Lupo (The Immortals Book 8)

by La Porta, Monica

  She was sitting at her immaculate desk, a garbage bin by her chair filled with used napkins. Her nose was red, and her eyes bright. “How can I help you?”

  “I don’t need anything. I just wanted to see if you were okay.” Lupo regretted his words right away. It didn’t take a genius to see she was anything but okay, and he could bet on the fact she wasn’t coming up with the flu.

  “If you feel bad for what happened last night, don’t.” Her words were sharp, but fat tears fell from her eyelashes.

  “But I do feel horrible.” Lupo advanced into the room, but when he saw her physically shrinking away as he approached the desk, he stopped. “And I wish things could be different between you and I.”

  “I wish that too. More than you can imagine, but what’s done is done.” Vera turned toward the window.

  “Maybe we could start from the beginning and be friends—”

  “We could never be friends.” Her tone was final.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Lupo retreated toward the door. “I won’t bother you any longer.” He was already out, when she called him back. “Yes?”

  “I found your cell phone, but I forgot it in my car. I’ll go fetch it—”

  He saw the pile of documents on her desk and shook his head. “There’s no hurry. Before you leave, I’ll come down to the garage with you and you can give it to me then.”

  “Okay.” Her eyes were as cold as her voice, and her whole body—that he had always seen as soft and welcoming—was stiff, giving the impression she was a marble statue.

  “See you later.” He closed the door and made no more than three steps before he heard her sobbing. “Great Wolf, what a mess I made.” He took his face between his hands and let out a suffered breath.

  One of the security guards patrolling the hallway gave him a sympathetic look. Lupo nodded to the man, then entered his office, turned on his laptop, and buried himself in a second attempt at finishing at least one paragraph of the document he had previously marked as unread. At ten past seven in the evening, he had enough of trying and prepared to leave the office.

  “Dad?” he knocked on Quintilius’s door, then peeked inside as his father raised his eyes from his computer.

  “Ready to go home?” He looked at his watch and sighed.

  “Yes, but I must pick up my phone from Vera’s car. Long story. I’ll tell you later.”

  “Okay, I need a few minutes to call it a day in any case.” Quintilius waved at him.

  “Give me the keys, I’ll wait for you in the Jaguar. I might even take a nap.”

  Quintilius snorted at Lupo’s jest. “I won’t be that long, but here—” He reached for a plate on his desk, found the car keys among several others, then hurled them at Lupo who caught them a millimeter from hitting him in his right eye. “Good catch,” Quintilius said, laughing.

  “Horrible throw,” Lupo said, then turned to the hallway, where Vera was waiting for him at the entrance.

  She was standing by the big vase with the tropical flowers, her face a blank mask, and her whole demeanor as unforgiving as before.

  Unable to make small talk, Lupo opened his arm to the side, pointing at the elevator. To the man guarding the foyer, he said, “Done for the day.”

  “Have a good night, sir.” The man opened the elevator for them, checked the car, and then let them inside.

  “See you tomorrow.” Lupo waved two fingers at the guard as the door closed.

  Inside the car, the atmosphere was as frigid as a chilly December night.

  Desperately looking for the right thing to say, Lupo leaned against the side wall, and turned his eyes up to the ceiling. “Vera—”

  “I know you want to do the right thing,” she said. “But you’re making it so much harder for me.”

  The elevator dinged, and the door opened at the garage level. Mr. Stano greeted them. Lupo explained to him that he would walk Vera to her car, then wait for his father in his Jaguar.

  “This will get old very soon,” he commented, keeping his voice as low as possible, when they were out of the shifter’s earshot.

  Vera wasn’t listening. If before he had thought her tense, now she was positively on edge, her movements jerky, and her hands moving from the bag’s strap on her shoulder, to her solitary curl, then to her side again.

  One of the guards patrolling the garage nodded at them as he walked in the opposite direction.

  “Just around that corner.” Almost talking to herself, she pointed ahead at a wall dividing the garage in two.

  They walked around the wall and entered the employees’ space. There were still lots of cars parked between the columns, and she directed him to one of the last rows. When they reached her parking spot, he almost sighed in relief. She hurried ahead toward a black SUV that lay in relative dimness between two bigger cars. Hers was one of those old Volkswagen models popular among the shifters youth because of the large trunks and the dark-tinted windows that came in handy when in the mood for a bit of privacy.

  Before Jasmine, Lupo had spent more than a few nights in the back of one of those tank-like cars.

  Vera unlocked her car by inserting the key in the pad, then walked to the back, and manually opened the trunk. She leaned inside, rummaging in between bags and sport supplies. “Just a sec,” she said. “I can’t reach your cell phone, it must have slipped further down while I was driving.”

  Eager to be on his way, and feeling trapped between the column and the back wall, Lupo instinctively bent to look inside from over Vera’s hunched figure. He brushed her back, and she jumped up, bumping into him who stepped to the side and hit the column. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to touch you.” He raised his hands in peace. “Let me try.”

  Her hands closed in fists, she moved to the side. “Please.”

  Lupo lowered his head and kneeled on the bed of the trunk, then looked down on the black rubber floor. His cell phone was also black, but he thought he saw it stuck in between the floor and the back passenger’s seat. He leaned forward and down, reaching out with his hand toward a dark rectangular shape. His outstretched fingers brushed something that had the right consistency. “I think I got it.”

  “I’m so sorry. They’ll kill Martino—”

  He heard her say between sobs before he felt the prick of a needle on the back of his leg.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Peeling his eyes open one at a time, Lupo woke in a room that smelled of antiseptic, reminding him of the infirmary room at Regina Coeli. For a moment, he stared in confusion at the white ceiling, trying to remember. When his memory failed, he pushed himself up to sit, but he couldn’t move.

  Leather straps pinned him down. He could only raise his neck, and turned sideways only to see his arms outstretched and his wrists pinned to lateral supports. IV drips were connected to the inside of his arms. Dried blood formed caked lines of rusty red where the needles had been inserted. When he wriggled his fingers, straining the tendons of his wrists against the ties, sharp pain reverberated through his arms. The bindings were coated in silver.

  The stench of his own burned skin reached his nostrils and he gagged.

  As his senses fully awakened, he caught the other smells in the room. He had soiled himself, several times, and his stomach rumbled in its emptiness.

  He remembered then. Vera sobbing. Something about her brother. A needle piercing his skin. A fuzzy feeling of moving on wheels while lying on his side. A voice wishing Vera a good night. Other cars. Different sounds, colors, smells. Then a prick again. Afterwards, complete darkness.

  How long had he been there, wherever it was?

  Judging from the stench emanating from his body and from his hunger, more than a day or two.

  The sound of a door opening outside of his field of vision set his heart into a galloping frenzy.

  Leather soles stepped into the room. Expensive cologne. Crispy starched clothes. A were-panther.

  “You are awake.”

  He had never heard Jasmine’
s father’s voice before, but Lupo knew it was him. His scent was reminiscent of Jasmine’s.

  The man walked around the bed, and stopped by the right side, then leaned over Lupo.

  “You’ll finally pay for destroying our family.” The Purist’s eyes were as black as his daughter’s, but the comparison ended there.

  If Jasmine’s had been liquid and full of fire, her father’s eyes were fathomless pools of despair, devoid of life.

  “I’m sorry,” Lupo whispered. He had once hoped to be able to face the man to talk to him. “If I could’ve died instead of her, I would’ve in a heartbeat.”

  “Shut up,” the man ordered, without raising his voice. “You won’t talk to me.”

  The door opened a second time, followed by hurried steps.

  A middle-aged man, wearing a doctor’s scrubs came to a halt by the Purist.

  “Will he be ready for the ceremony?” Jasmine’s father pointed his chin down at Lupo.

  The doctor nodded. “He’s been fasting and purging for the last five days. He’ll be ready.”

  “He must be cleaned before he enters the temple,” the Purist said before turning on his heels and leaving.

  “Where am I?” Lupo asked the doctor, but the man didn’t acknowledge him. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  At the last question, the doctor looked down, then shook his head, as if he had considered answering but then decided against it. He then tinkered with the IV lines.

  “Talk to me.” Lupo’s eyes felt heavy, and his head rolled to the side. A familiar torpor possessed him, and he slipped into unconsciousness.

  “It’s better this way.”

  The doctor’s words echoed in Lupo’s head as darkness fully embraced him.

  ****

  “Wake up.”

  A wall of cold water broke over Lupo. Or so it seemed.

  He gasped, his chest heaving with labored breaths. His eyes wouldn’t focus at first, and panic washed over him. His body convulsed against the restraints, but the expected sharp pain from the silver coating was more of a throb. Still thrashing, he made an assessment of how his limbs moved more freely in the confined space.

  “He’s just skin and bones.” The voice came from his right.

  “Give him enough glucose so he can walk into the temple on his own legs.” It was the doctor, talking on his left.

  A rush of bubbles that tingled at the base of Lupo’s head chased the darkness away, and he stared into a stranger’s face. White light was shone into his eyes, and it perforated his pupils, excavating a passage straight to his brain. His screams resonated inside his ear canals.

  Cold liquid was pumped into his veins. Lupo’s pain subsided and he took a few breaths, then hard metal was pressed to his chest, and panic rose to his throat again, bile travelling from his empty stomach to his mouth.

  “Give him five minutes to get his bearings, then take him to the baths.” The doctor straightened, and Lupo saw the stethoscope dangling from his neck. “This should wake him up completely.” He injected the content of a syringe into the port, then moved out of sight.

  Lupo couldn’t see the IV bag, but what little he could glimpse of the IV line had changed from clear to red, as if filled with blood.

  The effect from the latest ministration was immediate. The fog lifted, and Lupo’s sight became focused.

  “Nothing like a drop of angelic blood to make you feel on top of the world, right?” A were-panther wearing white scrubs and thick leather gloves leaned over to show him a silvery baton. “I’ll unshackle you now, but don’t try anything funny or I’ll have to hit you with this silver stick—” He swung the baton. “It’s going to hurt you and delay my work. I’d rather avoid it.”

  As the straps on Lupo’s wrists were removed, he flexed his fingers, blood rushing down to his extremities. His ankles were uncuffed next, and he wiggled his toes. He ground his teeth to ride the wave of pins and needles. Meanwhile, the bands over his chest, groin, and thighs, were removed one by one. Air circulated over the parts of his body that had been covered, and he realized that he was naked.

  “Up.” The nurse placed a strong arm under Lupo’s back and pushed him to a sitting position. From there, and despite Lupo’s lack of cooperation—he saw black dots swimming before his eyes the moment he became vertical—the man moved Lupo’s legs to the edge of the bed and let them dangle down like dead weight.

  The door opened and two were-panthers entered, followed by the doctor.

  The nurse raised his head and nodded at the newcomers.

  “He’s still out of it. But be careful.” The doctor pointed at Lupo.

  Dressed like the one attending Lupo, with scrubs and gloves, the two men approached the bed, and hooked their arms under Lupo’s armpits to hoist him up.

  Lupo’s wolf whined when Lupo’s knees gave away and he sagged between the two men, his head to his chest, and his arms locked at a painful angle. Under the doctor’s supervision, he was hauled out of the room, his feet dragging behind, brushing the smooth surface of the marble flooring. Once or twice, his knees hit the tiles, and the nurses readjusted their hold on him.

  Lupo’s arms were kept higher than his shoulders, and the position pushed his shoulder blades together, causing him pain that only grew worse as the seconds passed. Finally, the men stopped before a door opening into a large room that smelled of eucalyptus and was warm and humid.

  From a few steps ahead, the doctor pointed at a large, rectangular tub. “Use the lukewarm bath.”

  “We were told not to use any kindness,” the man to Lupo’s left said.

  The doctor shook his head. “The ice bath would send him into shock, and the trial will start in less than thirty minutes. We don’t have time to waste reanimating him and making him presentable for the temple.”

  The nurses took Lupo to the tub, then pushed him until the back of his legs hit the cold ceramic edge, and dumped him into the water. Falling backward, Lupo broke the surface with his head first, and he gasped, choking on warm seawater. He tried to emerge, but strong arms kept him under, until he touched the floor of the tub with his back. He gave the nurses his best fight, but didn’t have any strength left in him.

  When he thought he was about to die drowned in a bathtub, he was pulled up, dragged to another tub, and dunked again in warm water. After another mouthful, he could determine it was just plain tap water, but scented with eucalyptus.

  “Scrub him and shave him. We have fifteen minutes left,” the doctor ordered, and the nurses executed.

  Lupo was forced to sit. Impassive hands reached down between Lupo’s legs, and bars of soap and sponges were passed over his skin. He tried to resist, but it didn’t slow the nurses who washed him in sections, travelling up his shivering body, until they finally reached his head with a razor knife and shave cream. Chunks of already short black hair fell into the soapy water. The man’s movements were careless, and drops of blood mixed with the foam.

  Once they were satisfied with their work, the nurses made him walk to a shower stall, where he was rinsed until the water pooling at his feet was clear. He was then dried with a linen towel.

  “Hurry up. We’re late.” The doctor unfolded a black garment he was holding in his arms.

  The third nurse, who had followed them to the baths, but who hadn’t intervened, took what looked like a longer version of a chiton, and while the other two nurses kept Lupo upright, he dressed him.

  “To the temple,” the doctor ordered, pushing a door open.

  On the other side, bright light revealed a large corridor.

  Lupo could now put one foot in front of the other, and still held between the two nurses, he walked toward the door. Although it cost him precious energy, he straightened his back and raised his chin. Once outside the baths, the temperature was several degrees colder, and the tunic Lupo was wearing was made of thin cotton. He shivered and lost his footing. The nurses held him tighter and their hands left marks on Lupo’s skin.

  The process
ion with the doctor in front, the third nurse in the back, and Lupo and his handlers in the middle, crossed the whole length of the sterile hallway. The white walls were lit by several chandeliers spreading white pools of light every few steps. Soft breeze moved the fixtures, and the lights moved at a slow, dizzying rhythm that lulled Lupo into a sleepy haze. Or maybe it was the hunger that made him sway.

  Finally, the group stopped before an ornate wooden door. Three panels, as tall as the walls, were carved with a hunting scene. Panthers chased men. The details were exquisite.

  The doctor passed one hand over his hair, flattened the wrinkles on his scrubs, then knocked on the central panel. One rap, followed by silence that protracted for a long moment. A muted rap answered, then the door opened, folding away.

  Inside, a big amphitheater was filled with were-panthers. They all wore chitons. A podium stood in the center of the room, and Lupo was brought before it. After releasing him, the nurses retreated and left, while the doctor took Lupo by his elbow and made him climb the deep step.

  Once on the podium, the doctor said, “Don’t move from here. Keep your hands on the lectern for support.”

  Lupo didn’t have a choice but to obey, because a bout of vertigo hit him as soon as the doctor removed his support. His hands grabbed the wooden rail of the lectern as the amphitheater came in and out of focus.

  “Purists!” a voice boomed. “It’s your Priest calling you.”

  A man, wearing a purple chiton trimmed with golden edges, stood before the podium. Lupo hadn’t seen him walking there.

  The priest turned toward the crowd. “We are hereby reunited today to serve justice.”

  A low murmur resonated in the chamber.

  “One of our families has suffered a great injustice by the hand of a filthy werewolf. Aided by the corrupted Immortal Council, the subject standing before you today kidnapped and violated one of our daughters.”

  The murmur grew into a roar.