What are the odds of them tracking me down to a random, derelict hunting cabin in the middle of the Michigan woods?
Zilch.
I’m on my own. It’s a fact.
And if this torture continues for much longer, I’ll be on my own in a shallow grave. Until spring wanders in, and the rain washes the dirt away, and a bunch of woodland creatures eat my partially decomposed face. Now there’s an image. I swear—
The sound of a car door slamming shut draws me out of my head, and I crack open my swollen eyes, a sigh on my bloody tongue. And so begins day four.
All my mornings have started with that exact sound. McKinney and his goons work me over all day, each of them rotating out to take breaks. At dinnertime, McKinney and one of the goons leave for the night, heading back, I guess, to Aurora. The other goon stays behind to make sure I don’t magically break the industrial-quality rope and flee into the frigid forest with no shoes or coat (they took those too).
Last night’s security goon was Zhang. He perks up at the sound of the car door closing and yawns, rising from the old, stained futon in the corner that looks like it’s been in the woods longer than the cabin. He slips on his boots but doesn’t tie them and shuffles over to the cabin’s front door, just as McKinney and Donahue are stomping up the steps. Zhang opens the door a second before McKinney knocks, a look of anticipation on his face. Anticipation of breakfast.
Donuts. McKinney and Donahue brought donuts to their torture session.
Did I mention these guys are complete assholes?
Put that on the record.
McKinney strolls into the cabin with that snide smirk on his face I’ve come to know very well over the past few days. He’s holding a mug of what must be coffee, and he sips a couple times while he circles my chair. I meet his eyes when he comes into view, glaring at him as hard as I can with my left eye nearly swollen shut and my right incapable of blinking properly. The Wolf man stops directly in front of me and scratches at his beard as a low hum vibrates past his lips.
There’s a gleam in his dark eyes that I really don’t like.
McKinney bends over until he’s at my eye level. “Morning, kid. You wised up today? Got some names for me?”
It doesn’t matter how many times I tell this fucker that the ICM and DSI aren’t conspiring to shield the people who (supposedly) plotted Martinez’s murder. McKinney is so prejudiced against practitioners, and humans in general, that he won’t buy any narrative that places the guilt for his lieutenant’s death on non-ICM shoulders. He won’t even entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, those involved in this summoning plot on the ICM side didn’t randomly decide to murder a werewolf in cold blood. I could probably show him an HD video of the Jameson murders being committed by an honest-to-god dragon, and he’d still blame the ICM.
I’d be exasperated right now…if I wasn’t in so much pain.
I stare into McKinney’s cold gaze and finally reply to his question. “Have I gone cross-eyed, or are you even uglier than you were yesterday?”
McKinney, unfazed, takes another sip of his coffee. “That really the way you want to play this, kid? You want to be a smartass?”
“I’ve been a smartass since day one,” I spit out with more than a few drops of blood. “If you really didn’t notice until now, you might want to trade my ass for your brain. You’d gain a few IQ points that way.”
McKinney snorts and rises to full height again. “The mouth on you. Where’d you pick that up?”
“Dollar store.” I flash what must be a slasher smile, stained bright red. “Didn’t you hear? Sarcasm is cheap.”
I know most people would peg me a moron right about now, taunting my tormentor and all that. But the problem is that I don’t know how to cope with long-term torture. And, as a result, I spent four hours last night contemplating whether biting my tongue off and drowning in my own blood would be a better alternative to sitting through another day with McKinney and friends, so…Look, I got really low last night, and I don’t want to do that again. So I will default to making myself laugh until such time as I am either free, or dead from McKinney going one step too far.
Because as much as I want this shit to end, most of me doesn’t want to go out via suicide.
(It kind of scares me, honestly, that there is at least one part that does.)
McKinney crosses the room, sitting his coffee mug on a dusty nightstand next to the futon. He sinks to one knee and drags out from under the futon a navy duffle bag that has been a feature of our sessions together. Unzipping the bag, he digs through the “tools” inside and pulls out a skinny metal stick. The cattle prod. Yay.
McKinney stands up and tests the prod to make sure it still works—it does—then whirls back around to face me. “Since you’re still smiling, brat, I’m going to assume I haven’t been hard enough on you these past few days. So today, we’re going to start with this”—he hits the button on the prod, and it makes a zapping noise—“and work our way up.”
Up from the cattle prod? That’s usually his worst option.
He stalks closer to me, his two cronies watching with interest in the background, like there’s a damn football game about to start on TV. McKinney’s mouth tightens into a thin frown, and he says, “You know, kid like you, I thought you’d crack on day one, especially after you started crying when I killed your DSI buddy. But you’re a lot more resilient than your pretty—well, formerly pretty—face suggested, and so I’m a bit disappointed that this is probably going to end with you six feet under. If you’d just loosen your tongue, kid, this could be over in an hour. Hell, I’d drop you off at the door to the DSI office. Just give me a name. One name would suffice.” The cattle prod begins a slow arc toward my chest. “Come on, kid. Spit it out.”
My pulse quickens at the sight of the prod getting closer and closer. My mind starts racing, reaching for anything it can use to save me. And this time, weakened by a lack of food and constant pain, I almost, almost spit out Erica’s name. But I catch it at the last second and bite my tongue. I won’t get an innocent person hurt. I won’t.
Not after I already let one die on this case.
There it is again, the image of Liam, lying dead in the red-painted snow. He was a year older than me. He was twenty-fucking-three. And this bastard ripped his whole damn life away because he wasn’t “useful.”
I may not have known Liam very well. Hell, I may have even suspected him of being an ICM spy. But he didn’t deserve to die like that. He was scared. Cold and hurting, half out of his mind with a concussion, and there was nothing I could do to…just like Mac, there was nothing I could do to…
I drive my gaze into McKinney’s and croak out, “Go fuck yourself!”
McKinney jams the cattle prod into my chest.
And…we’re going to skip this part.
Seven or eight hours later—I lose track of time, but the dirty window tells me it’s getting dark outside—Donahue and Zhang finish kicking the crap out of me and go take a break, setting up a game of cards at a rickety table near the window. McKinney ambles back in from the front porch after Zhang calls out to him, that same gleam from this morning in his eyes. He spent the entire time he was cattle prodding me dangerously close to a cardiac incident with a calculating look on his face, like he was formulating his master plan. Or maybe his grand finale.
If I’m frustrated at his conspiratorial nonsense, he must be doubly frustrated that I won’t confirm his misplaced suspicions. Conspiracy nuts love having the tiniest tidbits of information to back up their wacko beliefs and hate being left high and dry. And I’ve given him nothing thus far.
From the beginning, it was only a matter of time until one of us…cracked.
It looks like that person might be McKinney.
Hunched over in the chair, pain radiating from places I didn’t know I had, a worrying rattle deep in my chest—cracked ribs, I think—I watch McKinney return to the duffle bag now sitting on the futon. He digs through it for longer than he eve
r has before, looking for something specific he hasn’t used on me yet. I can’t imagine what object could be worse than the cattle prod, or the pliers he used to pull out my teeth and nails. At least an object that would fit in a bag that size.
I apparently have a bad imagination.
Because when McKinney tugs out a set of butcher’s knives, including a menacingly large cleaver, what he meant by “moving up” clicks in my weary brain: dismemberment.
McKinney’s going to chop me into pieces.
God, maybe the suicidal tongue biting wasn’t such a bad idea.
The Wolf man examines the knives, and of course, picks the cleaver first. Grabbing it by the handle, he makes a show of swinging it through the air so fast it produces a loud whooshing sound. Sharp. Very sharp.
When McKinney knows he has my undivided (and petrified) attention, he turns toward me, a sneer cutting through his thick beard. “Sorry to say, kid, but I’m getting real tired of your zipped lips. So we’re going to up the ante now. You give me a name, I put the knife down. You refuse to give me a name, I cut off a finger. And I don’t care if I have to cut off all your fingers, and then move on to your toes—I will not stop until you talk. We run out of digits? You lose your eyes. We run out of those? I start abdominal surgery.” He raps his fingernail against the broad side of the blade. “Got it?”
Every beleaguered muscle in my body tenses up, and I struggle against my bindings for the first time in days. But the ropes don’t budge. I can’t do anything but watch as McKinney grabs the short nightstand, drags it over to my chair, yanks up my bound arm at an awkward angle that nearly snaps my wrist in half, and slams my hand, palm down, on the dusty wood. A cutting board.
McKinney looks at me expectantly. “Well? You got an answer for me, kid? Or should I start eeny meeny miny mo?”
My lungs seize, and a wet, choking sound grinds its way up my throat. Say Erica or Marcus! For fuck’s sake! They can defend themselves.
No. I can’t do that.
McKinney raises his bushy eyebrows, sets the cleaver down near my hand, then backs away, gathering up the rest of the knife set. He lays them out one at a time on the edge of the nightstand, like he’s deciding the order in which to use them. When he’s finished, he picks up the cleaver again and holds it directly over my hand. “What’ll it be? You got five seconds to make up your mind. Go.”
Five.
My heart races in my chest. Just say something.
Four.
Tears gather in my eyes. Anything, Cal!
Three.
A whimper passes through my teeth. Erica will forgive you. She’ll understand.
Two.
Bile bubbles up my throat. Spit out a name, you proud-ass moron!
One.
McKinney reels the cleaver back in a high arc.
I scream.
He swings. And—
There’s a deafening crash outside the cabin. Glass explodes. Metal shrieks. A car alarm squeals into the silent night.
The cleaver misses my finger by an inch and eats into the wood of the nightstand.
McKinney whirls toward the front door, eyes flickering between human and Wolf, an eerie reflective glow. Donahue and Zhang drop their cards and leap up, chairs grinding against the floor. There are no windows on the front of the cabin, so all three of them stand deathly still, keen ears searching for the source of the disturbance.
McKinney hisses, “There’s something out there.”
And then they move. McKinney bolts to the door, shedding clothing as he goes, his goons on his tail. He grabs the tarnished knob and yanks so hard the doorframe nearly splinters, and the door swings around and slams into the wall, leaving a sizable dent in the wood. McKinney barrels across the porch and lunges into the snow, Donahue and Zhang half a step behind, both nude already. By the time they’re halfway to where McKinney’s car was parked—but no longer is—they’ve become Wolves, massive blurs of brown and black racing through the white drifts.
The door slowly creaks back around and shuts, blocking my view.
And blocking theirs.
My eyes flick toward the knives on the nightstand. They moved closer to my hand when McKinney landed the cleaver blow.
I have no idea what’s happening outside. I have no idea where I am in relation to Aurora. I have no idea how I’m going to survive in the middle of the freezing, snow-filled woods at dusk.
And I don’t give a fuck.
I’m getting out of here, come hell or hypothermia.
Stretching my hand as far as it can go without breaking my wrist, I take hold of the small, serrated knife that bounced closest to me. Blade pinched between two fingers, it nips at my skin, beads of blood welling up—but I don’t even feel it. Pain that minor doesn’t register to me right now.
So I shimmy the knife toward me, until I can wrap my fingers around the handle. Once it’s firmly in my hand, held up at an angle, I slide my wrist off the nightstand, returning my arm to its original bound position. With the knife stuck right between the two main coils of rope that are keeping me tied to this damn chair.
I’ve never cut anything faster with a knife.
The rope falls to the floor.
I stand up on legs that wouldn’t hold me if I wasn’t hopped up on serious adrenaline. I cross the room, to the window, unlock it, and lift it as quietly as I can. I climb out the window, into the sub-zero night, the air hitting me like a brick wall. I land in the high snow next to the window, feet instantly numb. And then, with a desperate, disbelieving laugh on my tongue, I take off and sprint full speed into the dark, vast Michigan woods.
Five minutes and forty-seven seconds later, a furious howl breaks the night.
Chapter Fourteen
The first Wolf dies by fire.
After twelve minutes of running full speed with a body at less than half strength, I’m more exhausted than I have ever been in my entire life. Lungs burning, heaving air in and out. Feet numb, toes blue, heels shredded by objects hidden in the snow. Abused abdomen convulsing with each step I take, sending waves of crippling cramps through my tender muscles. Head throbbing so hard my vision whites out in time with my too-rapid heartbeat. I’m running on nothing but fumes and the quickly fading hope that I’ll come across someone or something that can help me—before the Wolves catch up and finish their dirty work.
They aren’t far behind. I can hear them gaining. Their hard steps echo in the snow. Their growls ripple around the trees. Their intermittent howls are so loud they knock snow off nearby branches.
They can see better than me in the near-black night. They can move faster than me, especially with my injuries. They can smell and hear better than me too. The physical perks of their corrupted DNA, changed forever by the lycanthropy virus that runs through their veins.
I am only human. They are so much more.
But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up without a fight.
Not after Liam.
So I barrel through the forest, zip past trees, climb over fallen trunks, jump frozen streams. Thorny vines nip at my skin, slinging blood into the snow. A sharp branch whips my face, nearly cutting my right eye. A frozen puddle I can’t see cracks underneath me, but holds long enough for me to pass without falling into oblivion. Above, through the bare-branch canopy, snowflakes flutter down from the cloudy sky, sticking to my bare arms and melting far too slow for comfort.
A yelp behind me. Thirty feet, maybe less. One of the Wolves fell into the puddle. But the others blow right past him, gaining on me even more as I struggle to tear through a row of dense bushes. I pull free, the fabric of my pants torn from the sharp, stiff leaves, and pick up the pace again.
Each of my crunching steps in the snow haunts my ears, loud, too loud, like a beacon. Second only to my heavy breathing. But I can’t step lightly or breathe softly—my body’s too battered for any sort of stealth. And if I try to change tactics now and mess up…the Wolves are crashing through the snowdrifts seconds behind me.
You’
re not going to make it, says a nagging voice.
“Stick it, you little shit!” I bark back. And then realize I told myself to shut up. The voice was inside my own head.
I’m losing it. I’m too tired. My brain is starting to short-circuit from all the abuse, and if I don’t screw up by taking a faulty step and falling, or running into a tree I can’t see in the dark, then I’m inevitably going to be done in by my mind losing track of where I am or what I’m doing.
I suck in a deep, painful breath, too cold in my lungs, and swear as I release it into the freezing night.
Behind me, the third Wolf is catching up to the other two, recovered from his little trip into the puddle.
I can hear them breathing now. It sounds as if it’s in my ear. The hair on the back of my neck stands up, and a chill that is all fear builds at the base of my spine. I push harder, faster, knees struggling to hold me up with each impact against the ground. I grab skinny trees and yank my body toward them for a second of added momentum. My mouth opens wide and vacuums in as much air as my lungs can take.
Forget the pain. Concentrate. I need to—
“Who?” yells a voice, and I nearly topple right there, flying off face first into the snow. I hold it together with a couple stumbling steps—the Wolves draw closer—and then snap my head toward the source of the sound. For a second, in the darkness, I see nothing. No movement. No black figures against the shadowy backdrop. Nothing human. Or even monstrous. Or even shaped like a friendly woodland creature.
“Who?” the voice repeats.
The sound is coming from above.
I glance up at a tree twenty feet ahead.
Perched on a low-hanging branch is a large brown owl. Even though the Wolves and I are making an awful ruckus, the owl seems unaffected. It stares at my oncoming form, at the hulking masses of the Wolves behind me, ripping their way through the bushes and vines, shredding the underbrush with teeth and claws. It stares with its big, bright yellow eyes and hoots, loud and clear. Hoots like…
Yellow eyes?
The ghostly touch of déjà vu caresses my mind for a split second, and then it’s gone.
Shade Chaser (City of Crows 2) Page 11