the door behind them.

  "Did she shoot you?" asked Hettie, staring in dismay at Savi's bloody shoulder as they ran down the perimeter corridor.

  "Yeah," said Savi. She started to peel her hand away from the injury, but clamped it back down at the burning of air on exposed flesh. Through gritted teeth, she said, "I think it only grazed me though. This hurts -- a lot -- but I'm guessing having an actual bullet in you would be even worse."

  "Sounds like we're the last ones down here," said Hettie as they turned the corner. "That can't be good."

  Hettie was right. The halls were too quiet. The only evidence of the war zone from before were the dead bodies of both humans and wolves on the floor. Trying not to think about -- or step on -- the carnage at her feet, Savi kept her eyes on the end of the hall and allowed herself to believe they might actually escape this nightmare alive.

  They were about halfway up the corridor when someone leapt out of the darkness and slammed her against the wall. Bright spots of white burst like fireworks in front of her as she slid to the floor, and she was only dimly aware of something hard and cold pressing against her temple. She thought it was Second pinning her against the steel wall, until she heard a different voice whisper in her ear -- the voice from the shadows, the voice that haunted her dreams.

  "You," hissed Jameson, "aren't going anywhere."

  I'm dreaming. This is just another nightmare.

  "If you want to see her die," Jameson said to Hettie, "go ahead and stay. If not, you better start running."

  "But --"

  "Go, Hettie," said Savi, her voice sounding strange and distant to her own ears.

  "Savi!" her best friend sobbed.

  "Run!" Savi screamed. Hettie started backing away, and finally turned and ran down the corridor.

  Jameson dragged Savi to her feet and into the nearest cell, only to force her once again to her knees against the wall. Pressing her forehead against the smooth steel, she closed her eyes.