Chapter 33
I was pretty sure I kept blacking out for seconds at a time.
My arm hurt so much, and the angle it was bound at wasn’t making it any better.
I had to keep my eyes open. They had given Ell some kind of injection, drugging him while he was still out from the Taser.
I couldn’t see him now. They’d moved him.
They had stuff here. It was like a campsite, roughly circular. There were tents.
I tried to remember how many days it had been since we’d first run into these guys, since I’d come here, but I couldn’t concentrate. My head was pounding.
The werewolf hadn’t shifted, but he had padded over. His eyes were mostly yellow, golden if I was in a poetic mood. I so fucking wasn’t. I had to keep swallowing so I wouldn’t throw up, and staying conscious was a similar challenge.
I saw the wolf sniffing the air, but he was subtle about it. His tail was low to the ground. I only had Ell, Dom, and Linc to compare him to, but he seemed smaller, thinner.
A click, then beeping and a mechanical whirring sound made me look around.
“Son of a bitch,” one of the men said. There had been another two here. One of them looked young, about the right age to be one of the twinks Steven had cheated with, perhaps.
Though that was me making light of this seriously fucked-up situation. All of these men had weapons, and when they looked at me, they barely even recognized me as a person. Even Steven’s inane venom was better than the way they tried not to see me at all.
They were running. Pain pulsed in my shoulder, threatening to make me sick all over again.
“Please,” I said, then I whined. It hurt so damn much.
At first, when Dom called my name, I thought I was hallucinating, but then things came into focus. They were looking for me. They could help Ell, get him help.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Steven, that ugly grin plastered on his face like shit stains dried in a toilet bowl.
“Dom?” My voice was raspy and crackling like static. “Dom… Do—”
Steven’s hand slapped over my mouth. He reeked, the smell of him burning all the way to the back of my throat.
“Shut the fuck up, Marc.”
I wanted to bite him or kick. The pain that came from him yanking me around like that was too much though. It stunned me completely, and my vision narrowed as my body prepared to tap out.
I had no idea what kept me alert, not really, but I was just so scared. I was scared they’d shoot Dom or Ell, I was scared Linc was here, that they’d shoot him too. I was scared of the pain.
The pain didn’t care. I heard the underwater sound in my ears while Steven was plastering duct tape over my mouth.
Faintly, I recognized how bad that was in case I really had to throw up after all.
There had been a time when I’d kissed that man and meant it, and now I was thinking about how him doing this to me could make me suffocate on my own vomit.
The werewolf watched as if he saw this kind of thing every day.
Steven slapped my cheek and walked away. He said something, some stupid, meaningless comment, but I couldn’t hear it over the buzzing in my ears.
I wasn’t picking up all the sound around me either, and my vision was still graying out. I tried to move, but everything I did just made it worse. I decided to focus on breathing and keeping my stomach from revolting.
I missed it when they dragged a naked Dom in, only sort of recognized when they lifted him up, slinging his arms over their shoulders and posing for a photo. One of them pulled his head up by his hair.
Seeing that—the man holding Dom by the hair—made everything white out for a second.
I thought he was dead. I thought they were posing with him like sociopathic billionaires did with the rhinos or lions they paid to kill. He was bloody. I couldn’t even cry. Maybe I cried without knowing it.
I realized he was alive only when they pulled a dart out of his side, the kind you saw in documentaries about wildlife. They let him drop to the ground, hard, and then they rammed a syringe into his buttock while laughing.
This was a nightmare, and I couldn’t wake up. I could only watch. They carried Dom out of my line of sight too, and I couldn’t turn properly. The movement hurt too much.
They started packing up the campsite then, moving fast. Someone jolted the ATV. I whimpered. They didn’t care. I couldn’t see the wolf anymore.
I went into a middle-distance place between being alert and passed out. I’d had no idea that place existed. I was sitting down, but I didn't hurt, and I could move my arms.
I touched my belly, still flat, and wondered how it would feel to have that change. I couldn’t make it line up with reality. It was a round peg for a hole that had been square all my life.
What would I even call a baby if there was a baby?
I was jolted out of that fugue state when the ATV started moving again.
Steven was driving. I wished him a heart attack or an aneurysm.
The ground was uneven, and I felt every stone, every pit in the nonexistent road we were crossing as blooming pain that radiated outward from my arm to the rest of me.
It was torture. I was breathing heavily by the time we stopped at a stretch of abandoned-looking road that was paved but plastered with dead leaves and pine needles.
There were several cars here as well as a truck, the large back of it scary.
It was seeing that truck that made me realize I was really living a true crime story now.
I had to be smart, then. I had to fight. I had to stay awake.
Steven cut me loose, and then he ripped the duct tape off.
I knew I should’ve felt that, and from the gleeful expression on his face, he thought so too. I barely felt a pinch.
Steven sneered and pulled me along. He was grabbing my good arm, but with the zip ties, I still ended up whimpering.
“For the sake of fuck, Marc, you’re such an embarrassment.”
One of them laughed, and it scared me. I looked around for who it had been; the one who’d looked at me across the river.
“Shit, man.” He came over and clapped me on my left shoulder. The pain would’ve brought me to my knees if Steven hadn’t been holding me up. “Shit. Sprained, huh? Poor little wimp this one, isn’t he?”
“You have no idea,” Steven said.
The man cackled. “Marc, huh? Hey, Marc, I’m sure they’ll be able to fix you right up back at Camelot. I’d cut off the redhead’s dick for you, but they kind of like them in one piece these days.” He scoffed. “Changing times, you know?”
Steven snorted. “Makes you wish for the good old days sometimes.”
They put me in the back of a large SUV and closed the door.
At least this wasn’t the truck. Maybe I could get out.
One of them was right outside the door, but at least I was alone in the car and insanely grateful for the quiet, for being able to rest my arms in my lap.
It still hurt, but it was marginally better than before.
With my head against the headrest, I looked around as best as I was able, but still jumped when the other door to the back opened and a scrawny-looking guy with dirty blond hair came in.
He had a sandwich box in hand, the cheap plastic kind you got from the supermarket. This one looked like cheese. He was smiling.
“Hi. I asked if you could have one, but Josh slapped me. I’ll share the next one with you, okay? I’m sorry, I’m really hungry. Haven’t had anything in two days.”
I just stared. Then I noticed his clothing was dirty and consisted of a sweatshirt and pants so threadbare you could barely call it clothing. He didn’t have shoes either.
“Are you…are you the werewolf?”
He bowed his head. “Yes. They don’t call me that. You smell kind of funny, do you know that? Sweet. It’s a really nice smell.”
He pulled the plastic open and pulled out one half of the sandwich. It took him barely three bites to finish it, and I wasn’t sure he swallowed in between. He was slower with the second half, but not by much. He glanced up from his food once, giving me a sheepish look.
He licked his lips. There was about two bites of the sandwich left.
“If…if you’re very hungry, I suppose I can give you the rest. I think they’re happy, so maybe they’ll give me a second one today. Here.”
He held the remainder of the sandwich out to me. It took me a second to realize he was waiting for me to take it.
I shook my head, flinching when that caused pain to shoot all the way from my shoulder down to my fingers. “N-no. Thank you. You go ahead.”
He beamed and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. I watched him, unable to tear my eyes away.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then folded the plastic over the sandwich box closed.
“They’re not too bad. You can get used to it.
” He licked a speck of mayo off the corner of his mouth.
“If you try to run away, they’re going to hurt you, bad.
” He leaned in closer. “I’m not saying don’t run, but be really sure.
” He pulled on a necklace that was tight to his skin.
“These don’t come off easy, and if you cut it, there’s an alarm. ”
“Is that a collar?”
The expression on his face, the blankness in his eyes cracked for just one fraction of a second, but I saw it. Anger, hurt. Pain. Then it was plastered back over by his benign, uncaring smile.
“It sure is. So I don’t get lost.”
Then the doors in the front opened, and Steven got in on the passenger side, the other guy taking the wheel.
“Off to Camelot,” he said.
Wherever they were taking us, I didn't want to go.