Chapter 28
chapter
twenty-eight
The concrete stunk. Fear and blood and wolf, so thick Tobias could choke on it.
Tobias groaned. He knew this scent. Even if he escaped and never came back, he would still dream about the arena pit. It was the kind of odour that wormed inside your skin and made a home in your bones.
“Tobias,” a familiar voice whispered, thin with youth and fear. “Are you okay?”
Tobias cracked his eyes open reluctantly.
He was in his boxers. Every joint in his goddamn body ached.
Fucking Muzzle must have kept him half-transformed, bones snapping and reforming until he was sobbing.
There was a pool of drool under his face and his holey cheek was mostly healed, only a bloody divot remaining when Tobias stuck his tongue there.
Josh was huddled on the ground several feet away, also in boxers. His hands were wrapped around his knobbly knees.
“Been better,” Tobias slurred, even as the dread set in. “What are you doing down here?”
Then he froze. The scent of wolf was thicker, and not because he was lying in the arena. It was rolling off the kid in front of him.
Josh wasn’t wearing a cast. The arrow hole in his shoulder was a pale pink scar, already healing. He was shaking.
Tobias had expected him to look proud after he got turned, or at least relieved: years of work finally paying off. The illusion of safety, if nothing else.
But Josh didn’t look safe. He looked trapped. Like a rabbit in a snare, waiting for the fox to close in. Tobias wanted to call him an idiot. To shake him, ask him if he thought it was worth it now that Muzzle was going to force them into something truly terrible.
“Aw, buddy,” Tobias heard himself say instead.
Josh shuddered. He looked over to where Alexander had blown a hole in the arena, and Tobias saw it had been covered up with rebar. There would be no getting out of there.
Next, Josh shot a pointed look up at the arena seats.
Tobias followed his gaze. The arena was empty, save for Muzzle in his usual high seat. His guards flanked him, dressed in their stupid suits. One of them held Donna by the arms. Her face was even more swollen than before. One of her eyes was crusted shut, her lip trailing blood.
She gave Tobias the smallest finger wave.
Tobias waved back, heart sinking to his shoes. He’d spent so long charming his way out of trouble. There was no charming his way out of this one.
“You’re finally awake,” Muzzle called. “Aren’t you going to wish our newest member congratulations?”
Tobias ignored him. He shuffled toward Josh and touched his shoulder.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t look at him, okay? Look at me.”
Josh shook his head. Tears gleamed on his eyelashes, his mouth shaking as he tried to speak.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I was just scared. You know? I was so small and hungry and so fucking weak, I couldn’t see any kind of future out there for me, I wanted—”
“A life,” Tobias said. “I know you did. It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me.”
They both cried out as their bones ground together inside their bodies, hot and painful.
Tobias looked up. Muzzle was standing now, twisting the amulet almost absentmindedly as he loomed over them. “I expect you’ve guessed what’s coming next,” he said, his voice booming around the empty arena, no speakers required.
Tobias gritted his teeth. Alexander would come for him.
He knew it in his aching bones. Even if his parents wanted him to stay away, to wait until they had a plan, Alexander would come for him.
He’d come for Donna, half-cocked and stupid.
There was no way he wouldn’t come for him.
Maybe he would go back with his parents afterward, but he would try to drag Tobias out of this first.
“If you want a show,” Tobias called. “You’re not getting it.”
“Such a shame. You were always a good performer.” Muzzle smiled, his teeth flashing white around his cigar. “You could have done such incredible things, Tobias. You could have been my right-hand man.”
“Right-paw,” Tobias said, unable to stop himself.
Muzzle sighed. “And yet you insist on digging a hole for yourself. Well: here you are at the bottom. How’s the view?”
Tobias wanted to rip the cigar out of Muzzle’s mouth and shove it into his eye. Wanted to strangle him with that amulet chain. But he was so far up in the stands. He would never reach. The walls of the arena were covered in scratch marks from wolves trying to claw their way out.
Muzzle sat down, smoothing a hand through his long hair. “Begin.”
He reached for the amulet. Tobias tensed, waiting for the wolf to take over.
Josh hadn’t filled out with the werewolf muscles he was always hoping for. He’d stayed whip-lean, like an alley dog. If Muzzle twisted that amulet far enough, Tobias would rip this kid apart.
Muzzle twisted the amulet back to its starting place. Tobias and Josh slumped with relief as the pain fled.
Josh cleared his throat timidly. “Y-you won’t make us go feral?”
“No. I want you to remember this.” Muzzle was answering Josh, but his gaze was locked on Tobias as he continued: “And I want you to suffer. Especially when I tell you how you ripped your boy apart.”
Tobias felt it right where the amulet always struck him, in the deepest parts of his body. He racked his brains, trying to remember. Alexander had passed out from the tranq. Tobias had twisted on the ground, his bones snapping and forming and snapping again, and then…
Tobias didn’t remember what happened next. He stared at his nails and sniffed them. They didn’t smell like blood.
“Josh,” he said. “Did I hurt Alex?”
“I don’t know,” Josh whispered. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You’re okay.” Tobias scanned the arena, trying to find a distraction.
He needed to buy time before Alexander got here.
He would get here. Muzzle had to be lying.
If Tobias killed him, his mouth would taste like blood.
He’d have Alexander’s flesh between his teeth.
He’d stink of death. But he only smelled of stress and sweat.
He turned to Muzzle, lifting his arms. “Why is it just you here, huh? The pack didn’t want to watch me tear the new guy apart? They kind of like him, right? He’s weak and pathetic, but they like him. Even without all the explosion shit. He’s like a puppy who keeps pissing on the floor.”
He turned toward the barracks. “HEY, GUYS!”
“They aren’t there,” Muzzle said.
“Yeah? How about when they come back?” Tobias wobbled, unsteady on his feet after being kept in mid-transformation for so long. His bones felt brittle, like they could break at any moment.
“You can keep me here all night,” Tobias hissed. “For days, and I won’t hurt him. And he won’t hurt me. Right, kid?”
Josh stared at him. Then his gaze snapped to the far left of the arena. It was so fast that Tobias thought he was imagining it. Then Josh did it again, letting his eyes linger.
Tobias glanced over. There was a slab of concrete pushing up from the ground, cracked from the explosion.
Before Tobias could ask what he was trying to tell him, Muzzle sighed and reached for his amulet. “I have to admit, I’m quite ashamed of you,” he told Josh. “I thought you would be more pragmatic.”
He twisted the amulet.
Tobias and Josh yelled as one, both of them curling onto the ground. Tobias’s gums bulged with fangs, his skin straining to hold his new, misshapen bones.
Josh crawled toward him, pained tears falling down his cheeks and into the dusty concrete.
“Under-n-neath,” he slurred.
Tobias panted, “What?”
A door slammed open in the stands. Tobias looked up to see Meredith White stride in, slicing a knife through the bouncer’s throat. Bart marched behind her, crossbow at his side.
Sadie and Honey followed. Honey was holding a gleaming ax, Sadie had her fangs bared.
And behind them, walking so fast he almost pushed the girls aside, was Alexander.
His crossbow was up. His pale hair was a mess. He stared at Tobias with such relief he almost lowered his crossbow. But only for a moment. Then he pointed it across the stands at Muzzle.
Meredith let the bouncer drop to the ground and slid her knife into a holster. “Muzzle,” she said.
Muzzle smiled. “Meredith! Look at you. The years haven’t been kind. How’s your leg?”
Meredith jerked her head. Bart shot the bodyguard holding Donna. He howled and reeled back, a silver bolt burning in his shoulder.
“Straight to business, then.” Muzzle stubbed his cigarette out on his chair and stood, cricking his neck.
Josh made an urgent noise. He was trying to crawl to the spot he’d been pointing at, Tobias realized. He shuffled toward him, overtaking him easily even as he kept glancing back at Muzzle’s position.
Muzzle rushed forward with a litheness Tobias didn’t know he was capable of and threw himself over the barrier.
He heard Donna shriek in pleased shock. She thought he might hurt himself, that they might get a win.
Then Muzzle started to swell and change. Black fur sprouted over his skin, his clothes shredding as he transformed. He hit the concrete several feet behind Tobias with a hard crack, the arena shaking underneath the weight of his enormous paws.
Muzzle raised his shaggy head. He was even bigger than Tobias remembered. He’d only seen Muzzle in wolf form once before—the last time they fought this damn family.
Tobias gritted his teeth and forced himself to crawl faster. He reached the concrete slab and looked underneath it.
A grenade glinted back at him. Tobias looked back at Josh, who raised his eyebrows shakily as if to say, can’t beat the classics.
Tobias shot Josh a pained grin. Then he ripped the bomb out from under the concrete.
“The stairs are to your right,” Muzzle rasped at Meredith, his voice thick and twisted through his muzzle. “Come down and let’s end this, Meredith.”
Tobias ripped the pin out of the grenade and threw.
Muzzle continued, “Once and for—”
The grenade rolled to a stop next to Muzzle’s back paw. Muzzle paused to glance back at it.
“Huh,” said Meredith approvingly.