by Mark Henwick
I didn’t want to think about it. They weren’t my concern.
As the van drove next to the walls of the convent building, I dropped to the ground, rolled away and started to concentrate on how I was going to get inside and get Diana out. And Frank, if I could.
Chapter 49
The fortress design of the convent walls, with high thin slits for windows, worked well for me so long as everyone else stayed inside. I ducked below the windows and made my way around the side where the convoy had been parked.
I sent photos of the two remaining SUVs to Naryn. There would be a chance that he could track them just from that.
As I hoped, they stored gasoline near the parking area, in a shed against the wall.
If I needed a diversion, I knew where it was going to start.
And the shed helped me in other ways; from its roof I was able to jump up and catch hold of a viga. From there, a little overhang-climbing technique got me onto the roof and I crawled over it like a spider.
As I’d seen from outside the compound, the building itself was organized around two square courtyards. The one in the front was bare and filled with gravel. It provided parking for vehicles, and it looked as if the business end of the convent faced onto that courtyard: kitchens, storerooms, a dining room, offices and so on.
I guessed that left the rear courtyard for accommodation.
The middle section was a later addition—stone rather than adobe. A featureless building bulging out into the courtyard. Maybe the church, if they had one to maintain their illusion of a religious retreat.
The box van and two SUVs were in the courtyard, but there was no sign of anybody.
I took some more cellphone photos and sent them to Naryn. I decided against checking his responses. He’d only be asking me to do something I couldn’t.
This courtyard seemed deserted. In fact, with the eighteen or twenty Were in the last convoy, the Confederation seemed to have moved out already.
Where to? And why?
After a long time looking and straining my wolf ears, I could hear nothing nearby. It was time to get inside.
The overhang on the courtyard roof was less than on the outside, and the second story had a balcony with railings running around three sides. I swung in and grabbed a balcony strut, hauling myself in.
I knelt against the wall, heart pounding. The maneuver had been completely exposed. One casual look by anyone and they’d have seen me. I was fluctuating between scared-stupid and stupid-confident.
The rooms had windows onto the courtyard. It looked like they were originally offices, but everything had been shoved aside and the space used for camp beds. The beds were bare. There was nothing else in the rooms.
I did a quick estimate of the numbers of Were that had been here.
Two hundred in the convent? More if they used the common areas like the dining room and church. Maybe another hundred in tents outside. I had no way of knowing if this was the only place that the Confederation were gathering, but I carefully texted more photos and my estimates to Naryn.
As I was doing that, crouched down in one of the offices, sounds reached my wolfy ears, travelling through the fabric of the building itself.
Shouting. Female and male voices.
And, very faintly, screams.
Shit.
I had a mission. Those screams weren’t Diana. They weren’t my business.
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t turn away. I had a terrible feeling I knew what those screams represented.
I found a staircase and slunk down. I was in a hallway on the ground floor. The staircase ended and a separate one went on down to a basement. And that was where the screams were coming from.
Unfortunately, before I got there, the door to my left opened. Two Were, armed and surprised. And not Gold Hill—Confederation Were; Iversen’s Wind River pack.
I ran through a door on my right, more to get some time to think than through any plan.
Bad move. They’d have me, or they’d have someone coming the other way. Windows were too small or only opened to the courtyard. I needed to get out of the building. Now.
I could hear one of them, yelling into a radio.
I fired. The sound of the shots would carry, but it was better than him calling in and pinpointing my position.
The second Were fired back. I didn’t duck. One day, one would have my name on it.
Tap. Tap. Second Were down and I was out the opposite door.
The next room was a storeroom with no windows.
The next was full of nuns running toward me.
Not the peaceful, billowing habits and prayers type of nuns. These three had lost their cloaks and wimples. What remained turned out to be close-fitting, charcoal-gray PJs, a bit like the uniform that Bian sometimes wore to fight in. But they weren’t carrying katanas or guns: they were carrying bō, dark wooden staffs about five feet in length, tipped with silver.
Ah. That would make them the Silent Order of the Kung-Fu Ninja Athanate Ladies. Or something.
My finger froze.
Women. Not armed with guns.
My brain overrode the impulse, but by that time, one of them leaped up and did a showpiece kick and spin, landing with thebō jabbing toward me.
In real fighting, there was only one reason for showy moves like that: distraction.
I jumped to one side, narrowly avoiding the bō-strike through the doorway behind me. She came through, overbalanced by the weight she’d put into the attempted blow. I kicked her in her ribs and tried a quick stamp on her bent knee, but she was already twisting away.
The show-off was closest. I grabbed the bō as she swung it at me, and dragged her forward. As she fell, I took her by the collar and belt and lifted her off her feet. I was still holding the HK, so my grasp on her belt wasn’t good. It was enough to lift her off her feet.
She could be as strong as a linebacker, but now she had no base to use it against me.
I used her as a shield and battering ram, running straight through the other two, and then tossing her at the third.
The silver tip of her bōwacked my leg andI stumbled.
Crap.
Those bō were frigging Tasers. Unfair. Not traditional at all.
I lurched into the next room.
Windows!
I just needed a couple of seconds to get out through them.
They weren’t giving me any.
The nuns were right on my back, even the ones I’d hit.
They weren’t armed with lethal weapons.
On the other hand, they were probably going to hand me over to a laboratory where they’d run experiments on me.
Tap-tap. No time for the three shot. One down, gut-shot.
They were too close.
Tap. Missed.
One of the bō slammed against my left arm. Excruciating pain exploded in my head. I leaped backwards, arm flopping uselessly. Slammed into the wall.
Tap. Missed.
Bō coming. Turned, slid the silver end past me into the wall and kicked. Good contact, but weight wrong. Arm making balance difficult.
Another bō, crashing into my chest.
I didn’t even see the one that got me. I was aware of it hitting my head.
There was a flash like lightning.
Falling.
Silence.
Darkness.
Chapter 50
I came around gradually, not sure of the point where I went from unconsciousness to being aware.
I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. It smelled as if I was in a toilet. I could taste my own blood.
It was freezing cold, and instinct made me move. I tried getting my hands underneath me to push me up, but they were behind my back, tied together. More rope pulled my upper arms together so my shoulders ached. There were loops around my neck and waist as well. My arms were immobilized. Even part-changing to wolf wouldn’t allow me to get my hands free. Whoever had done this, had done it to a werewolf before.
Not a ha
ppy thought.
Struggling made me groan, and I discovered my ears were still working.
I wasn’t blindfolded, but there was nothing, not even a heat source for my wolf eyes to see.
I hurt. Every part of me felt as if I’d been beaten hard with sticks. Then again, maybe I had.
My face told me the floor was damp, rough concrete. I was naked, and wriggling around to sit told me I had bruises and wounds over all my body.
Sitting wasn’t any better than lying down. My head spun and my stomach lurched. I held on grimly and waited out the spasms.
Was this a toilet?
I spat to clear my mouth.
Finally, I got my legs under me and managed to get to a kneeling position. More minutes passed, as I had to wait out the heaving stomach again.
How long had I been unconscious? There was no way to answer that at the moment.
And why was I alive? There were no comfortable answers to that.
I made it to my feet and turned cautiously around in a small circle. Nothing.
I thought of making a noise. I wasn’t a bat, but I should be able to get some idea of the type of room I was in. But if they were waiting for me to regain consciousness, maybe they’d hear. I wanted to know more about where I was before they came to get me.
I edged forward. One step. Putting out a foot for the second, I hit a wall.
Okay.
I turned my back to it, felt it with my hands. It was just a plain, bare-brick wall.
I edged to the right and found a corner.
Keeping a shoulder brushing against the wall, I took careful steps until my toes found a wall in front of me. Three steps.
Stop, turn, walk. Three steps. Sensations under my feet I did not want to think about.
Stop, turn, walk. Three steps.
Not okay.
This room was about three yards on each side. No door, no features.
The first trickle of panic skittered down my back.
I pushed it away. Think.
Smelled like a toilet. People had been left down here. Cell. Dungeon. Oubliette. The words skittered across my mind.
I thought of nothing but breathing slowly for a hundred breaths.
There had to be a trapdoor above to get in. And out.
No panic.
I made a noise, as quietly as I could and still get some feeling of confirmation for the dimensions of the room. It echoed a little.
No one came to investigate the noises.
I tried to reach out using the Call, and there was something there, but it was ugly and I recoiled.
The box van I’d used to get me in had been bringing in Ute Mountain Were. Not all of them, just the females. And the Call I was sensing was Gold Hill.
That screaming I’d heard was Gold Hill raping the women.
I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but it was still going on.
Sickened, I tried to reach out with eukori instead, seeking anything but the taste of the Gold Hill Call. There was nothing.
Time to take stock.
I was tied up, but I was relatively healthy. I’d taken no lasting damage from the bō-Tasers. I’d been unconscious, but, as far as I could tell, I didn’t have a head injury beyond the nausea and dizziness. In fact, as my wits returned, my mind felt clearer than it had before.
Unfortunately, that just gave me a clearer view of how much shit I was in.
Thinking it through…
They wouldn’t have bothered to strip me and carefully tie me up just to leave me here to die.
And making a prisoner naked and cold in disgusting surroundings were standard softening-up procedures. The darkness was another. They’d know I’d come around disoriented. The lack of anything in the room was intended to prey on my mind. I’d been trained to deal with these techniques.
Training and reality are different.
But I was not going to panic. I was not going to panic. The walls were not pressing in on me.
I had advantages over the time I’d spent in Obs and when I’d been strapped to the gurney in the Max. I made myself go through them.
Alive.
Able to move, apart from my arms.
Legs not tied.
Fully awake.
Not drugged.
I had control of myself. Not great control, but enough.
So what had they kept me alive for?
A bargaining chip against Skylur? Felix?
Neither of them would give a two dollar bill for me at the moment.
Experimentation? What would interest them? My Athanate Blood or my hybrid status? I shuddered.
There was no way of knowing for sure.
After a while I settled myself into a lotus position and started going through Master Liu’s forms in my mind.
Strive only for peace and control.
I am not cold. I am not uncomfortable. I am not scared.
I am not vulnerable. I am not here.
I endure.
And as I went through the forms and the words, the image of Chatima’s candle returned to my mind.
Instead of sand, I now visualized flame passing through my body in a stream, flowing out in every direction.
The energy that flowed out of me flowed into something and some subtle message came back to me, like sound traveling through water.
About all I could think was that there were Adepts nearby and workings. Maybe Diana wasn’t far away.
Maybe she’d escape and be the one to rescue me. That’d be ironic.
There was nothing I could usefully do about that.
To divert myself, I knelt and tried to think about everything else.
Gradually, I came back to the ritual for Olivia.
Last time I’d seen Martha, something Mary said had been churning in my mind, and it came back again: Everyone has a connection to the energy, even humans. A million people in the broad daylight who believe you can’t change into a wolf would make it difficult for a Were in the middle of Denver.
Were the packs getting it wrong? Were they the cause of their own problems?
People were more distanced from nature all the time. Jobs and cities, cars and houses, movies and web surfing—everything about civilization, one tiny step at a time, was leading everyone away.
Weres immersed themselves in nature. It didn’t stop them from living in civilization as well, but more and more people had a barrier to being able, even temporarily, to abandon all the things that isolated them from their own nature.
That wouldn’t cause it all by itself. All it would do was raise the numbers who had difficulty.
Maybe the real problem was that packs had responded to that difficulty with support: the whole pack turned out. The number of failures went up, and gradually, like water dripping on stone, their attitude toward any halfy who had a problem was eroded. Like animals in the wild, they sensed the failure like a disease and subconsciously turned their backs on anyone who couldn’t manage the change.
If I was right, the packs themselves were the main cause of the problem; they didn’t believe the halfies would make it, and that prevented anyone who had even a small problem with changing from succeeding.
But that wouldn’t have been something that Speaks-to-Wolves had to deal with. Martha had said she took Were out to try changing alone.
So, would any ritual she had used work now?
Had Chatima known this?
A helper to seekers, she’d called the necklace. Make anew, she’d said of the ritual. And not quite lost.
Some of the old ritual mixed in with a new one?
I fell into half-dreaming, imagining a ritual. What would it need?
Four and a half hours passed before the trapdoor above me opened with a crash.
A powerful flashlight blinded me. I had to close my eyes and look away.
There was the sound of a shell being chambered in a pump action shotgun, then someone shouted: “Stand up!”
Using the wall behind me as support, I struggled to my feet, m
aking it look much more difficult than it was. Better to have them underestimating what I could do.
“Stand still, bitch.” A second voice.
I swayed. It wasn’t that hard to look weak.
The second voice was Lance Evans, the guy that Zane had sent back to Gold Hill, and that wasn’t good.
I kept my head down, away from the flashlight.
From the shadow it cast, I could see something was being lowered into the basement. Before I had time to react, a metal hook had slid under the ropes binding me and jerked me off my feet.
All my weight went through the main points where I was tied. I nearly blacked out as pain like a blade sliced through my already abused shoulders.
That was just the beginning.
I was left dangling.
The loop of rope around my neck had also tightened, choking me.
I tensed my neck, grunting with effort, but the blood and air weren’t getting through. Someone was shouting. The hook started swinging to and fro. There was a roaring and bright light like I was standing in front of a train at night.
Then my body started to convulse and I couldn’t see anything.
Chapter 51
Senses returned as I was lifted out, thrown on the ground and kicked. I barely felt the blows. As soon as the crushing grip on my neck had eased, my whole world had been concentrated on coughing and gasping for air.
A bag went over my head. Hands grabbed my legs and I felt rope fastened around my ankles.
“You fucking idiot! You could have killed her.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t. She’s alive and we’ll have no trouble from her now.” That was Evans.
“She could barely walk anyway.”
“You listen to me,” Evans yelled. “This bitch needs to be shown how it’s going to be. You two dumb-fucks lift her out without precautions and she’d have gone for you.”
“I’m so scared. She’s tied up and all I’ve got is a fucking shotgun.”
There were slaps and punches to my head and kidneys; hard, soft, hard. Not disabling, but enough to hurt. It’s difficult not to cringe when you can’t see where the hits are coming from and can’t predict how hard they’re going to be. That was the entire point of the bag over my head.