Silence. Had that still sounded sarcastic? Damn it! Change tack, double-time. I yawned and rubbed my hands over my face.
"I'm sorry, Ty. I'm so tired."
"You didn't look tired when I walked in. Standing around, chatting it up with Xavier. You two seem pretty tight."
"I was just thanking him. He did me a big favor, jumping in-"
He snapped his fingers, pique vanishing in an eye blink. "Favor. That reminds me, there's something I need to ask you about. Hold on and I'll be right back."
I wanted to ask if it could wait until morning. I really did. But after last night, I desperately needed to get back into his good graces. I couldn't deny him a favor. Besides, he seemed to be in a chipper mood. That was a good sign. So I summoned my last bits of strength, managed a clumsy half-smile, and nodded. Not that my consent mattered. Winsloe and his guards were already gone.
TORTURE
When Winsloe returned I was dozing in my chair. He burst into the cell waving a manila envelope.
"Devil of a time finding these buggers," he said. "Larry had already filed them in his to-do box. Way too efficient."
I roused myself. Tried to look interested. Accidentally yawned.
"Am I boring you, Elena?" Winsloe asked. The edge in his voice twisted his grin into a teeth-baring grimace.
"No, no." Bite back another yawn. "Of course not. What do you have there?"
"Surveillance photos of a werewolf I'd like you to identify."
"Sure"-Damn it, Elena. Stop yawning!-"if I can, but my memory for faces is pretty bad."
"That's okay. This one doesn't have a face." Winsloe chortled. "Not a human face, I mean. He's a wolf. If you ask me, all wolves look the same, which is why Larry didn't bother asking you for an ID. But then I thought, maybe that kind of thinking is too race-centered. You know, like those witnesses who get on the stand and finger the wrong black guy because all black men look the same to them?"
"Uh-huh." Get to the point. Please. Before I drift off.
"So, I thought, maybe all wolf faces don't look the same to a wolf. Or to a part-time wolf." Another chortle that set my nerves on edge.
"I'll do my best," I said. "But if I've seen this mutt before, I've probably only seen him as a human. A scent would be better."
"Scent." Winsloe snapped his fingers. "Now why didn't I think of that. See? Race-centered again. I think I'm sharp if I can identify the smell of pepperoni pizza."
I reached for the envelope. He thumped onto the bed and tossed it beside him, as if he hadn't noticed me reaching for it.
"Could I see-?" I began.
"A team spotted this guy late last night. No, I guess that'd be early this morning. The wee hours anyway."
I nodded. Please, please, please get to the point.
"Very bizarre circumstances," Winsloe mused. "Ever since we snatched you and the old witch, we've had a team trying to find the rest of your group. We could always use another werewolf, and Larry's pretty keen on getting that fire-demon guy. We lost track of them after we grabbed you two. That's not exactly a secret, though I'd rather you didn't tell Larry I told you. He's not too pleased about the whole thing, but I'm sure it makes you feel better, knowing your friends got away."
Winsloe paused. And waited.
"Thanks," I said, "for telling me."
"You're welcome. So, we've had this team scouting the area, picking up tips, most of them useless. Yesterday Tucker recalled that group and sent a fresh one to replace them. Keeping up morale and all that. The first team was heading back and spent the night in some backwater motel. Next morning, they get up for a pre-dawn start, go outside and what do you think they see there, on the edge of the woods?"
"A-uh-" Come on, brain, wake up. "A-umm, a wolf?"
"Glad to see you're paying attention, Elena. Yes, it was a wolf. A big f**ker of a wolf. Standing right there, watching them. Now either this is the biggest coincidence in the universe or this werewolf had been following them. Searching for the search party."
Brain kicking in now. "Where was this?"
"Does it matter?"
"All werewolves are territorial. Technically mutts can't hold territory, but most stick to a familiar piece of ground, like a state, just moving from city to city. If I knew where this took place, it would help me figure out who it might have been."
Winsloe smiled. "And help you figure out where you are. None of that, Elena. Now let me tell my story. So, the guards see this wolf and they figure out that it's a werewolf. One grabs a camera and snaps some photos. The other two go for the tranquilizer guns. Before they can unpack them, though, the wolf vanishes. So they gear up and head into the woods. And do you know what? He's right there, like he's waiting. They get close, he runs, then stops and waits. Luring them in. Can you believe that?"
"Werewolves retain human intelligence. It's not that strange." But it was. Why? Because luring prey was an animal tactic and mutts didn't use animal tactics. No, I corrected quickly. They rarely used animal tactics. Of course they could. Some did.
"Wait," Winsloe said, grinning. "It gets weirder. You know what this wolf does next? He separates them. Takes a commando team, including a former Navy Seal, and figures out how to separate them. Then he starts picking them off. Killing them! Can you believe that?" Winsloe laughed and shook his head. "Man, I wish I'd been there. One werewolf turning those military goons into blithering idiots, wandering around the woods, getting picked off like blonds in a horror flick. The wolf kills two and goes after the third. And what do you think he does?"
My heart was pounding now. "Kills him?"
"No! That's the topper. He doesn't kill him. He runs him ragged. Like he's trying to exhaust him, like he wants to keep him alive but too weak to fight. Okay, maybe I'm reading too much into this, attributing human motivations to an animal. Anthro-what do they call that?"
"Anthropomorphism," I whispered, feeling as if all the air had been knocked from my lungs, knowing this was no accidental segue.
"Right. Anthropomorphism. Hey, that's what your boyfriend studies, right? Anthropomorphic religions. Boring as hell if you ask me, but people say that about computers, too. Each to his own. Now where was I?"
"The wolf," I whispered. "Running down the last survivor."
"You don't look so good. Maybe you should come over here and lie down. Plenty of room. No? Suit yourself. So the wolf is running circles around this last guy. Only something goes wrong."
I wanted to stop up my ears. I knew what was coming. There was only one way Winsloe could have the photos in that envelope, only one way he'd know this story. If the last team member had survived. If the wolf-
"Somehow that canny f**ker screwed up. Miscalculated a turn or a distance maybe. He got too close. The guard fired. Pow! Dead wolf."
"Let-let me see the photos."
Winsloe tossed the envelope at me. As it tumbled to the floor, I scrambled after it, ripping it open and yanking out the contents. Three photos of a wolf. A golden-haired, blue-eyed wolf. I felt a whimper snake up my throat.
"You know him?" Winsloe asked.
I crouched there, clutching the photos.
"No? Well, you're tired. Keep them. Get some rest and give it some thought. Xavier's probably waiting for me upstairs. I'll come back in the morning."
Winsloe left. I didn't see him go. Didn't hear him. All I could see was the photographs of Clay. All I could hear was the pounding of my blood. Another whimper crept up from my chest, but it died before reaching my mouth. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't make a sound.
Suddenly my body convulsed. A wave of agony blinded me. I toppled, photos fluttering the carpet. My leg muscles all knotted at once, like being seized by a thousand charley horses. I screamed. The waves hit in rapid succession and I screamed until I couldn't breathe. My limbs flailed and jerked as if being wrenched from their sockets. Some dim part of my brain realized I was Changing and told me to get control before it tore me apart. I didn't. I gave into it, let the agony rip through me, welcomed each new torment even as I screamed for release. Finally it was over. I lay there, panting, empty. Then I heard something. The faintest scratch from the hallway. Winsloe was there. Watching. I wanted to leap up, charge the wall, and batter myself against it until it broke or I did. I wanted to tear him apart, mouthful by mouthful, keeping him alive until I'd wrenched every last shriek from his lungs. But grief crushed me to the floor, and I couldn't even find the energy to stand. I managed to pull my belly off the ground and hauled myself into the narrow crevice between the foot of the bed and the wall, the one place where Winsloe couldn't see me. I wedged into the tiny space, tucked my tail under me, and surrendered to the pain.
***
I spent the night replaying Winsloe's words, fighting against my grief to recall each one. Where had the guards seen the wolf? Behind the motel or beside it? Exactly when did it happen? What did Winsloe mean by "pre-dawn"? Had it been light out yet? As I asked these questions, part of me wondered if I was just allowing my mind to stutter through inanities rather than confront the soul-numbing possibility of Clay's death. No. These questions held clues, minute clues that would reveal the lie in Winsloe's words. I had to find that lie. Otherwise, I feared my breath would jam up in my throat and I'd suffocate on my grief.
So I tortured myself with Winsloe's story, his hated voice invading and filling my brain. Find the lie. Find the inconsistency, the misspoken word, the detail so obviously wrong. But no matter how many times I replayed his story, I couldn't find a mistake. If Clay found the search party, he'd have done exactly what Winsloe claimed he did: lure them into the forest, separate them, and kill them, leaving one alive to torture for information. There was no way Winsloe could make up something so true to Clay's character. Nor was there any way Winsloe could have guessed what Clay would do in that situation. So he'd told the truth.
My heart rammed into my throat. I gasped for breath. No, it had to be a lie. I'd know if Clay was dead. I'd have felt it the moment the bullet hit him. Oh, God, I wanted to believe that I'd know if he was dead. Clay and I shared a psycho-physical connection, maybe because he was the one who had bitten me. If I was hurt and he wasn't around to see it, he'd feel it, knowing something was wrong. I'd experience the same twinges, the same floating anxiety and unease if he was hurt. I hadn't felt anything that morning. Or had I? I'd been asleep at dawn, drugged by Carmichael's sedative. Would I have felt anything?
I stopped myself. There was no sense dwelling on vagaries like premonitions and psychic twinges. Stick to the facts. Find the lie there. Winsloe said the last guard killed Clay, then returned with the photos and the story. If I could talk to that guard, maybe he wouldn't be as accomplished a liar as Winsloe. Maybe-I inhaled sharply. The guard had brought back the photos and the story. What about the body?
If that guard had killed Clay, he'd have brought back his body. At the very least, he'd have taken photos of it. If there'd been a corpse or photos of one, Winsloe wouldn't have settled for showing me pictures of Clay alive. He'd known exactly who the wolf was and he'd told me the story to torture me, to punish me. This was my comeuppance for disobeying him the night before. One small misstep and he'd lashed out with the worst punishment I could imagine. What would he do if I really pissed him off?
***
Eventually, after I'd persuaded myself that Clay was alive, the exhaustion took over and I fell asleep. Though I'd fallen asleep as a wolf, I awoke as a human. It happened sometimes, particularly if a Change was brought on by fear or emotion. Once we relaxed into sleep, the body morphed painlessly back to human form. So I awoke, na**d, with my head and torso sandwiched between the bed and the wall and my legs sticking out.
I didn't get up immediately. Instead, I thought of ways to catch Winsloe in a lie, so I'd be certain about Clay. I had to be certain. Winsloe had left the photos. Maybe if I studied them I'd see something-
"Open this f**king door now!" a voice shouted.
I bolted upright, knocking my head against the bed. Dazed, I hesitated, then wriggled from my hiding place.
"Let me out of here! "
A woman's voice. Distorted, but familiar. I winced as I recognized it. No. Please no. Hadn't I suffered enough?
"I know you hear me! I know you're out there! "
With great reluctance, I moved to the hole in the wall between my cell and the next. I knew what I'd see. My new neighbor. I bent to peer through. Bauer stood at the one-way glass wall, banging her fists soundlessly against it. Her hair was snarled and matted, face still streaked with blood. Someone had dressed her in an ill-fitting gray sweat suit that must have belonged to one of the smaller guards. No more meticulously groomed heiress. Anyone seeing Sondra Bauer now would take her for a middle-aged mental patient coughed up from the bowels of some gothic asylum.
After last night's rampage, they'd put Bauer in the next cell. The last wisp of hope in my dream of escape evaporated. Bauer was now as much a prisoner as I. She couldn't help me one whit. More than that, I now had a crazed, man-killing werewolf in the next cell, with a hole through the wall that separated us. Was this Winsloe's doing? Wasn't last night's torture enough? I realized it would never be enough. As long as I was in this compound, Winsloe would find new ways to persecute me. Why? Because he could.
I wanted to crawl back into my hidey-hole and go to sleep. I wouldn't sleep, of course, but I could close my eyes and blot out this whole nightmare, dredge up some happy fantasy world in my mind, and live there until someone rescued me or killed me, whichever came first.
"I'm sorry, Ty. I'm so tired."
"You didn't look tired when I walked in. Standing around, chatting it up with Xavier. You two seem pretty tight."
"I was just thanking him. He did me a big favor, jumping in-"
He snapped his fingers, pique vanishing in an eye blink. "Favor. That reminds me, there's something I need to ask you about. Hold on and I'll be right back."
I wanted to ask if it could wait until morning. I really did. But after last night, I desperately needed to get back into his good graces. I couldn't deny him a favor. Besides, he seemed to be in a chipper mood. That was a good sign. So I summoned my last bits of strength, managed a clumsy half-smile, and nodded. Not that my consent mattered. Winsloe and his guards were already gone.
TORTURE
When Winsloe returned I was dozing in my chair. He burst into the cell waving a manila envelope.
"Devil of a time finding these buggers," he said. "Larry had already filed them in his to-do box. Way too efficient."
I roused myself. Tried to look interested. Accidentally yawned.
"Am I boring you, Elena?" Winsloe asked. The edge in his voice twisted his grin into a teeth-baring grimace.
"No, no." Bite back another yawn. "Of course not. What do you have there?"
"Surveillance photos of a werewolf I'd like you to identify."
"Sure"-Damn it, Elena. Stop yawning!-"if I can, but my memory for faces is pretty bad."
"That's okay. This one doesn't have a face." Winsloe chortled. "Not a human face, I mean. He's a wolf. If you ask me, all wolves look the same, which is why Larry didn't bother asking you for an ID. But then I thought, maybe that kind of thinking is too race-centered. You know, like those witnesses who get on the stand and finger the wrong black guy because all black men look the same to them?"
"Uh-huh." Get to the point. Please. Before I drift off.
"So, I thought, maybe all wolf faces don't look the same to a wolf. Or to a part-time wolf." Another chortle that set my nerves on edge.
"I'll do my best," I said. "But if I've seen this mutt before, I've probably only seen him as a human. A scent would be better."
"Scent." Winsloe snapped his fingers. "Now why didn't I think of that. See? Race-centered again. I think I'm sharp if I can identify the smell of pepperoni pizza."
I reached for the envelope. He thumped onto the bed and tossed it beside him, as if he hadn't noticed me reaching for it.
"Could I see-?" I began.
"A team spotted this guy late last night. No, I guess that'd be early this morning. The wee hours anyway."
I nodded. Please, please, please get to the point.
"Very bizarre circumstances," Winsloe mused. "Ever since we snatched you and the old witch, we've had a team trying to find the rest of your group. We could always use another werewolf, and Larry's pretty keen on getting that fire-demon guy. We lost track of them after we grabbed you two. That's not exactly a secret, though I'd rather you didn't tell Larry I told you. He's not too pleased about the whole thing, but I'm sure it makes you feel better, knowing your friends got away."
Winsloe paused. And waited.
"Thanks," I said, "for telling me."
"You're welcome. So, we've had this team scouting the area, picking up tips, most of them useless. Yesterday Tucker recalled that group and sent a fresh one to replace them. Keeping up morale and all that. The first team was heading back and spent the night in some backwater motel. Next morning, they get up for a pre-dawn start, go outside and what do you think they see there, on the edge of the woods?"
"A-uh-" Come on, brain, wake up. "A-umm, a wolf?"
"Glad to see you're paying attention, Elena. Yes, it was a wolf. A big f**ker of a wolf. Standing right there, watching them. Now either this is the biggest coincidence in the universe or this werewolf had been following them. Searching for the search party."
Brain kicking in now. "Where was this?"
"Does it matter?"
"All werewolves are territorial. Technically mutts can't hold territory, but most stick to a familiar piece of ground, like a state, just moving from city to city. If I knew where this took place, it would help me figure out who it might have been."
Winsloe smiled. "And help you figure out where you are. None of that, Elena. Now let me tell my story. So, the guards see this wolf and they figure out that it's a werewolf. One grabs a camera and snaps some photos. The other two go for the tranquilizer guns. Before they can unpack them, though, the wolf vanishes. So they gear up and head into the woods. And do you know what? He's right there, like he's waiting. They get close, he runs, then stops and waits. Luring them in. Can you believe that?"
"Werewolves retain human intelligence. It's not that strange." But it was. Why? Because luring prey was an animal tactic and mutts didn't use animal tactics. No, I corrected quickly. They rarely used animal tactics. Of course they could. Some did.
"Wait," Winsloe said, grinning. "It gets weirder. You know what this wolf does next? He separates them. Takes a commando team, including a former Navy Seal, and figures out how to separate them. Then he starts picking them off. Killing them! Can you believe that?" Winsloe laughed and shook his head. "Man, I wish I'd been there. One werewolf turning those military goons into blithering idiots, wandering around the woods, getting picked off like blonds in a horror flick. The wolf kills two and goes after the third. And what do you think he does?"
My heart was pounding now. "Kills him?"
"No! That's the topper. He doesn't kill him. He runs him ragged. Like he's trying to exhaust him, like he wants to keep him alive but too weak to fight. Okay, maybe I'm reading too much into this, attributing human motivations to an animal. Anthro-what do they call that?"
"Anthropomorphism," I whispered, feeling as if all the air had been knocked from my lungs, knowing this was no accidental segue.
"Right. Anthropomorphism. Hey, that's what your boyfriend studies, right? Anthropomorphic religions. Boring as hell if you ask me, but people say that about computers, too. Each to his own. Now where was I?"
"The wolf," I whispered. "Running down the last survivor."
"You don't look so good. Maybe you should come over here and lie down. Plenty of room. No? Suit yourself. So the wolf is running circles around this last guy. Only something goes wrong."
I wanted to stop up my ears. I knew what was coming. There was only one way Winsloe could have the photos in that envelope, only one way he'd know this story. If the last team member had survived. If the wolf-
"Somehow that canny f**ker screwed up. Miscalculated a turn or a distance maybe. He got too close. The guard fired. Pow! Dead wolf."
"Let-let me see the photos."
Winsloe tossed the envelope at me. As it tumbled to the floor, I scrambled after it, ripping it open and yanking out the contents. Three photos of a wolf. A golden-haired, blue-eyed wolf. I felt a whimper snake up my throat.
"You know him?" Winsloe asked.
I crouched there, clutching the photos.
"No? Well, you're tired. Keep them. Get some rest and give it some thought. Xavier's probably waiting for me upstairs. I'll come back in the morning."
Winsloe left. I didn't see him go. Didn't hear him. All I could see was the photographs of Clay. All I could hear was the pounding of my blood. Another whimper crept up from my chest, but it died before reaching my mouth. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't make a sound.
Suddenly my body convulsed. A wave of agony blinded me. I toppled, photos fluttering the carpet. My leg muscles all knotted at once, like being seized by a thousand charley horses. I screamed. The waves hit in rapid succession and I screamed until I couldn't breathe. My limbs flailed and jerked as if being wrenched from their sockets. Some dim part of my brain realized I was Changing and told me to get control before it tore me apart. I didn't. I gave into it, let the agony rip through me, welcomed each new torment even as I screamed for release. Finally it was over. I lay there, panting, empty. Then I heard something. The faintest scratch from the hallway. Winsloe was there. Watching. I wanted to leap up, charge the wall, and batter myself against it until it broke or I did. I wanted to tear him apart, mouthful by mouthful, keeping him alive until I'd wrenched every last shriek from his lungs. But grief crushed me to the floor, and I couldn't even find the energy to stand. I managed to pull my belly off the ground and hauled myself into the narrow crevice between the foot of the bed and the wall, the one place where Winsloe couldn't see me. I wedged into the tiny space, tucked my tail under me, and surrendered to the pain.
***
I spent the night replaying Winsloe's words, fighting against my grief to recall each one. Where had the guards seen the wolf? Behind the motel or beside it? Exactly when did it happen? What did Winsloe mean by "pre-dawn"? Had it been light out yet? As I asked these questions, part of me wondered if I was just allowing my mind to stutter through inanities rather than confront the soul-numbing possibility of Clay's death. No. These questions held clues, minute clues that would reveal the lie in Winsloe's words. I had to find that lie. Otherwise, I feared my breath would jam up in my throat and I'd suffocate on my grief.
So I tortured myself with Winsloe's story, his hated voice invading and filling my brain. Find the lie. Find the inconsistency, the misspoken word, the detail so obviously wrong. But no matter how many times I replayed his story, I couldn't find a mistake. If Clay found the search party, he'd have done exactly what Winsloe claimed he did: lure them into the forest, separate them, and kill them, leaving one alive to torture for information. There was no way Winsloe could make up something so true to Clay's character. Nor was there any way Winsloe could have guessed what Clay would do in that situation. So he'd told the truth.
My heart rammed into my throat. I gasped for breath. No, it had to be a lie. I'd know if Clay was dead. I'd have felt it the moment the bullet hit him. Oh, God, I wanted to believe that I'd know if he was dead. Clay and I shared a psycho-physical connection, maybe because he was the one who had bitten me. If I was hurt and he wasn't around to see it, he'd feel it, knowing something was wrong. I'd experience the same twinges, the same floating anxiety and unease if he was hurt. I hadn't felt anything that morning. Or had I? I'd been asleep at dawn, drugged by Carmichael's sedative. Would I have felt anything?
I stopped myself. There was no sense dwelling on vagaries like premonitions and psychic twinges. Stick to the facts. Find the lie there. Winsloe said the last guard killed Clay, then returned with the photos and the story. If I could talk to that guard, maybe he wouldn't be as accomplished a liar as Winsloe. Maybe-I inhaled sharply. The guard had brought back the photos and the story. What about the body?
If that guard had killed Clay, he'd have brought back his body. At the very least, he'd have taken photos of it. If there'd been a corpse or photos of one, Winsloe wouldn't have settled for showing me pictures of Clay alive. He'd known exactly who the wolf was and he'd told me the story to torture me, to punish me. This was my comeuppance for disobeying him the night before. One small misstep and he'd lashed out with the worst punishment I could imagine. What would he do if I really pissed him off?
***
Eventually, after I'd persuaded myself that Clay was alive, the exhaustion took over and I fell asleep. Though I'd fallen asleep as a wolf, I awoke as a human. It happened sometimes, particularly if a Change was brought on by fear or emotion. Once we relaxed into sleep, the body morphed painlessly back to human form. So I awoke, na**d, with my head and torso sandwiched between the bed and the wall and my legs sticking out.
I didn't get up immediately. Instead, I thought of ways to catch Winsloe in a lie, so I'd be certain about Clay. I had to be certain. Winsloe had left the photos. Maybe if I studied them I'd see something-
"Open this f**king door now!" a voice shouted.
I bolted upright, knocking my head against the bed. Dazed, I hesitated, then wriggled from my hiding place.
"Let me out of here! "
A woman's voice. Distorted, but familiar. I winced as I recognized it. No. Please no. Hadn't I suffered enough?
"I know you hear me! I know you're out there! "
With great reluctance, I moved to the hole in the wall between my cell and the next. I knew what I'd see. My new neighbor. I bent to peer through. Bauer stood at the one-way glass wall, banging her fists soundlessly against it. Her hair was snarled and matted, face still streaked with blood. Someone had dressed her in an ill-fitting gray sweat suit that must have belonged to one of the smaller guards. No more meticulously groomed heiress. Anyone seeing Sondra Bauer now would take her for a middle-aged mental patient coughed up from the bowels of some gothic asylum.
After last night's rampage, they'd put Bauer in the next cell. The last wisp of hope in my dream of escape evaporated. Bauer was now as much a prisoner as I. She couldn't help me one whit. More than that, I now had a crazed, man-killing werewolf in the next cell, with a hole through the wall that separated us. Was this Winsloe's doing? Wasn't last night's torture enough? I realized it would never be enough. As long as I was in this compound, Winsloe would find new ways to persecute me. Why? Because he could.
I wanted to crawl back into my hidey-hole and go to sleep. I wouldn't sleep, of course, but I could close my eyes and blot out this whole nightmare, dredge up some happy fantasy world in my mind, and live there until someone rescued me or killed me, whichever came first.
