Wolfen (8 page)

Pain drags me, kicking and screaming, out of the
oubliette of nothing. It comes in waves, making me spasm in full-body cramps, but
with each wave, the pain is less, and I feel better, more anchored in life.

I try to open my eyes, but though I feel my body is
mended, breathing alone is still a chore. My heart feels bruised, and my head
is pounding. I can’t move a finger, not even when the world tilts and I feel
myself rolling sideways, falling…

Someone catches me.

Nate?

I hear a voice I’ve never heard before. A man. He says to
someone, “We should let the little bit sleep it off.”

A grunt answers him.

The world moves again. My head lolls, and my eyes roll
back in my head, so close to passing out again, but somehow, through the
ringing in my ears and the bright red flashes of light behind my eyelids, I
stay present.

“Home sweet home,” the man says dryly. “For a night,
anyway. Pick a bed, bro, any bed.” Then, “Dude, just pick a bed. It’s not
like—not that one!” He laughs. “I’m kidding, B.”

A rumble like a massive earthquake rolls through me, and
the sharp spike of fear it brings makes my heart beat stronger, faster. With
the support of a mattress beneath me, my head cushioned on clouds, I pry open
my eyes to see a savage face inches from mine.

He is terrifying. None of the paleness I’m used to
seeing. His skin is tanned, as if he has no fear walking out in the sun, a
beast among his own. His eyes shine in the low light, but when they flicker, I
make out their shade: a fierce golden brown with flecks of green. There’s
nothing soft about that face; it seems to be chiseled out of raw power and
fury. His hair is dark, falling over one eye and cheek, but it could never hope
to hide the ugly, pale scars, claw marks marring him from left temple to chin.

I woke from one nightmare into another…

~

Sinna gasped, her throat tight and dry. Flight instinct took
over, sending her crawling backwards from the stranger. She was slow, and
didn’t get very far; the bed was flush to the wall in the corner, and she’d
only managed to put a few more inches between them.

Air wheezed in and out of her: she was hyperventilating as
much as her dehydrated body would allow. Her lip was split; she tasted blood.
She’d pass out again, she knew it.

The stranger reached out, big, callused hands curled almost
into claws. She flinched.

“D-don’t,” she whispered, “please…”

The stranger looked confused for a moment, then flushed and
pulled back, ducking his head. When he stood, he towered over her and the bed.
He was massive, layered with the kind of muscle she hadn’t seen since the turn
of ages when the food supply ran out, but his movements were sleek and silent
like a great cat on the prowl. With long steps, he distanced himself, and
another stranger took his place.

This one was his polar opposite, with blond hair cut short,
and strong, handsome features tempered by a wicked twinkle in his eyes. He was
weighed down with dozens of chains around his neck and a half-dozen rings on
each hand. “Welcome back, little bit,” he said, and she recognized the voice
from before. “How are you feeling?”

He gave her no chance to answer before he produced a metal
canteen and brought it to her face. “Here, have a sip. Don’t worry, it’s just
water.”

Sinna glanced at the other one, now watching her balefully
from a dark corner across the room. He gave a curt nod, which she supposed was
meant to be reassuring.

“Go on,” the blond urged. “You lost a lot of blood. Need to
replenish your fluids.”

Yes, that much she knew. Sinna licked her dry lips, but her
tongue was just as dry and sticky. She took hold of the canteen and sniffed
cautiously. Water. She sipped and shivered as the cool, clean liquid slid down
her throat. Her next breath came easier and, snatching the canteen from the
blond, Sinna gulped down three huge mouthfuls before it was ripped away.

“Nice and easy now, okay? You don’t want it to come back up
again. Take a breath.”

Sinna wanted to take the water back instead, but it would
have been a wasted effort. With her gaze glued to the canteen, she panted and
waited for the blond to deem it safe enough to drink more. He made her wait
forever until he finally relinquished it. Sinna latched on and drank quickly,
not caring when some spilled all over her chin; she had to get as much as she
could before he took it away again.

He didn’t. He let her finish the whole thing. “Better?” he
asked, when she handed it back.

Sinna nodded. The motion made her head throb painfully. She
was so tired, she could sleep for a week. “Where’s Nate and the others?” she
asked. For that matter, where was
she
? This wasn’t the parking garage.
It looked like a house, with open windows and translucent drapes billowing in
the night breeze. No barricades, no crammed little basement hidey-hole.

“Now which one was he? The geek, or the pretty boy who liked
to play with guns?”

Sinna gaped. Was that how he saw them? Then she flushed. Compared
to him, Nate wouldn’t have amounted to much. Actually, an army of Nates
wouldn’t have amounted to much.

“Ah, the pretty boy, then.”

The scary one in the corner scoffed.

“Hey now, don’t judge,” the blond said over his shoulder.
“For all we know, she’s never seen an actual man in her life.” He winked at
her. “Ain’t that right, little bit?”

Sinna didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, she was so
confused. And that could mean a heap of trouble. How was she still alive, and
why wasn’t she hurting?

She looked down at her brand new clothes, now filthy and
drenched in blood. She pulled up her shirt. Nothing but smooth skin where a
bullet hole should have been. “Whuh…?”

“Right!” the blond said. “Intros. I’m Aiden. That handsome
fella hiding in the corner there is my brother, Bryce. And the people who
almost killed you back in ‘Frisco said your name was Sinna. That right?”

With her mind struggling to catch up with the fact she was
unharmed, Sinna frowned. “What?”

The blond patiently pointed to himself. “
Ai
-den,” he
enunciated, then pointed behind him. “Bryce.” Then he pointed to her and raised
an eyebrow in question.

Sinna shook her head. “Uh, I don’t…umm…Sinna?”

His other eyebrow went up. “Are you asking me, or telling
me?”

The one named Bryce came to his feet and shoved at the blond
to crouch in front of her. Without a word, he offered a metal spoon and a can
with the label torn off. He wore a cuff on his wrist just like she did, only
his was wider, almost like a piece of armor, and blackened, its shine dulled until
it was nearly invisible in the darkness. Sinna’s gaze traced up the length of
his massive arm to his neck, noting the thick torc he wore. Silver again. Just
like the blond, only more subtle.

He tensed, face flushed and mouth pressed into a thin, disgruntled
line. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he rattled the spoon in
the can to break her stare.

Sinna accepted the offering with a hesitant smile in thanks,
and he grunted, returning to his corner. Beans. She sighed in disappointment.
Food was food, of course, but Sinna remembered, way back in the day, when meals
actually consisted of varieties. She used to like apples and strawberries, and
that year they’d had turkey legs for Thanksgiving… She still salivated over
that when times got tough.

Stop it. You’re alive, you’re safe…relatively…and you
have food and water. That’s more than you had yesterday, so shut up and say
thank you.
“Thank you,” she said, risking a glance at this Aiden and Bryce,
“for helping me.”

Aiden grinned, preening. “Nothing to it, little bit. It’s
what we do.”

In the corner, Bryce rolled his eyes.

Sinna ducked her head to hide a smile. She ought to have
been wary of them, but her brain was too tired to put up a fight, and the
longer she sat there, stirring a can of cold beans while they hung back totally
relaxed, the less she worried.

At least they didn’t leer the way Nate used to. That helped
matters some. And when she started eating, it almost seemed like an unspoken
signal to them, saying everything was cool. Aiden dropped onto the mattress
opposite hers, ridiculously huge on the pink princess bed, and threw an arm
over his eyes as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Bryce moved to sit at
the foot of her bed with his back to both her and the window, fiddling with something
she couldn’t see. Neither he nor Aiden seemed overly concerned that they were
basically out in the open for all the Grays to scent.

Sinna finished half of the beans, and couldn’t fit another
spoonful into her stomach. It was the most food she’d eaten in one go in days.
With a satisfied sigh, she rested the can in her lap and licked the spoon
clean. “Umm,” she ventured when the silence had stretched to uncomfortable
lengths. “Where are we?”

“Sign said Modesto, if that means anything to you,” Aiden answered.

“What happened to the others I was with?”

“Most of them were still breathing when we left.”

She frowned. “Most of them?”

An ugly sneer crept into Aiden’s voice when he said, “The
knife guy kind of lost his head after he almost killed you.”

Sinna shuddered, spoon clattering against the can. Connor
was dead?

The sound brought Bryce’s head around, and he frowned at
her.

She swallowed and handed the can back to him. “Thank you.”

He looked inside it, scowled, and shoved it right back at
her.

“No, I’m full. Really. You should have it.”

“Take a break, then. You can eat more later.” Aiden hadn’t
moved since he lay down, and Sinna kept thinking he’d fallen asleep. But he was
still very much awake and alert. Something told her he’d never really let his
guard down. For all his laid-back attitude, she got the sense he was just as
dangerous as Bryce. Maybe more so. With him, she might never see a blow-up
coming.

She put the can onto the little yellow nightstand. Despite
her exhaustion, Sinna couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes. She’d never
slept this exposed before and didn’t relish the thought of starting now.

Aiden had grown quiet again, and Bryce hadn’t said a word
yet.

She sighed.

“Ask,” Aiden said.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Ask.”

“Okay… Where did you come from?”

“Montana,” he answered. “Before that, Ukraine.”

“How did you get to San Francisco? Were you looking for
survivors? How did you find us?”

“You called,” Bryce said. His voice was low and gruff,
rasping, as if his vocal chords were damaged, or he wasn’t used to talking.

“What do you mean, we called?” Had Nate somehow gotten word
out? The last radio had stopped working a decade ago.

“Not them.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “You.”

“What?”

Aiden sighed. “We’re not humanitarians.” The bed frame
groaned precariously as he turned onto his side, one massive arm under his
head, chains pooling around his neck. He faced her, his eyes closed as if he
were trying to sleep, yet he kept talking. “We were in the neighborhood looking
for something else. Bryce heard you howl.”

“Oh.” She remembered now. Her last act of defiance. She’d
been so sure she’d die, so angry that her life had been cut short, so hurt by
Connor’s betrayal—and Nate’s. He’d just stood there and let it happen.

She’d screamed, knowing the Grays were close enough to hear.
What did that make her?

“What will happen to the others?”

Aiden shrugged a shoulder. “They had about a gallon of your
blood to cloak themselves with, a fighting chance of getting out of the city.
After that, who knows?” He cracked open one eye to look at her. “Why do you
care?”

Half of what he said didn’t make any sense. Blood
attracted
Grays.

But then she remembered the way they’d sniffed her, as if
she was spoiled meat. They’d left her unharmed.

“Nate and Connor protected the rest of us,” she said. “They
put themselves in danger every day to hunt for food so we could eat.” Except
they’d had a strange habit of whispering to each other a lot, and they’d never
brought back all that much, if anything.

And then Nate had killed Tam.

Sinna hugged herself, squeezing her eyes shut against that
memory. “Okay, so maybe they weren’t the best people, but the rest of them were
my friends.” Poor Isaac. He shouldn’t have died the way he did. And what would
happen to Amy and Matt now? And David! She remembered he’d tried to help her,
even though he had to have known it was useless. In the end, the weak,
vision-impaired “geek” had done more for her than the “pretty boy” who’d played
at being her hero.

“No offense, little bit, but your definition of friendship
scares the shit out of me.”

Bryce grunted in agreement. Sinna was beginning to
understand how he carried his meaning across by the different sounds and
gestures he made.

Aiden frowned. “Question for you now. Something that’s been
bugging me since we got you out. Do you know what you are?”

Sinna shook her head in confusion. “What do you mean?” The
food and water had eased some of her headache, but the weariness remained and impaired
her judgment. She was in a wide-open house in the middle of God-knew-where with
two muscle-bound behemoths who’d apparently saved her life, but couldn’t extend
the same courtesy to the rest of her group. Logic insisted there was a reason
for that, and not a particularly good one. Still, she was more afraid of the
open window than the two in the room with her.

Aiden groaned and sat up, rubbing his face. “I can see this
is going to take a while.”

Bryce, too, came around to face her, suddenly very interested
in the topic of discussion.