20. Crypt Keeper
CRYPT KEEPER
Consciousness came back in pieces. Sound first. A low mechanical hum. Dripping water. The distant whir of a ventilation system.
Then smell. Bleach. Blood. Silver. Something with a heavy chemical smell that burned the back of my throat.
My wolf came awake violently. Not gradually. Not confused. One second there was darkness. The next, the beast inside me slammed against my ribs so hard my body jerked.
Bad idea. Pain exploded through my shoulders, wrists, ribs.
I opened my eyes. Concrete ceiling. Fluorescent light. Metal restraints.
My arms were stretched wide and locked into silver-lined cuffs bolted to a steel frame.
My ankles were secured the same way. A thick band wrapped around my chest with heavy chains that connected to the frame, another around my throat, holding me upright at an angle that kept my feet barely touching the floor.
Hanging in tatters, my shirt was barely covering me. The way my back burned, I wondered if they’d literally dragged me back here.
My vision sharpened. Tables lined the room, some with straps and shackles attached. Trays of instruments. Vials. Scales. Medical refrigeration units.
Not a cell. A fucking lab.
Except unlike a normal lab, this one had warding sigils painted in careful, precise lines along the walls. Not sloppy witchcraft. Nor was it panic magic. This was controlled. Layered. Designed.
My wolf snarled. The sound vibrated up my throat, but the collar bit down instantly. Silver burned into my skin, stealing the growl before it could fully form.
Knowing it was useless, I tested the restraints anyway.
Nothing. The metal held. Pain flared through my wrists. Still, I tested it harder. The walls hummed. Magic slammed into me like a fist. My knees buckled, but the restraints held me upright.
“Impressive,” a voice murmured from the dark.
I went still as I tried to ascertain the direction it was coming from.
Footsteps approached. Calm. Measured. He stepped into view, and somehow I knew who he was.
He was exactly what I expected and worse. Not monstrous, nor dramatic. Not some snarling demon with horns and smoke curling off his skin.
He looked highly controlled. Refined. Dark hair. Cold eyes. Expensive coat. The kind of man who didn’t raise his voice because everyone around him had already learned to pay attention.
Just looking at him pissed me off.
“You recover faster than expected,” he explained, not confirming my suspicions.
My lip curled. “Come closer and I’ll show you what else I do fast.”
A faint smile curved his lips. “Still spirited. I like that.”
My wolf lunged against my skin, but there was no way for me to shift. Not with the collar burning against me from whatever magic was embedded in the silver lining. I clenched my jaw until bone creaked. Rafael watched the reaction like he was studying weather patterns.
“You weren’t supposed to find the tunnel yet,” he continued. “That was extremely inconvenient.”
“Sorry to ruin your schedule,” I retorted with a sneer.
His smile deepened slightly. “You didn’t ruin it. You simply accelerated it.”
That wasn’t exactly better.
He stepped closer, stopping just outside the reach of my restrained hands. Smart bastard.
“Rafael, I presume?” I questioned with a smirk.
“You know who I am,” he confirmed.
“Obviously,” I drawled.
His eyes flickered. “Then she told you.”
She. Katalina. My chest tightened before I could stop it.
Rafael noticed. Of course he did. His gaze sharpened. “Ahh, there it is.”
I didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Didn’t give him a damn thing.
He came closer anyway, gaze sweeping over my chest, my shoulders, my throat. Not like an enemy. Like an investor inspecting a property he was thinking of purchasing.
“You are far more valuable than I was initially led to believe,” he admitted, sounding a bit surprised.
I laughed once, low and ugly, without an ounce of humor. “People keep saying shit like that to me lately.”
“That is because very few understand what you are,” he flippantly replied.
“I’m getting tired of people pretending they do,” I shot back, wanting more than anything to break free and rip his throat out.
Rafael’s expression didn’t change.
“No,” he softly corrected. “You’re getting tired because some part of you suspects they’re right.”
The words slid insidiously under my skin, yet I said nothing.
He glanced toward the glass wall on the far side of the room. I followed his gaze. There was another room beyond it. Dark. But not empty. Something moved inside. Large. Too large.
My wolf went still.
Rafael noticed that too.
“They were supposed to be extinct,” he said conversationally. “Did you know that?”
My eyes remained on the glass. “What?”
“Werewolves.”
The word sat between us like a live wire.
“You mean the things your kind tried to wipe out?”
Rafael’s gaze slid back to mine. “Not my kind. Not all of us.”
“No. Just the ambitious ones.”
That earned me another faint smile.
“Ambition is simply survival with vision. They didn’t do it out of ambition. They did it because they didn’t want to die.”
“You practice that line in the mirror every morning?”
A pause. Then Rafael quietly chuckled. Genuine.
That actually irritated me more than if he’d hit me.
“Thousands of years ago,” he explained, “demons believed the wolves were gone. Eradicated. Burned from history.”
He moved toward one of the tables, slowly dragging a finger over the edge of a metal tray.
“Then one nearly killed Séamus in Rome.”
The name meant something. I knew it because of the way the air changed when Rafael said it. Like even walls knew it was best to absorb it than to repeat it too loudly.
“The king survived,” Rafael continued. “Barely. Which created a very uncomfortable realization among certain circles.”
He turned back toward me.
“If one werewolf could almost kill the demon king, what could an army of them do?”
My stomach tightened. Beyond the glass, something hit the wall. Hard. The sound resonated through the room. My wolf snarled silently.
Rafael didn’t even flinch.
“Officially, the remaining wolves are being hunted down,” he said. “Unofficially…” He let the silence finish for him.
“They were caged,” I guessed.
“Preserved,” Rafael amended.
“Bred.”
“Eventually.” He shrugged as if it was no big deal.
My hands flexed against the restraints. Warded silver burned my flesh, but I welcomed it. Better pain than the fury trying to tear me apart. “You sick son of a bitch.”
Rafael tilted his head. “Careful now. After all, I didn’t begin the program.”
“No. You just found a way to profit from it,” I interjected.
That landed. Not visibly, but enough that I could tell his eyes cooled. Then another voice spoke.
“Profit is such a vulgar word.”
The door opened behind him. A man stepped inside wearing a white lab coat.
Plain. Human-looking. Older, maybe late fifties, early sixties, with heavily silver hair neatly combed back and pale, intelligent eyes that held no warmth whatsoever. He carried a tablet in one hand and a syringe in the other. Everything about him was unsettling… uncanny.
Not because he looked evil, but because he didn’t. He looked merely curious. Terribly, calmly curious. Like nothing in this room was suffering. Like suffering was simply data on a page. Black and white symbols on bright white paper.
Rafael turned slightly. “Doctor,” he greeted with a nod.
No name. Just that. The Doctor.
The man’s gaze landed on me and stayed.
“Well,” he began softly. “You are simply beautiful.”
My wolf tried to rip out of my skin. The restraints screamed. The walls flared with ward light. The Doctor smiled.
Not pleased. Not excited. Worse.
Fascinated.
“Yes,” he murmured. “I see it now.”
Rafael watched him carefully. “Explain.”
The Doctor approached with the easy confidence of a man who believed every monster in the room had already been accounted for and contained. He stopped in front of me, studying my face. Then my shoulders. Then the places where the restraints bit into my skin.
“You are not merely a Rougarou,” he stated.
I bared my teeth. “What gave it away? The cage?”
He ignored that.
“Rougarous are already rule-breakers. Wolf shifter lines altered by cursed magic. The full moon does not simply pull the beast forward—it mutates the very expression of it.” His gaze sharpened. “But you…”
He looked genuinely delighted. “You are something better.”
Rafael’s attention sharpened as the Doctor moved around me in no apparent hurry.
“Do you know what an amplifier bloodline is?” he finally asked.
I went cold. My mother. The thought struck fast and hard. I didn’t know why. Only that it did.
The Doctor saw something on my face. His smile widened. “Ah,” he gleefully purred. “You’ve heard the term.”
“Keep talking,” I quietly encouraged. “I like imagining exactly how much of you I’m going to rip apart.”
Rafael stepped closer. The Doctor only lifted a hand, unconcerned.
“Amplifiers are not powerful in the traditional sense,” he continued. “They do not create power. They magnify what already exists.”
He tapped something on the tablet.
“Certain bloodlines stabilize mutations. Others suppress them. Some strengthen existing supernatural traits. Some…” His eyes gleamed. “…make the impossible viable.”
My stomach dropped because I knew exactly what he was referring to: Zara.
The Doctor’s gaze shifted slightly, like he was reading the thought in the air before it fully formed. “The female was not supposed to survive. Did you know that?”
I stopped breathing. Everything inside me stopped. Rafael watched closely. Too closely.
“What female?” I asked, though I knew the answer. My voice was flat. Too flat.
The Doctor smiled. “Come now.”
The collar burned as my throat worked around a growl.
“Say her name,” I demanded.
The Doctor’s head tilted. “Zara?”
My wolf went insane. Lashing wildly, I hit the restraints with everything I had. Silver burned. Wards detonated. The angled table I was strapped to rocked. Pain ripped through every nerve, but I didn’t care. I’d have torn off my own arms to get to him.
Rafael moved fast, pressing something against my neck. Another injection.