Wolfen (38 page)

No one was listening. Klaus had named the culprit, and he’d
chosen well. Every single person in the hall was chanting for her death.

Desiree twisted from the guard, pulling on her arm to free
herself, but she had no leverage or balance. “I didn’t do anything! You crazy
fucking asshole! Tell them I didn’t do anything!”

Frank smiled and shook his head.

Klaus raised his chin a notch at the insult, but said
nothing. His men already had their orders.

“No! Let go of me!” Desiree struggled as the guard dragged
her around the table and toward the door. People screamed at her, shoved,
slapped, threw anything within reach, besides food. They wouldn’t waste
sustenance on a traitor. “I didn’t do anything!”

Arik grabbed her free arm and lifted with the other guard so
her feet were off the floor as they rushed her out. “Stop fighting,” he said
into her ear. “It won’t do you any good.”

Desiree screamed in his face, thrashed her head, but within
moments they were outside, the angry mob following them across the market
square toward the tunnels. They’d laid out a neat little path of torches, like
a sacrificial light trail. Flames blurred, stars flashed above her. Desiree
blinked and there was darkness as they entered the tunnels. The mob didn’t
follow them that far. The noise dulled the deeper they went, until Desiree only
heard her own echoing screams. “No! Let go of me!”

They tossed her into a cell and slammed the metal door shut,
locks tumbling into place with deafening finality. Desiree felt lightheaded,
unable to catch her breath. Total darkness caged her into her own panic; her
skin felt too tight, her eyes were open too far, but she couldn’t close them
longer than a blink. Her thigh burned and throbbed; she was bleeding, but
couldn’t even see the wound to staunch the flow. Terrified, she sought a frame
of reference, and found a thin shaft of light spearing in through the keyhole.
Dragging her bad leg behind her, she crawled to the door to look out. “What’s
going on?” she demanded, her voice unsteady. “Why am I here?”

She needed Arik to tell her this was somehow part of the
plan, that he had everything under control and they’d be getting out any
minute.

But Arik didn’t answer. “You know what hurts me most?” Klaus
asked. “Is that you thought I would not know.”

“W-what did I do?”

“You betrayed me,” he hissed. “You tried to make a fool out
of me!”

“Klaus, I don’t know what you’re talking about! Frank set me
up!”

“Ya, of course he did. Frank put that pack under your bed.
Just like he destroyed the Wolfen’s semen, und almost killed poor Dare.”

“Yes!”

“I do not believe you.”

“I’m telling the truth!”

“Lie,” Alpha said from the cell across from her.

“You shut up!” she snapped.

She was supposed to be untouchable! How could Klaus turn on
her like this? He needed her!

“I know you are too much like your mother. Incapable to
distinguish trus from lie.” His voice grew softer. He was walking away! “We are
finished, Dee. You are finished.”

Desiree couldn’t breathe.

“Well, isn’t this interesting,” Alpha purred. “Gotta say I didn’t
see that coming.”

“Stop it,” she wheezed.

“Little helpless, one-legged Desiree. Traitor. Almost killed
poor Dare. Now, which one was he again?”

Desiree moaned, curling in on herself. “Stop it. Just stop!”

“Big daddy can’t help you now, little bird.”
Bang!

Desiree wailed. Not that again! Please! “Arik!” she
screamed.

Bang!

“Might as well get used to this. You ain’t getting out.”

Bang!

Desiree pressed her hands to her ears. “Arik! Please!
Someone—
let me out!
”

Bang!

“And it’s a good day from morning ‘til night.”

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

I perform my greatest adlib yet. Does the witch even
clap? No.

Torment is no fun when I can’t get a rise out of my
victim. She doesn’t respond to my taunts and insults, doesn’t care that the
door banging is completely out of rhythm with my song, and the air is too still
and too stale down here to scent mood changes.

After a while, I get bored and stop.

Her sigh is almost inaudible, but it’s enough to tell me she’s
still alive and conscious. Hopefully not for long.

The only thing worse than being locked up underground, is
being locked up underground with a person who doesn’t appreciate the nuance of
fine, old world music.

Maybe some Tuvan throat singing is in order.

~

Whole hours passed with Desiree uttering nothing more than
an occasional hiss of pain, which was enough to drive Aiden bonkers. Being
alone and quiet was one thing—he couldn’t very well expect the walls to start
talking—but knowing another person was within earshot and she refused to speak?
Inconceivable! It was like she knew how to push his buttons.

Aiden needed noise. Conversation—well, argument. A proper
jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding, foul-mouthed fight. He was entitled, goddammit!

Peg Leg Desiree refused to be goaded into one. Bitch.

“So. Adding cold-blooded murder to your resume. Pretty
impressive, what with the mad scientist degree, emphasis on creative torture
techniques.”

“He’s not dead.”
Aha!
Apparently, all he had to do to
get her talking was talk back. Who knew? “He’s just in a coma.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“And I’m not mad.”

Aiden snorted.

“And I didn’t torture anyone!”

“I have two scrambled eggs and a blood sausage that say
otherwise.”

“Oh, give me a break. You healed, didn’t you? And I said I
was sorry.”

Aiden gnashed his teeth. “And that makes it all okay in your
book, right? No lasting damage, so no harm done. Oh, that’s right. I’m not
human. Ergo, I can’t feel pain.”

Hiss.
“Cry me a river.” She moaned, then took a few
deep breaths.

“I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you it wasn’t
my
pain that did the most damage.” Aiden had been out of his head for hours, and
when the hallucinations had finally stopped, he remembered what they’d needed
his juice for, and he’d almost lost it. How many of those females would get
impregnated? How many would die before they carried to term? And what would
these sick fucks do to the pups?

“Didn’t you hear?” she said through gritted teeth. “Your
semen was destroyed.”

Aiden stilled. He had heard Klaus mention something about
that, but hadn’t dared to hope.

Sigh.
“Don’t get too excited. It just means they’ll
do it again. Maybe this time they’ll go with the original plan: tying you up in
the open and charging admission for the show. Did you know convert venom doesn’t
dissipate on its own? It’s the hormones that flood your system when sperm is
released that make it break down. It was in your bloodstream for seconds with
me. Imagine how long someone with a grudge will keep you frozen, all those
nasty things they’ll be able to do while you can’t defend yourself before they
finish it.”

His eyebrows shot up. “So I’m supposed to be
grateful
to you?”

“I don’t expect a bouquet of flowers, but a ‘thank you’
might be nice! You’re fucking welcome. Asshole.”

“Oh, you are some piece of work, you know that?”

She laughed bitterly. “Yeah, fat lot of good it does me,
too.”

Aiden shoved to his feet to pace. The cell only allowed him
two almost-full strides on the diagonal, which pissed him off even more. He
needed to move. Run, swim, box…
something
besides sit around and listen
to this bullshit. Out of other options, he inverted himself into a handstand
and started doing push-ups. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.

Not enough!

His claws itched to do damage. The walls were closing in on him
until he felt them pressing on his chest. He punched one so hard, the skin over
his knuckles split and tore. By the time he flexed his hand and curled his
fingers into a fist again, the wound had healed. For days he’d been locked up.
No sun, no wind, and not once had he felt as stir-crazy as he did after minutes
of talking to the bitch.

She was
right there
. Five feet away. So close, he
could take her out with a fucking pebble, if not for the doors keeping them
apart.

And that son of a bitch, Klaus! He’d tossed her in there
just to fuck with both of them.

Chill. Breathe. Let it go.
Aiden took a deep breath
and held it.
Time is a river. Let it flow.
He sat down, closed his eyes,
and forced himself to hold still, the same way he’d done all those times he’d watched
Bryce get dragged out of his cell to fight for human amusement. He sat, because
he could do nothing else. He breathed in a steady rhythm, because it was his
only way of telling time. He closed his eyes, because he didn’t want to see the
desperate faces of his kind looking to him for help he couldn’t provide. So he
could better hear his brother roar his fury.

Aiden had never told Bryce, but he felt it—every time Bryce
wolfed out, Aiden felt it like a shift in gravity, and he silently cheered his
brother on, willed him to keep going. At least one of them should get to fight
this goddamned hate out of their system. Rage it out, tear shit apart until
nothing was left but hollow lethargy. Relief. A plateau of numbness, before the
old flame of anger stoked back up again.

So he sat, and he breathed, and he let the world fall away
until the bad had receded to a hum of a faraway beehive.

BANG!

“Oh God, not this again!”

Aiden slowly opened his eyes.

BANG!

“Can you give it a rest for five minutes?”

BANG!

He pressed his ear to the door.

“Flattered as I am that my percussion skills have left a
lasting impression, that wasn’t me.” Aiden waited for another strike, but it
didn’t come.

“What the hell was it, then?” she asked, apprehension
creeping into her voice.

Distant running footsteps made Aiden’s ear twitch, and he
focused on the sound, his mind filling in the blanks to paint the scene: a
harrowed, thin little man was running for his life, gait uneven, tired. He
wheezed, fighting for breath. A shift in the sound said the man turned to look
behind him. Mistake. He stumbled, fell, sobbed, before he scrambled to his feet
again and ran past the cells.

“Hello?” Desiree called.

The man didn’t hear her.

“Who’s there?” she tried again, unaware the runner was
already long gone.

“Shut up,” Aiden snapped, needing to concentrate. He shifted
to press his nose to the gap beneath the door, sucked in a sharp breath, and
huffed it out to clear his nose of familiar scents, then breathed in deeply.

Air didn’t flow down in the tunnels. Scents were too slow to
reach him, but his ears picked up what his nose missed.

The familiar sound of shuffling feet—many of them.

Aiden pulled back, unsure if his mind was still playing
tricks on him. “You hear that?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“Hear what?” Desiree whispered.

He shook off her distracting voice to tune back into the
sounds deeper down the tunnel. Something creaked, but it wasn’t mechanical. A
series of croaks and clicks crackled in the darkness, interspersed with
chuffing hisses of predators stalking a scent. The runner must have had enough
of a head start to keep out of sight, but these things followed their noses,
not their eyes. The trail he’d left behind was too fresh for them to miss.

They were coming.

“Alpha?” Desiree called, voice small, frightened. On any
other day, Aiden would savor it. Right now, he had bigger issues.

He gritted his teeth against telling her to shut up again.

One of the creatures emitted a long drone, and like some
sort of sonar, it bounced off of the stone walls, sound waves compounding one
on top of the other, until Aiden’s head felt ready to explode. He slapped his
hands over his ears, but it didn’t help.

“Aiden,” Desiree said, louder this time, more insistent.

A woman screamed aboveground. A convert screech cut her off.
Then all Aiden heard from up there was a lot of people dying.

“Oh, my God…”

The drone cut off. Footsteps stopped.

Aiden pushed to his feet and backed away from the door,
holding his breath.

“To the tunnels! Move!”

“Get out! Get out now!”

Crying, terrified people ran down the ramp and into the
tunnels meant to be their last hope of escape. They didn’t make it far; a horde
of converts flooded in from the other end and overwhelmed the refugees, taking
them back out on a tide of ravenous snarls.

The scent of blood, mixed with the unmistakable stench of
convert rot, hit Aiden so hard, he nearly doubled over. Wavering on his feet,
he braced himself against the door as a mammoth dose of adrenaline raised his
hackles, made his back bow and his jaw ache. His claws dug into metal and
screeched down along the door’s surface.

“Mommy!”
a child screamed.

Aiden knew that voice.

He roared, and slammed the flat of his hand against the
door, making it shudder. Muscles strained, tensed, forcing him up onto the
balls of his feet. His eyesight sharpened, and he could see even the smallest
detail as if it were high noon in his cell. A wave of fear flared his nostrils,
and with a series of cracks, his face snapped into a different shape.

Aiden struck the door again. And again. And again. He shook
his head, needing to think, but there was only one coherent thought he could
hold onto:
Destroy.

Rage like he’d never known before burned through his veins,
demanding he get out and tear heads from bodies—
NOW!
Aiden struck the
door, threw his weight against it, clawed at the stone around the hinges.

Running footsteps stopped just on the other side. “Hope
you’re ready to rock and roll, big guy,” a man said, and the tumblers clacked
into place. The man backed away in a hurry when Aiden pushed through. “Shit…”
Shock. Fear. But the bastard didn’t run.

Aiden stalked forward, backing the bug-eyed bastard as far
as the wall would allow, bared his fangs and flared his claws, all but salivating
for a taste of his blood.

“You want Klaus,” the human said.

Aiden snarled.

“He’s that way.”

Aiden’s growl built into a blood-curdling roar as he loped
up the ramp toward the surface, diving head-first into the battle.