by Abby Tyson
"You're coming with us. We can't risk losing you."
The silver wolf growled. Ren took a step back.
"What's the other debt?" Marley asked.
"None of your concern," replied Nissa.
Irritated, Marley repeated his earlier question. "Why didn't you tell us you can talk to werewolves?"
"It doesn't work every time," she said simply, bumping against him as she walked between the two brothers, the silver wolf at her side.
Marley turned to Ren, his own dawning understanding of what they had just brazenly run into mirrored on his brother's face. Then, with a gaze up at the no longer full moon, he patted his brother on his good shoulder and limped after Nissa.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
"She's been out for hours. I don't think it's going to happen."
"Obviously. What remains to be seen is if she's affected at all after she's awake."
The whispered conversation tickled Savi's unconscious mind, luring her toward wakefulness.
"Ship her out, Mama," said Top. "I don't like Berto's way of doing things any more than you do, but he's said more than once to let him know if we come across one of these, and she's too much trouble for us. Let her be his problem."
Savi held her eyes closed, trying to keep her breathing steady as she listened.
"We still don't know for sure," said Marcia.
"What else could it be?"
Marcia was silent. Savi could feel them both staring at her and struggled to keep still.
"After she's awake," Marcia said finally, "not before."
"I'll go prep the van."
After Top's footsteps had disappeared, Marcia said, "I spent a lot of time with your father. Our families would go camping almost every weekend during the summer when he and Glenn were young."
She chuckled. "He was such a fish -- you couldn't get him out of the water. Memorial Day was always our first trip of the year, and even then Monty would dive in, the only one crazy enough to swim in the cold water, teeth chattering the whole time. Jackie would have to force him out by threatening to eat his lunch."
Savi watched the image of her young father emerging from the lake, shivering, a woman wrapping a towel around him and walking him to a picnic table.
"You can open your eyes, Savannah. If you hadn't already given yourself away before Thomas left, your smile would now." Savi opened her eyes.
"How are you feeling?" Marcia grabbed a glass of water and held it just far enough in front of Savi's mouth so the straw was out of reach. Savi reflexively licked her dry lips but didn't say anything.
"Water for answers," Marcia sang, wiggling the glass tauntingly.
Savi glared, but her parched mouth was too demanding. "Tired. Hungry. Thirsty. Human."
Marcia nodded, then put the straw in Savi's mouth. "I already took another blood sample. Your arms are going to be a bit bruised for the next week, I'm afraid, with all this poking around we've been doing."
Although she hated giving this woman anything that resembled satisfaction, Savi's thirst for understanding her father was stronger than her pride. "What were they like?" she asked. "My dad's parents?"
"Your grandparents?" Marcia put the glass back on the steel table behind her. "Didn't you know them?"
Keeping her voice as emotionless as possible, Savi said, "Monty left before I was born. I never knew him or anyone from his side of the family."
Marcia's mouth opened then closed in surprise. "But he was so doting on Chloe. If anyone was going to end that relationship I would have bet money that it was her."
"Well it wasn't," Savi snapped, laying her head back.
Marcia squinted at her in disbelief, then sighed. "Jackie and Louis Drake. Nice people. More devout than the crowd we typically ran with, but they didn't mind missing church for camping, as long as we had our own mini service, so we got along fine. Sunday morning they'd get out their hymnals and we'd all sing our favorite hymns, and Louis would read passages from the Bible that he'd selected." Marcia laughed. "Jackie had even convinced the priest to give her a stash of blessed wafers and wine that we could take for communion. No one could say no to your grandmother once she made her mind up."
"Do you know where they are now?"
Marcia shook her head. "After Monty was altered he spent most of his time with us. Jackie..." She trailed off, seeing the memory but not sharing it.
Savi waited as long as she dared, then whispered, "What?"
The corners of Marcia's mouth tucked into her cheeks, pressing her lips together in a slight frown. "On his thirteenth birthday, Monty decided he wanted to tell his parents what he'd become. He was proud of being a savior and wanted to share his new path with them."
Fearful that Marcia would stop talking, Savi forced herself not to scoff. Marcia eyed her for a moment, but continued.
"He brought them to the barn and they watched him alter. Jackie fainted. Louis ran outside, lost his dinner, lunch, and breakfast, then picked up his wife and peeled out of here. When my husband dropped him off the next morning, Monty's parents were terrible to him. They told him he was an evil demon, he was going to hell, we were all going to hell because we'd made a pact with the devil. Poor Monty ran all the way back sobbing and confused. He rarely went home after that. I'm pretty sure when he did go home Louis beat him, but Monty never admitted it. Within about a year he came to live with us for good. His parents moved away shortly after. I don't know if he ever saw them again."
Marcia's eyes were wet, but she blinked back the tears. "I'll go check on Thomas."
Out of both her longing to know her father and her fear of where Marcia was sending her, Savi quicky asked, "What was he like? My dad?"
Standing by the stool, Marcia looked down at Savi, her expression wavering between sympathetic and stubborn.
Stubborn won.
"You gave up the right to my memories when you chose to sabatoge our mission."
"Where are you sending me?" Savi asked, her voice still hoarse. Marcia didn't respond.
Savi dropped her head in frustration. Only then did she notice that the bed beside her was empty. "Where's George -- I mean Glenn?"
"Glenn's experiment was successful."
"What does that mean? Where is he?"
Without another word, Marcia climbed the ladder, shutting the heavy hatch door behind her.
Savi's body ached all over, but she jerked as hard as she could against the cuffs still holding her to the bed. Unsurprisingly, they didn't give. She groaned and lay back against the bed, praying for rescue.
Who's going to rescue you? a voice in her head sneered. Your father's dead, your mom is curled up with her boyfriend, Marley hates you, Ebony and Pearl lied to you, and your best friend is pissed at you and currently a wolf. Maybe there's a reason you're here. Maybe this is your path after all.
"No," Savi said to the empty laboratory, refusing to accept that her only purpose in life was to be a lab rat for self-righteous, amoral crazies.
Maybe when they bring me outside, I can run.
Savi's escape plans were interrupted by soft footsteps on the ladder. Expecting Marcia or Top, her fear skyrocketed when she saw Jameson climbing down -- with a gun in his hand.
"Jameson?" Savi shouted, hoping someone upstairs would hear. "Where's Marcia?"
"She's outside talking with Top and Baxter," he said, hurrying to her bedside. "The Gabes are picking through their burnt cabin."
"Help!" Savi screamed, yanking in vain on her cuffs once more.
Jameson shoved the gun into her throat. "I locked the hatch. They can't hear you." Keeping the gun against her, Jameson lowered his face to the crook of her neck and inhaled deeply.
"What are you doing?" she cried, squirming away from him as much as she could.
He pulled away and undid the buckle on Savi's wrist. Unsure if she should be grateful or terrified, she started unbuckling her other wrist. "Why are you doing this?" she asked.
Keeping the gun trained on her, he took a few steps back an
d said, "You can't run if you're strapped to a bed."
Her hand froze. "Run?"
"Free yourself."
Although Savi desperately wanted to believe Jameson was helping her escape, the enmity seared in his eyes made his motive all too transparent, if not his actions.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"Shut up. If you're not on the floor in ten seconds I'll shoot you. One, two, three..."
Savi raced to unbuckle her ankles. Her legs nearly gave out when she landed on the floor.
"Good. Now go in that corner." Jameson gestured with the gun to the corner diagonally opposite from the ladder. As Savi moved, Jameson walked slowly to the center of the room, his gun never leaving her.
Savi eyed the ladder. Being locked up in a van was preferable to being locked up in the basement with this armed lunatic. Maybe if she kept Jameson talking one of the others would find the locked door and get Marcia to talk him out of this.
"Why are you doing this?" she repeated.
"You may have killed my wolf on the outside, but I know he still lives in me." He lowered the gun onto one of the tables and started walking backwards toward the ladder. "I want to find out how much."
"What do you mean?" The walls were cold against Savi's bare arms. Her whole body started shivering uncontrollably.
Jameson glared at her from across the room, then leaned against the wall, taking off his shoes. "On the count of three, I'm coming for you."
"What!" Hardly believing this was real and not another hallucination from Marcia's drugs, Savi asked, "Why are you taking off your shoes?"
"One." He leaned forward, preparing to spring.
Her hands, slippery with sweat, clung to the wall. "Are you serious?" She could barely talk through her clenched throat and empty breaths. "But I didn't know what would happen when you bit me! I still don't know what happened. It's not my fault you're not a wolf -- it's Marcia's fault!"
"Two." He slowly lifted his hand and put it on the light switch beside him.
"Help!" Savi screamed. She searched the steel table for the gun. Was that supposed to be a defense for her, or was it a race? "Three and then run?" she asked, nearly hyperventilating. "Or run on three?"
The lights clicked off.
"Three."
Chapter Thirty
The room was silent and black. If Jameson was moving toward her, she couldn't hear it.
That's why he took off his shoes, Savi realized. This guy is insane!
Paralyzed by fear and indecision, she stood rooted to the floor. Should she go for the gun? Or should she run for the ladder?
A whisper of a sound pricked the deadly stillness. Savi had no idea what it was, or if the sound was even real or imagined, but the jolt of fear that it caused was real enough, pushing her over the edge and into action. Quieting the primal need to run, Savi took a creeping step along the back wall.
The squawk from her sneakers was probably nowhere near as loud as it seemed, but in the noiseless tomb of a laboratory it was a dead giveaway of her position. There were no thoughts this time, no weighing of strategies -- every muscle within Savi's body sang with the same imperative: LIVE!
Given no choice but to succumb to instinct, Savi bolted. Her hand, trailing along the table so she wouldn't collide with the wall ahead, bumped into something. A crash of glass behind her was followed almost instantly by gasps and cries of pain from Jameson.
He had been a lot closer than Savi suspected. There was no way she'd make it up the ladder without Jameson reaching her. He was too fast.
The table ended. Keeping her hand on its edge, Savi rounded the corner. She reached out with her other hand and found the second table. Picturing it as it had been before the lights went off, she took a few steps and frantically started searching blindly for the gun.
She bumped a few more glass beakers, a few of them tipping over with a crack that made Savi jump. Her hand closed around something rectangular at the same time that she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. By the pale, miniscule orange glow of a power strip against the wall to her left, she thought she could just barely make out a black shape moving toward her in the dark emptiness.
Grabbing the gun, she dragged her arm against the tabletop and threw more glass beakers in Jameson's path. With the table as her guide, she ran down the aisle, hoping to make it to the ladder. A thump sounded behind her, then a howl. But this wasn't a cry of pain. This sound, coming from near the ceiling, was wild, savage, and full of joy.
As she rounded the end of the table, in the corner by the beds, her hand swept against something. From the wide, metallic clatter that resounded through the lab as it crashed against the wall and onto the floor, Savi guessed it was the tray Marcia had used.
"I can almost remember."
Savi jumped away from the table at Jameson's growling voice, nearly on top of her. Her back bumped into one of the beds. She hunched, walking backwards, getting as far away from the table as she could.
"The memory of a taste," he said, his voice still hovering near the dark fluorescent lights.
The gun clanged against a metal support bar under the bed, reminding Savi that she held it. She felt the unyielding concrete behind her and realized too late that trapping herself in the corner, surrounded by walls and a hospital bed, was a terrible idea. One of the leather straps brushed against her arm, and Savi almost longed for the time when she'd been bound by it. Self-righteous sociopath that Marcia was, Savi would have traded her for murderous wolf-boy in an instant.
A soft slapping sound told her that said wolf-boy had jumped down from the table. Savi clutched the gun in both hands. She'd never even held a gun before, let alone fired one, but as the smooth curve of the trigger cradled her index finger, the same tingling sensation ran over her body that she'd felt when Eric had knelt in front of her.
Power.
The ghost of a silhouette moved in front of her. She couldn't escape without going through him. She raised the gun to where his chest probably was, but after a split-second lowered it to his legs. Closing her eyes, she pulled the trigger.
The soft click of the empty chamber was deafening.
Jameson let out a breathy laugh.
Hands shaking, Savi fired again. And again.
Nothing. She was powerless.
His laughter grew to a cascade of voiceless pops that sounded disturbingly like the useless gun in her hands.
Fear, rage, and adrenaline surged through Savi, leaving no room for rationality.
"You honestly thought --"
She hurtled forward, cutting off Jameson's taunt by ramming into him. They both fell to the ground, with Savi on top, striking with the gun and her fist at any part of him that she could feel.
A sharp pain burned across her cheek as Jameson groped for her wrists. She yanked back her left hand before he could get a good grip, but the one holding the gun was trapped in his fist. His other hand wrapped around the same forearm, doubling his grip on her. Savi heaved her whole body backwards, but Jameson held firm, and she screamed into the darkness as he bit into her.
Her fist found his temple and he let go. Suddenly off balance, Savi fell backwards, the gun flying from her grip as she tried to break her fall.
She landed on top of the metal tray. Her right hand tingled, almost numb from his bite. Without thinking, Savi grabbed the tray and tried to get to her feet, but Jameson was too quick, his hands locking around her ankles. She slammed the tray down as hard as she could, making contact with something sensitive enough for Jameson to let out a wail and loosen his grip. Kicking herself free, she ran toward the ladder, clutching the steel tray.
"No!" Jameson screeched, still on the floor by the beds.
Her eyes had adjusted enough that she could see the shape of the ladder ahead. In the space of a second, Savi had to decide whether to attempt to scramble up the ladder in time, or try to knock Jameson out.
"No!" He screamed again, this time upright and moving closer. His footfalls weren't so sile
nt anymore.
Savi ran to the end of the table and crouched behind it, steel tray at the ready. She could see him coming at her, which meant he had probably seen her hide, but he didn't slow down. A second later he was nearly on her. She jumped up, throwing her weight behind the tray as she swung it at his face.
An alarming crack echoed off the walls. Jameson cried out, covering his face with his hands. She struck his neck and knees with the edge of the tray, and then thrust it into his stomach, shoving him backwards until he fell to the floor. Tossing the tray across the table, she ran for the ladder, flipped on the lights, and fled. Jameson cried out from the sudden brilliance. Savi was blinded momentarily as well, but with the ladder safely beneath her, all she needed to focus on was unlocking the hatch and forcing the heavy thing open.
No one was in Marcia's apartment. After slamming the door shut on Jameson's pained howls, Savi ran for the door to the werewolf room and threw it open, her mind still clouded by adrenaline. Top was on the other side walking in her direction, and cried out when he saw her. Savi slammed the door shut and sprinted for the door, but Marcia and Baxter were already opening it from the outside. She spun back around but ran straight into Top. Within seconds he had her arms pinned painfully behind her.
"Let me go!" she shrieked, feeling as crazed as Jameson.
"What in the world?" Marcia asked. With a laugh, she said, "Anxious for your road trip, are we?"
"What's this?" asked Top, tapping her bloody arm.
Baxter tilted her head up to inspect her cheek. "How'd you do that?" he asked.
Panting, Savi jerked her chin out of his hands.
"Where's Jameson?" Marcia asked, searching the apartment.
Savi glanced back at the hatch, which was still closed. When she looked back up at Baxter, his brow was furrowed in disbelief.
"Jimbo did this to you?" he asked.
She nodded, her legs shaking. The anger and adrenaline that had fueled her escape from the lab were shriveling up too rapidly, leaving her exhausted.
"Let me take a look," Marcia muttered, heading toward the hatch.