Chapter Eight – Angela
Chapter Eight
Angela
The decoy-thing sitting beside me in the backseat stank.
A little like Rabbit, but more like something wrong.
It was hard not to recoil from it, but I had to pretend that it was my baby boy.
I couldn’t even look back as we left—one of Paco’s men had counseled against it—as it might break the illusion that Rabbit was here beside me.
There was a chance that Mark’s place hadn’t been under surveillance, but all the men in the car found that thought unlikely. Anything they thought past that, they kept to themselves.
We traveled in tight formation until we hit the highway, and then the third and unimportant car zoomed ahead. It took an exit and I was sure I could hear distant motorcycle pipes.
“Go,” one of the other men commanded—and our car surged off. I could almost feel Rabbit’s car pulling further behind me—and neither my wolf nor I liked that one bit.
My wolf—suddenly she was back inside, filling me, now that the magician had lifted all that silver out—and she was pissed. This thing beside us was not her cub, and her place was at his side. My lips peeled back and I almost snarled.
No, no, no—I wrestled with her, internally—but based on what was happening now and, goddamn the timing, an almost full moon outside—she wanted to be in control. She’d been hidden inside me for long enough and it was going to be her turn. She was going to make the decisions here.
I was utterly unprepared for how strong she was with all my silver gone.
I reached for the knife Jack had given me, unsheathed it, and batted its blade against my hand.
“Stop that,” I warned, in an effort to gain her attention as the silver bit me.
She growled inside, and made me throw the knife down.
Frightening things were happening in me—I could feel her strength—but I could also feel her claws—I held onto the seat ahead of me tight, like I was going to be sick and—
We were side-swiped.
Airbags blew from all over, pinning each of us in safety.
My arm flew out for the decoy—I was a mom, and it was child-sized, I couldn’t help myself—and I felt it flop against me with its doughy shape.
Metal scraped metal as whatever’d hit us didn’t stop pushing—then we were hovering over an edge, I could feel us teeter—I had half a second to scream-howl before the stomach wrenching sensation of freefall.
The sedan landed, on its roof, with all of us, still seat-belted, dangling inside.
The way Paco’s men recovered was extraordinary—it was just that the car was besieged by werewolves in an instant.
A door was pulled off, and the man next to me shot out—until an arm reached in and clawed his throat out, spattering the interior with his blood.
There were two heavy thumps as other creatures landed on the chassis of the sedan above—I went for my seatbelt to free myself as an almost disembodied hand reached in and yanked the front passenger outside.
I heard him howl and then a crunch. I could see the silver knife glittering, just out of reach.
I had a feeling, from my wolf-driven senses, that most of the Pack was here—which meant that Rabbit had escaped. And he would be safe as long as no one knew where he’d gone. The driver’d freed himself and was bravely preparing to charge the outside world.
“Give me a gun?” I whispered. He handed me one. “I’m sorry,” I said—and then I shot him. The Pack was going to kill him anyways—but this way he couldn’t tell them where Rabbit was, first.
Hands reached in, caught my ankles, and dragged me out.
“What the fuck is this thing?”
Pack members had pulled the decoy out after me, and Murphy stood over it, kicking it with his boot.
It tried to fight him but lacked strength, instead puffing out sooty blackness like a mushroom.
Then—it blossomed. Like one of those disgusting black snake fireworks that stain your sidewalk on the fourth of July—the decoy erupted, winding up around Murphy’s legs.
He started to scream and it flowed into his mouth.
“Get it off me! Get it off!” he shrieked, before he started coughing up blood.
Men rushed in only to be burned themselves; shouting, rubbing their hands against their jeans or in the dirt at their feet.
All the silver that’d been living in me was slowly killing Murph now.
I bit back a howl of satisfaction. He fell to the ground and started rolling, trying and failing to put out the fire inside.
A non-descript black truck pulled up, and Daziel leapt out of the cab, running over to help Murphy before other Pack members held him back for his own safety. When Murphy was done screaming, clearly dead, he wheeled on me.
“What’re you smiling at?”
“Murphy, getting what’s his at long last,” I snarled.
I could only see him out of my one good-eye, as the other was swelling shut from the tumble I’d taken in the sedan. My hands were being tied in front of me by someone I didn’t know—there were ten or so pack members here, most I didn’t recognize, it’d been too long.
Daziel looked me over. “You don’t look very good, dearie.”
I could see his mutilated hand, from where Jack had gotten him. “Yeah? Would you say I take after my mom?” I grinned so that if he slapped me he would cut his hand on my teeth.
His eyes narrowed. “Get in the truck.”
“Or what?”
“Or we’ll drag you behind it.”
Men I didn’t know grabbed me, boosted me up, and shoved me inside the truck’s cab, pushing me until I reached the center seat. No one bothered putting a seatbelt on me, and Daziel jumped up and into the driver’s seat.
“Nice hands,” I said, as he reached for the wheel, noticing the missing fingers Jack’s silver knife had taken off of him.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said, and someone yanked a hood over my head.
The truck bounced along whatever path Daziel drove it—I knew we were going up from the way I slid back, and from the way my ears popped when the altitude had changed.
While I knew the Farm I’d remembered had been raided by the cops, I was sure they’d found an alternate location, someplace else safe they could hide on a full moon night.
And speaking of—my wolf knew one was near.
She’d retreated when there’d been speaking to do, but now that I was in darkness, I could feel her responses to our situation battering my mind.
Each twist of the truck unnerved her, the loud sound its clattering made, the way that strange smelling men pressed up on every side.
I had no idea how fine her nose could be, until now—I could scent each man in the cab individually.
Each man and…his wolf. Their wolves were always present, always close at hand.
Whereas the transition between me and my wolf was like switching gears—they, and their creatures, lived as one.
I found myself jealous of their simplicity and also scared by it.
I was literally in a truck cab full of wild animals.
The only thing I was truly sure my wolf and I had in common was our concern for Rabbit. We were not as one, and I didn’t think we’d ever be, but our love for him bound us inextricably. If they had him, I was sure Daziel would have gloated by now—please be free, baby, please be free.
The truck lurched to a stop, and we were yanked out. Someone caught us before we fell over—Daziel—and someone else pushed us along—he smelled gamey, so in my head I called him Meat.
“Stairs,” Daziel warned before I reached them, and then we walked up and in through an open door. Meat’s hands caught our shoulders and shoved us down into a chair, and then the hood was removed.
My eyes adjusted to the dark far faster than they had any right to. We were in a garage, and a massive cage occupied half the back wall.
“Where are we? And what are you going to do to me?”
Daziel counted on the fingers he had remaining. “We’re deep in the woods, love. And now we’re going to make you pay.”
I squinted at him. “You didn’t have to drag me here for that. You could’ve shot me beside the car.”
“Too easy. Plus, we want answers. Where’s the boy?”
“I don’t know.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that.”
I waited for someone to dramatically run one of the wood saws in threat, but all of them seemed unconcerned.
“I honestly don’t know where he is. And you’ll never find him again. We changed our scents.”
“I can tell,” Daziel said, tapping his own nose. “But you’ll be able to find him. As your wolf.”
I was taken aback, and started shaking my head as he went on.
“She grew up away from her kind. Poisoned with silver. Taught to hate us, to be afraid. You think our wolves can’t sense the fear in you for yours?
You’ve been practically torturing her for the past seven years.
What do you think will happen when she comes out?
Will she believe you? Or will she listen to us—when all her instincts tell her to rush to his side? ”
Blood started thundering through my veins. I hadn’t gone through all this to not keep Rabbit safe—
Daziel stood. “I’ve a mind to take the price of Murphy’s death and my hand out of your hide. But Gray still wants you whole—for now. Get in the back,” he said, and I knew he meant into the cage. I hesitated.
“GET IN THE BACK!” he shouted, and both my wolf and I jumped.
The remaining fingers of his bad hand snatched my hair up and threw us forward, onto our hands and knees—we had to lopsidedly scramble with bound hands for the cage’s door.
He came into the cage after us, which we realized with a panic—and then a boot came at our face.
Between it hitting and our head ricocheting off the metal bars behind us, everything went black.