Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
The cold concrete was rough against Stella’s skin, and there was a metallic taste in her mouth.
The light was bright and flat, and she spotted a drain on the floor a few feet away.
Reaching for her inner bear, she could feel the shape of it inside her and the warm familiar weight that had been her company as long as she could remember.
But the bear was muffled and wrapped in something thick.
She pushed at the shift, but it didn’t come.
They’d drugged her. The memory came back in flashes.
The sidewalk outside the hotel. The white van.
The man with the syringe. She tried to look around.
The room had concrete walls. A single fluorescent fixture overhead.
No windows. A metal door at the far end with a small reinforced window in the upper third.
There were four women sitting against the far wall.
One had her arms wrapped around another’s shoulders.
She recognized them from the fight venue.
Stella tried to push herself up onto one elbow and her arm gave out.
Nell… She was there with the others. She lay there with her cheek back on the concrete.
“Stella!” Nell’s voice echoed in Stella’s brain.
The metal door opened.
Two guards in black polos came in with a camera. The first one crouched beside her and rolled her onto her back. His hands were on her shoulders and her hip, moving her the way orderlies moved patients.
“Get her photographed,” he said. “The buyers want to see her before we move them.”
The second guard held a tablet up to her face. The flash went off. White spots bloomed in her vision.
“Other side.”
The first guard turned her head. The flash hit her eyelids through her closed eyes and the bear inside her growled. The wrap around her bear cracked. The nails on three of her fingers started to lengthen.
The second guard’s hand stopped. “She’s shifting. This one’s a bear.”
The first guard’s face went pale. He let go of her shoulder and stumbled back. “Get another dose. Now.”
The second guard scrambled for the door. Stella’s other hand on the concrete had thickened too. The skin of her forearms was rippling with growing fur.
The guard came back with a syringe. The first guard went for her right wrist. Her partially shifted hand snapped at his sleeve. Her claw caught the fabric and tore it. Three lines of red opened across his forearm. He swore and pulled back.
“Hold her down.”
The two guards grabbed as her shoulders began to thicken and shift. One lost his grip and stumbled back. The other pushed his weight against her to hold her down. She growled, deep and loud.
The second guard came at her with the syringe. She snapped at his hand with sharp, half-bear teeth. He pulled his hand back fast. The syringe flew across the room and slid under the door.
Two more guards came in, and they all piled on top of her. Stella thrashed, her bear trying to break free. The women along the far wall pressed themselves against the concrete and watched. She caught movement at the edge of her vision. A tiny brown shape hopped along the floor toward the exit.
The guards’ weight was on her chest and one of them had her by the hair. Another syringe came down. She felt it prick the side of her neck. Then another. Then a third. The drug wrapped around the bear again. The bear pushed against it. But she was pushed far back, down inside Stella’s mind.
Stella went limp. All signs of her grizzly disappeared.
The guards stayed on top of her until she stopped moving.
The one who’d taken the claws to his forearm was bleeding through the torn sleeve of his shirt, holding the arm against his chest. The others pulled back slowly, breathing hard and watching.
Finally, when they were sure she wouldn’t attack again, they picked her up and carried her out of the room and down the hall to a second room. The guards laid her on the concrete floor and stepped back fast, like they expected her to come up again.
She would have ripped them apart if she could. But whatever drug they’d used, it held her bear deep down inside her. They closed the door behind them and left her on the concrete floor in the dark.