by Jen Haeger
This was really not the way to do this, but they were out of time. David whined softly to remind her of the sun’s imminent arrival, and Evelyn thought, it’s now or never. She grasped the end of the branch that was most badly splintered with both hands and looked at David. He gripped the woman tightly and Evelyn jerked hard on the branch, wrenching it from the woman’s abdomen. Blood immediately began to pour from the holes that were left behind. Evelyn dropped the stick and started to tie the bandages tightly around the woman’s torso adding extra sheet pieces directly over the wounds to soak up the blood and create more pressure at those points.
The woman’s body began to twitch then went into a seizure as David tried to keep her on the table. The change had started for the woman, and an instant later Evelyn was also on the floor wracked with pain. David was able to hold onto the woman for another minute, but then had to let her go as his own change took place. It took Evelyn longer than usual to recover and David went and got her a shirt from the bedroom after first checking that the woman was still breathing. Even though they had eaten well, the previous sleepless night and the effort it had taken to move the boulder to free the woman and to carry her back to the cabin had taken their toll, and Evelyn was utterly exhausted. Also looking haggard, David knelt beside her and handed her the shirt. She shrugged into it still lying on the floor and David frowned at her as he put on his own shirt. He then got a glass of water and helped Evelyn to sit up and drink some.
Evelyn took a few small sips. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into a bed and sleep for an entire day, but she knew that the woman on the table might be dying, so she forced herself to stand, leaning heavily on David for support. The woman was tall and rather well-endowed. She had curly blond hair that fell to her shoulders in ringlets that matched well with her pug nose and somewhat pudgy cheeks giving her a look that could modestly be called cute, and truthfully called adorable. She had a faint tan left over from the previous summer and was well-muscled even in human form. Evelyn guessed that she was in her mid to late twenties.
Evelyn sent David into the lab to get a couple of sterile gowns and one of the large bottles of ethanol along with a scalpel blade while she checked the woman’s vitals. She was breathing steadily and her pulse was a little weak, but thankfully, it was steady. Evelyn lifted the woman’s lip and checked the color of her gums. Then she pressed on her gums for a few seconds and released the pressure to get a rough idea of how anemic the woman was due to the blood loss. The pale pink tissue turned white and took about three seconds to refill with blood and turn pink again, which was longer than normal.
Evelyn fervently wished that they had more than a rudimentary first aid kit around. She did have some suture materials in the kit, but you normally didn’t stitch puncture wounds closed because they were too deep and dirty. When Evelyn was satisfied that the woman was not in immediate danger of dying, she undid one of the bandages and inspected the wound, curious to see what it looked like after the change. It wasn’t as bad as she had feared and the bleeding had ebbed considerably. Evelyn marveled at the possibility that the change may have actually aided in healing the wound by constricting the injured blood vessels. When David came back with the supplies she had asked for, she sent him back to retrieve some ice packs as well for helping to slow the bleeding. Then Evelyn covered the woman’s upper body with one of the gowns and went to work on cleaning out and redressing the wound. She used the scalpel blade mainly to remove severely injured tissue from the edges of the wound that would have died anyway and hindered the healing process. David returned in the middle of her work.
“How is she doing?” he asked tentatively.
“Not bad. Not great of course, but not too bad. I think she’s going to be fine,” Evelyn replied absently.
She finished her work on the entry wound and then had David tilt the woman on her side, so that she could do the same to the exit wound. After she had cleaned and rebandaged both wounds and packed some ice packs around them, she turned her attention to the woman’s legs. She was wearing athletic pants and Evelyn could easily feel the structure of her legs underneath the lightweight material. She palpated both legs thoroughly and came to the conclusion that the bones were not broken. She then checked the woman’s pulse in her ankles and it was weak, but present. Evelyn didn’t think that there would be any permanent damage, but they would have to wait for confirmation on possible nerve damage until the woman woke up.
Evelyn thought that she might fall over if she stood up for too much longer, so she said, “I think that’s all I can do for her right now. Help me to move her to the couch, and then I have to lie down for a while.”
David shook his head, “I’ll move her.”
Evelyn was too tired to argue, so she just shrugged as he reached over and swept the woman up into his arms and moved her swiftly over to their modest couch. Evelyn helped to situate her and repack the icepacks and then got one of their few extra blankets and placed it over her. Evelyn looked down at the unconscious woman wearily.
“What if she’s a Vulke?”
David didn’t answer right away. “I don’t think she smelled like a Vulke,” he said carefully.
“But we really have no way of knowing, do we? What if she was hunting us? What if she wakes up and tries to kill us?”
David had no answer.
Evelyn suddenly thought of something. “Check her pockets.”
“What? Why?”
“Check for weapons…or an I.D,” Evelyn insisted.
David frisked the woman’s pockets and pulled out a wallet, a set of car keys, and a cell phone. He opened the wallet and removed her driver’s license from the I.D. pouch. The name on it was Kimberly Reece Panders and it was a Tennessee license. The address listed on the front was familiar to David and Evelyn as it was in a small town they remembered driving by on their way to the car park, but there was a sticker on the back with a different address in Knoxville. Inside the wallet were also a few credit cards and a grad student identification card from the University of Tennessee. Evelyn relaxed a little. She doubted that the Vulke would bother to either falsify identification like a student I.D. card or else plant an operative who was a graduate student. But still…
“Can you watch her while I take a nap?” she asked David.
He nodded. “Of course I will. You get some sleep. I’ll wake you if anything happens. Or she wakes up.”
Evelyn nodded. “Thanks.”
Evelyn barely had enough presence of mind to take her boots off before she fell onto the naked mattress of the recently ransacked bed. If she isn’t a Vulke, and Clem said that there weren’t any Wahya living in Tennessee, than who is this woman? Evelyn thought just before she fell into a deep, fatigued sleep.
20
Allen awoke with the taste of blood in his mouth. He felt sore and cold. Attempting to move, he realized that he was on a hard, concrete surface. What the hell? he thought. Opening his eyes, he saw a pale and dingy light, barely illuminating the room around him. He was on his stomach on the floor of a small room with bare concrete walls. From the cool dankness, Allen guessed that he was in a basement. Swallowing hard, he felt something constricting his neck and rolled over bringing his hands up to his throat. His fingers closed around some kind of large, bulky collar that was uncomfortably pinching his skin.
Allen let out an exclamation of fear and befuddlement and immediately was hit with a jolt of electricity from the collar, which caused him to shout again and receive a second shock. After the second electrocution, he lay quiet, twitching on the floor. Reaching for the collar again, he frantically tried to get it off his neck. He felt the buckle, but he couldn’t get the straps to pull through. Upon further examination with his fingertips, he found that the nylon straps of the collar had been melted together such that it was impossible to remove without cutting it off.
Confusion gave way to panic and Allen struggled to gain his feet, but something tugged at his leg and he clumsily fell back onto the floor. The room s
pun wildly and he turned his head just in time to not vomit down his front. It took Allen a few minutes to recover from the retching enough to look down at his leg. There was a chain attached to it by a padlocked shackle around his ankle. His gaze followed the chain to a simple metal ring bolted to the floor. The panic swelled inside Allen’s chest again and he grasped the chain and pulled with all his might, adding intermittent violent jerks. The chain was thick and the bolts secure to the floor, so he dropped the chain and his hands flew to the shackle. Allen prodded and clawed at it, but it was so tight around his pant leg that he couldn’t even get his fingers underneath it. He yanked at the padlock, and finally in desperation flung off his shoe and sock and tried to slide the shackle over his foot. He succeeded in shifting the metal band down his leg about half an inch and then gritted his teeth as the edge got caught on his ankle bones and began to bite painfully into his flesh. Struggling with his bond for several more minutes, Allen finally stopped when the agony in his ankle became too much to endure.
Tears of frustration began to form in the corners of his eyes and he hastily wiped them away with the side of his arm. It was at that moment that Allen noticed that he was naked from the waist up. His torso was coated with dust from the floor but also smeared with dirt and blood from numerous shallow scrapes and cuts. For a moment he was preoccupied by the wounds and missing shirt, but then decided that they were infinity less concerning than the shackle around his leg. Peering around the room more carefully, he tried to spot anything that might help him escape. He found nothing in the room, save himself and the restraints. At one end stood a solid-looking wooden door with hinged slots near eye level and at the bottom, and no handle on the inside. Allen crawled towards it as far as his bond would allow him and reached out, but his outstretched fingers were still more than a foot away from the door. Winded from the effort, he flopped back onto the concrete.
His stomach heaved again, but he managed not to throw up, resting his head on the cold concrete floor and breathing heavily. Allen’s mind was reeling, but he forced himself to try to concentrate. How did I get here? Casting his mind back to the last thing that he remembered, an image of his office surfaced. As the image cleared, he recalled that he had been working on the weekend, he had been at the office late, no one else had been there, and…and…nothing. He didn’t remember leaving the office. Could this have something to do with one of his cases? Occasionally he had clients mixed up with unsavory characters, and had been threatened once or twice before, but nothing recent. With a sudden surge of hope, Allen dug his hands into his pockets to check for his cell phone. Coming up empty he almost screamed in aggravation, but then he remembered the collar.
Allen gave up trying to think and had just decided to make another attempt at sliding the shackle when he heard the bolt on the door scrape back loudly. Scooting back away from the door as far as he could brought his back up against the far wall, and he stood up. Still dizzy, Allen was lucky that the wall was there to steady him as the room spun again. He stared at the door, which slowly opened inward. Two shadowy figures stood in the doorframe, but the light outside the door was not much brighter than inside the room, so Allen couldn’t get a good look at any distinct features. By their height and build, he guessed that they were rather burly men.
“Oh goody, we’ve got a live one,” came a deep, humorless voice with just a hint of an accent.
One of the figures walked forward and gave a grunt in response. Once out of the doorframe Allen could see that the man was pale and had dark, unkempt hair and murky, bloodshot eyes. He wore faded military fatigues and large, black, steel-toed boots. His expression was malicious and in his hands he held a pair of handcuffs.
“Turn around,” he said darkly.
Allen weighed his options. He could resist now, and if the man with the handcuffs had the key to his shackles, he might escape. But if the other man in the doorway had a gun, he could just shoot Allen, or simply close and lock the door on him if he got free. On the other hand, it appeared that the men were taking him somewhere, and anywhere else had to have better escape options than the small concrete cell that he was currently in. Allen had little time to decide and the longer he thought, the more suspicious he looked, so after only a moment’s pause, he turned and faced the wall. A terrified thrill went through him as he felt the man roughly grab his wrists and apply the cuffs.
“Don’t move,” he growled then moved away.
Allen didn’t dare turn around, but he heard the shuffling of footsteps and then a faint, metallic tink. It was clear to him now that the man had not initially had the keys to the shackle padlock on him, but had just gone to retrieve them from the man outside the door. Allen heard footsteps returning and felt someone behind him again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man squat and take off the padlock of the shackle and put it in his pocket. It took an effort of will not to try to kick the man in the face while it was down near his feet, but because the other man was still watching from the door, Allen resisted the urge.
Once his leg was freed the man stood up and grabbed Allen’s handcuffed arms, jerked him around to face the door, and frog marched him from the room. Allen was wobbly to begin with, but having one bare foot and one still with his shoe and sock on didn’t help matters, so he stumbled a few times as the man impatiently shoved him along. His ankle on the shackled leg also was now painful to walk on and Allen winced as he approached the man outside the door. That man did indeed have a gun and was careful to keep a measured distance away from Allen and the dark-haired man. His hair was a sandy color and pulled back into a smooth, greasy ponytail that barely touched the man’s back. His skin was slightly darker than the first man and his eyes were hooded. He was also wearing military fatigues and boots, though his clothes were black instead of a faded green and looked newer. On his face, he wore a very ugly and smug expression. As Allen got closer, the man smiled evilly showing off his crooked, yellow teeth.
“What? No cries of protest? No, ‘What’s going on? Why have you done this to me?’” he mocked.
Allen remained silent.
“Oh, this one’s a smart one, Klause!” he said gleefully to the other man. “This one has figured out our little system for keeping the whelps quiet.” He gave a low chuckle. “I’m sure that this is obvious, but just in case you are not as smart as I give you credit for, if you do anything, but what you are told, I will shoot you. Now walk!” He raised the gun’s muzzle slightly as he pointed away from him.
The man in the green fatigues, Klause, yanked him around and began pushing him down the hallway. The man in black then shouted something in a different language and Klause pulled Allen to a stop. Then, after a brief pause, the man in black thrust a black sack over Allen’s head. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the layout of the dim hallway and silently cursed himself for not paying more attention. Klause pushed him forward again as Allen tried to count his steps and remember any turns or stairs as they led him away from his cell. It was a longer ways than Allen expected with many twists and turns and a fifteen second trip upwards in an elevator. With his bare foot he felt mainly concrete, but also metal, especially on the stairs they encountered. Allen struggled to create a mental map of the layout, but he had already forgotten if it was initially left or right after the twenty-five steps from his cell.
Occasionally Allen’s two captors would talk back and forth in another language that sounded like it might be Russian. Finally Klause heaved Allen backwards and shouted for him to halt. Klause removed Allen’s cuffs and then quickly yanked the blinding bag off his head. Allen blinked madly as bright, white light glared into his dilated pupils. He brought his newly freed hands up to shield his eyes and tried to take in his surroundings. He was in a large open space with a concrete floor in the center of a larger room. Overhead, bright fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling over the center space, leaving the rest of the room in relative gloom. The area looked like part of some old industrial building. Stains and cracks as well as a generous lay
er of disturbed dust marred the concrete floor. Klause and the man in black had backed away from Allen, although the latter was still leveling his pistol at him. As he watched, the man in black handed Klause what looked a lot like a cattle prod and they took up positions about ten feet away from Allen, flanking him. The tension built as a minute went by with the two men just watching him. Allen wondered if they were waiting for him to try to flee, so that they could attack him. He tried to search for a way out or a door or a phone or a weapon or anything useful just using his eyes and keeping his body facing the men.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t see anything beyond the lit area of the room. He glanced surreptitiously down at the floor and could at least devise the direction that they had come from by his footprints in the dust. Suddenly, Allen heard noises behind him and spun around, fear gripping his chest. Out of the gloom at the other end of the room, came three individuals. They looked eerily familiar, as one wore green fatigues, one black, and one was shirtless and wearing a black bag over his head. Allen watched, perplexed, as the same procedure as he had just undergone took place in mirror image at the other end of the lit space. When the bag was pulled off the shirtless man’s head, Allen could see that the man was also wearing an electroshock collar. Allen turned slightly to look at the faces of the men behind him. Klause was sneering and the other man was smiling wickedly.
“Have you figured it out yet, smarty?” the man in black scoffed.
Allen glanced back at the men across the room. He saw that the shirtless man was looking dazed and confused as well, but also noticed that he was several inches taller than Allen. Though the other man was in worse shape than Allen, with a lower left leg that was obviously bloodied through his sweatpants, he also had probably twenty pounds on him, pounds of mostly muscle. Allen suspected that the leg injury was due to a shackle similar to the one that had been around his own ankle. The shirtless man spotted Allen and started. He then turned abruptly away as one of the two men on his end began talking to him in a low voice that Allen couldn’t quite make out. Then Klause caught his attention by speaking.