Chapter Twenty Nine
Sharp Pain, Secret Plans and Sudden Visitors
Elliot
My head hurts. Something is digging into my wrist. I try to move my hands. Sharp pain ripples up my arm.
Scratch that, everything hurts.
I try to open my eyes, but it’s hard. It’s like my eyelids are glued together. Where am I? What’s happening?
“I know you’re awake,” a voice says sweetly.
Finally, I pull the eyelids open. Everything is dark, off focus. Then I can make out a figure standing in front of me, a few feet away. He’s a little blurry. I focus on his face.
White, male, tall, muscular. Werewolf.
He’s grinning under my inspection.
“Hey, there,” he says. “Heard a lot about you. Your boyfriend won’t shut up about you. Elliot this. Elliot that. I had to see what all the fuss was about for myself,” he continues.
The mention of Nicholas sends a pang in my gut. I try to form words, but my mouth is too dry. So, I focus on breathing and assessing my situation. My hands are tied behind the back of the wooden chair I’m sitting on, and my ankles are tied to its legs.
“And of course, there was the whole thing about you killing my girlfriend,” he says matter-of-factly.
My head snaps to his face.
Bad idea. My gaze whitens, and pain sears through my head. It makes me dizzy and nauseous.
He laughs. “That got a reaction, huh? Not the boyfriend thing. Well, now I’m sure he’s going to forgive me if he finds out, which he won’t. About me, that is. You’re screwed. I’ll make sure of that,” he says.
“I don’t… know… what—”
“Don’t bother. I know I got it wrong twice. They didn’t deserve to live anyway, so I’m not upset or anything. But this time I’m sure. What did you think? You were some sort of god making decisions about who gets to live? Well, now you have no power,” he says with a manic smile.
“No, you’ve got the wrong—”
His laugh startles me. “Is that really how you want to spend the little time you have left. I know it was you. You ordered the medicines. Cocky little shit, weren’t you? Thought no one would care enough to look. Well, I did,” he says.
“What medicines?” I try with my croaky voice. What else can I do?
“Shut up,” he yells. “Enough of that. I suspected long before the medicines. There was no veterinarian conference in Arizona that weekend. You know what did happen, though? The body of a werewolf was found in a hotel. Died of a heart attack.”
He stalks toward me. I plaster myself to the back of the hard wooden chair to get away from him. He leans down until his face is right in front of me, just inches away.
“You really thought you got away, didn’t you?” he whispers. “Oh, Elliot, this is gonna be so much fun.”
A sharp noise distracts him. He backs off to check his phone lying on a desk a few feet away. I take this time to look around me. My mind feels sluggish, everything trailing behind. But at least I can see clearly now.
The room is dark, with an overhead light hanging from the ceiling above the desk, the only source of light here. The air feels stale, suffocating.
So, a basement. That explains the lack of windows. Not that I’m complaining. I can’t expect the man to make his abduction room open and airy.
I look at my abductor again, now frowning down at his phone. Why the fuck did I trust him? Right, he said he’s Nicholas’s friend, and I believed him like an idiot. So fucking stupid of me.
Even then, I wouldn’t have just driven away with him to my own abduction. And he clearly knew that.
That explains the red-hot pain in my head and the bleariness.
He wants me dead. So, what’s all the theatrics about? He could have gotten rid of me right there on my front porch. He was in his uniform, no one would have questioned him much.
No, he wants to make it hurt. While that sucks, it also gives me a chance to survive this.
And then what?
If he found me, Nicholas will too, if he hasn’t already.
I might try to run. Succeed even. Then what?
Sam has categorically said he won’t continue this.
And while the normal life was fun, I can admit it was only because of Mickey, Ashley, and Nicholas.
But only because I’m going to die soon. What’s the point in lying to myself anymore?
“I need to check something. I’ll be back,” Dominic says absentmindedly, leaving me alone.
I focus my attention on breathing and calming my heartbeat. Once the initial shock of the situation wears off, I’m just left with shame. How could I be stupid enough to trust a werewolf I didn’t even know?
But I don’t have any doubts in my mind that Sam must have sent out a search party for me already. How he manages that, I don’t know. Just like I never know how he does anything.
Still, I can’t sit here twiddling my thumbs, waiting to be rescued, especially because time is not on my side.
I can hear footsteps stomping on the floor above me. I rotate my wrists to gauge how securely he’s tied me.
A rope? Not at all securely, then, if you know what you’re doing. Oh, werewolves. Always so fucking cocky.
I press the backs of my wrists together to create some slack. My hands are trembling, but after about thirty minutes of consistent pressure which makes my wrists raw until it goes numb, I feel the rope give a little.
I smile. Within minutes, I have my hands free.
I keep the rope handy, ignoring the pain and get to work on my legs—a cakewalk. I look around again, checking for exits. Just one that he left through.
I don’t dare to move from my chair. With the werewolf hearing, the man would know I’m free before I can take a single step. No, I need to wait for him and finish him off first.
I leave the rope lightly tangled around my legs, giving the impression of knots, and hold the other one behind my back, my only weapon here.
I’d rate my chances of beating a werewolf with just a rope at about two out of ten. But what do I have to lose? I’m dying either way. This might speed up the process and make it less painful. Always a fan of feeling less pain.
So I wait for my captor to show up and mark the end of the story for one of us.
***
By the time I hear footsteps getting down the stairs, I feel sharper and ready.
Is it weird that I feel more relaxed tied in a basement at an unknown location than I did in my kitchen trying to figure out if I got the quantity of sugar right?
You can’t just say one hundred fifty-six grams of sugar as if everyone has a metric-system weighing machine lying around in their houses, yourbakingqueen777.
Dominic isn’t looking as chirpy as he did a few hours ago. He still looks confident, but there’s a tiny frown between his eyebrows. The guy is under stress.
“We’re hurrying the plan along,” he declares. “But we can still have fun, can’t we?” he says, his face all smug.
“Oh yeah? I didn’t keep it quick with your girlfriend,” I say. I need him close and distracted for this to work. My chances of survival will go down to nil if he comes at me with his claws out at werewolf speed.
The change in his expression is instant. He’s furious now. Yes, be angry, focus on being angry. “You son of a bitch.”
I laugh. “You got caught, didn’t you?” What else could he be this worried about if he’s been planning his petty revenge for what has to be over a year? His tax returns?
“They will give me awards when they know who I disposed of,” he claims.
I laugh again, more mockingly. “Oh, and how are you proving I even did anything? Because what, I bought some medicine?”
He smirks and walks toward me. He leans in again. “Not the human police,” he says.
But I’ve heard enough out of him. I leap, swinging the rope behind his neck. Before he realizes what’s happening, I have it looped around him twice. I kick the chair back to have some space to move.
I kick at his knees until he goes down. He thrashes, claws out, trying to attack me.
I’ve trained to keep the claws away. Even with my body at its weakest, they’re not getting me. Not today.
When he tries to headbutt me in the chest, I tighten the rope.
His hands go around the rope, trying to cut it off. But it’s too late. That’s why I didn’t choke him all the way immediately. I needed to keep his claws away from the rope until he was desperate. Now, he’s just injuring himself.
His body starts to give out.
A loud bang upstairs distracts me. Footsteps thunder down. Then Nicholas is standing there with a gun trained on us.
Everything happens in slow motion, or maybe my brain freezes when I see him here. Dominic claws through the rope, which is now drenched in both of our bloods. He flips us so he’s standing behind me and pulls me against his chest.
All the while, I stare at Nicholas and the end of the barrel of his gun. Then I feel a sharp claw against my neck.
No, no, no, no, no. I was so close.
“Dom, you don’t have to do that,” Nicholas says carefully. He looks tired and unkempt. His hair tussled, as I’ve only seen in the mornings. He’s frowning hard. At least, I got to see him before I died. His eyes are trained on Dominic behind me.
“I have to. But you already know that,” Dominic says while I try to stand as still as possible. “He killed my girlfriend and so many werewolves. You were investigating the case. You stalked him for months because you suspected him.”
I knew he wouldn’t want me once he realized what I was. But knowing he never did? That crushes my cold, dark heart to pieces. An unrelenting heaviness weighs me down, my eyes watering.
“But this is not the right way,” Nicholas says, his voice breathless. He still won’t look at me.
“What, you want to protect him even after knowing everything you know?”
“No, we need to bring him in. Punish him the right way,” he says. “You don’t want to be like him.”
Dominic does snort. “You know they’re just going to tangle the entire case in paperwork. The Bureau is nothing but a bunch of pansies working to keep the humans happy and quiet,” he says with so much hostility I’m surprised he hasn’t stabbed me yet.
“Okay, okay. You’re right,” Nicholas says. I knew this was coming, but hearing him read out my death declaration still makes something cold drop to the pit of my stomach. The worst part? He still won’t look at me, the fucking coward.
“You’re right, they’ll just delay everything,” Nicholas continues. “But you still can’t stab him with claws. I have LAPD officers coming here. Didn’t know what I was going to find. So, it has to be with a gun. Easy to explain away.” Then Nicholas winks at him.
I thought I knew what it felt to lose everything. Even hope. But the cold expression on Nicholas’s face makes me finally give up. I’m done. I don’t even care how they do it anymore. I just want not to be here looking at his stony face. It doesn’t even suit him.
Maybe I deserve to go. It took so long to figure this out. This is why nothing made sense once we stopped the missions.
I don’t belong. I’ll never belong.
“You’re right,” Dominic sighs, retracting his claws. “But do it quickly. This bitch isn’t as helpless as he—”
Nicholas shoots.