Tires had been stacked up at the center of the building, a massive mound of dusty rubber that she could hear housed a plethora of small scrambling creatures. She focused on details, searching the dusty ground for footprints. She found them near a second exit, a set of hard, clean steps by two or three people, and one pair of footprints that dragged or stepped erratically. She sniffed the ground, then sniffed the air.
She caught the scent of blood. It led in the same direction as the footprints. She followed them on silent cat feet. But half-way to the door on the opposite end of the arena, a bellow of absolute pain ripped through the silence.
The small black cat froze in place, her ears pricked, and her heart raced. She flashed at once into her human form and rushed for the door. Just as she’d feared, the plan had taken a detour. Because she recognized the blood as shifter blood, and that sound was one of tortured agony, she just knew who it was that was making it.
She was right. She crashed through the door, which wasn’t locked – why would it be if they weren’t expecting anyone – and came face to face with a nightmare.
It took her a moment to accept what she was seeing. And like a gracious host, Abraham Silence stood there in un-surprised calm and allowed her to take it all in. So did the warlock beside him and the three Hunters who remained unmoving on the sidelines like bodyguards and executioners.
Nausea roiled in Sam’s belly at the vision before her. Darius Walker had been strung upside down on a make-shift wooden “X.” He was naked from the waist up and bleeding from various wounds across his body, some long and thin, others short and blunt. There were words burned into his skin: demon, sick, and abomination. That last word was so long, Sam could not believe he had remained conscious for the duration of its creation.
And that thought had her gagging. She covered her mouth, swallowed very hard, and tried to think. She even tried to breathe.
But Darius Walker was conscious, and he was looking directly at her. As some of the more powerful shifters could do, Walker was capable of changing his eye color, and by the same token, his eye color could change depending upon his mood. Right now, they were dark gray and shot through with white lightning, clouded with pain and angry as hell.
Though it was impossible, though it was inconceivable, the former Shifter King caught her gaze, held it steady, and shook his head. It was the tiniest movement, small, almost imperceptible. But she saw it. And as she tried desperately to understand what it might mean, the Hunter leader slowly turned fully toward her and smiled.
“Welcome at last, Miss O’Neill. We’ve been waiting for you.”
We’ve been waiting for you…. He’d known she was coming.
“Oh yes, we’ve known for some time. I must say, you make a fetching black owl.”
Sam’s guts were clenching with intense discomfort.
“And that little rodent you became – it was adorable.” He chuckled. “And amusing as hell when you came up against tarmac before finally finding your way through.”
Her insides twisted. And curse words played havoc with her spinning mind.
“Most graceful as a small black cat. But then, they are the very essence of grace, are they not?” He took a step toward her, shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d been dressed like a soldier, more or less. But now… he wore a suit. And it looked expertly tailored. He was out of place, different, and there was a sensation coming from him that only added to the queasiness moving through her.
“Still, I quite look forward to seeing you take the form of something a bit more extravagant again. Such as a griffin, perhaps. That would be most interesting. Or… a dragon.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Sam took a step back. She touched the diamond on her necklace, a simple uncut stone with a white gold chain running through it. She began to feel panic rise, sour and twisted as a corkscrew inside her.
“But take solace, Miss O’Neill. You meant for yourself to be caught after all, didn’t you? So that you could charm the name of my young warlock friend from him, and use that little black jewel around your neck to bring your cavalry running?”
Sam slowly released the diamond on the necklace and felt what little blood remained in her face drain away. Fight or flight made her want to transform, if only to fly or run away as fast as possible. The plan had gone awry, just as she’d feared it would. She was supposed to be caught, but not until she’d freed Walker, not until she’d gotten the warlock’s name, and worst of all, the Hunters weren’t supposed to know that Jack and his men were on their way. Someone had leaked the information. And she was betting she knew who it was.
The Traitor’s betrayal was expected. It was why they had a back-up plan in place, and that back-up plan was the bloody tattoo she’d carved into her arm. It was a transport “tattoo” and it would take her and anyone she held on to out of the air force base and to safety. The Traitor didn’t know she had the mark; it had been discussed in the first meeting, not the second. And the Hunters, being human, wouldn’t be able to smell her blood or suspect she possessed it.
She was supposed to get Walker out if she could, and if not, she was supposed to immediately leave on her own. Jack made her promise she would do so. He’d been so insistent, it had actually frightened her. He’d backed her up against the wall, wrapped his hand gently around her neck and leaned in. “Promise me.”
The way things were looking right now, however, she was afraid that wasn’t going to pan out either. She couldn’t make it to Walker, grab him, touch the tattoo, and move through the portal before the Hunters stopped her. They were surrounding him. So she’d have to leave alone. And seeing him as he was, she couldn’t allow that. Promises or no promises, she had to help him. She felt it deep inside, as sure as she did her heart. She had a duty to assist him. She was responsible.
He was so pale. He had suffered so much. She could see him shaking, even from here, where he hung upside down. Again, he shook his head, this time with more urgency.
The warlock who stood behind the Hunter leader noticed Walker’s movement and obtained the attention of his boss. The Hunter leader turned to his tortured prisoner and bent over him, placing his ear to Walker’s lips. “What was that, young man? Speak up.” He waited a bit longer, and then stood, chuckling. “Oh yes, that’s right. Very difficult to speak when your vocal chords have been burned from the inside. A scream of pain will emit if coaxed enough, but lowly speech, not so much.”
Sam felt the bile rise and barely managed to keep it down this time. She tasted it on her tongue, sour and horrible. Her body began to shake.
The Hunter leader turned to face her. “Forgive me. You wanted names, and I’ve been horribly impolite. My name is Abraham Silence. And this here is Oliver Allen,” he said as he gestured to the warlock behind him, “my most useful companion.”
Oliver Allen, she thought tragically. There’s the name. Not that it would do them any good now. Oliver Allen had a bruise around his neck that very much reminded Sam of the marks left behind when someone was strangled to death. And the look he gave her was not the look of someone who was pleased with his position. He looked terrified. Obediently terrified.
“What do you want from me, Mr. Silence?” she asked, forcing some evenness into her voice, despite her horror at the situation. She had no idea what else to do.
“It isn’t what I want from you, Miss O’Neill. It’s you I want, plain and simple.”
“Then why did you torture Darius Walker?”
“Oh, that?” He smiled innocently. “Why, I am not responsible for that,” he said nonchalantly. “I only left him in the care of my men for a few hours. You know how boys are. They do get out of hand.”
“Oh gods…” she whispered, unable to give strength to her voice as she once more put her hand over her mouth and turned away from Abraham Silence, not wanting to see his face.
“They were attempting to force him to shift, you see,” he explained as if he
were explaining something like a walk in the park or an errant golf swing. “It is necessary for them to test their new Stayme spell. However, Mr. Walker proved quite stubborn. A shame, really. If he’d cooperated, he would most likely be in far better shape.”
So that was what they were doing. The Curse Breaker, Katherine Caige had been right. The Hunters were working on magic that forced the Stayme on shifters, and probably on werewolves too. But apparently it didn’t work if a shifter was in human form.
And that was why Walker had been shaking his head, she realized. He’d been trying to tell her, Don’t shift. Because if she did, she would remain shifted forever.
“I agree,” she said, her voice shaking as she turned to face him again. “He should have shifted. Then he could have ripped their faces off and they could all remain changed forever together.”
The Hunter leader laughed. But it sounded different. It sounded strange, hollow, and echoing. There was an edge of…. She tried to place it. Damned if it didn’t sound like magic. Either she was losing her mind out of stress and fear, or there was something quite off about Abraham Silence. And not only in the psychiatric department.
“You needn’t worry, however,” said Silence. “It won’t matter whether you shift or not… magishifter. No one will be burning your internal organs or,” he paused and his voice grew softer a he looked at his men. “What else was it you did? Oh yes, putting needles in your ears.”
Sam closed her eyes. Monster, she thought. Goddamned monster. But, despite it all, there was hope. There was still hope! They hadn’t taken off any of Walker’s limbs or severed his body parts. If she could get him out of here still drawing breath, he would heal. It would take a while, but he would heal, probably completely.
Fucking fucked up sons of bitch monsters, her mind spat as she couldn’t help but imagine all they had done to the man. “I thought Hunters killed weres and shifters outright,” she said. Her voice was hoarse with unshed tears and crazed fury.
“Times change,” Silence said. “And Hunter politics have changed with them. They have a new agenda now. Progress always takes sacrifice.”
Sam blinked. A tear broke free when she did, but she ignored it. It was something Silence had just said. He’d said “Hunter politics have changed with them.” He’d said “them.” Not “us.” Not “we.” He’d said “them” as if he were speaking of someone else.
“Clever girl, Miss O’Neill. I am not the man you met that fateful night in the heart of the city amongst all of that colorful confection. You have incredible instincts.”
Her gaze narrowed. Her jaw set. And she felt her eyes light up with angry power. “Who are you?”
“Names have power, young lady. Especially old ones. And I’m afraid mine is one of the oldest names in the multiverse. But I believe your ilk refer to me as the Entity.”
The Entity.
The room began to tilt around Sam. And as it shifted and even turned a little, white dots started to appear in her vision.
The Entity wanted the body of a queen. That was what the Kings had told her; that was what Jack had told her. But he wanted the body of a queen before she actually became queen. He wanted all of her power and none of her will. Once a woman became a queen, she became too powerful for the Entity to control. He wanted that power for himself, before the queen was strong enough to deny him.
Sam hadn’t yet accepted the position of queen. She thought her reservations had been wise. She couldn’t help them, after all. She needed to be sure. But she was a fool. She’d walked right into the spider’s web, a big, fat, juicy fly with no armor whatsoever.
She touched the diamond around her neck. Don’t come, she thought desperately as she fell to her knees, losing the strength and feeling in her legs. Stay away.
Across the room, Darius Walker made a soft sound. And when Sam looked back up, Abraham Silence was watching her through a smile – and wickedly glowing blood red eyes.
Chapter Forty-Three
Okay that’s it, she thought at last, giving in to the hell of the situation. She looked down at her sleeve. Deciding at once that remaining behind to die would help no one, including Walker, she shoved the sleeve up and prepared to touch her finger to her carved tattoo.
But Abraham Silence had a long stride, and he made quick work of it as he covered the ground between her and Walker and was suddenly standing over her. Sam felt his shadow first before she felt his presence hit her like an actual wall of unpleasant force. It was that same feeling she’d felt around him before but didn’t understand. It was a negative energy, and she instantly wanted to get away.
She hastily placed her hand on her wound. But in truth, she never got that far. He had knelt before her and grabbed her carved-up wrist in the split second before she would have made contact. She hadn’t even seen him move.
Sam drew in a quick, shocked breath and tried to scramble to her feet; his touch was painful. It was tight and hard, and inexplicably it felt as though he had barbs sticking out from his palm. Claws. Even teeth.
He smiled and yanked her hard, pulling her closer. Those burning red eyes of his, as unnatural as the ninth layer of hell, tore into her. As she stared helplessly into their crimson depths, his grip around her make-shift tattoo began to heat up. Now there were not only teeth digging into her transport mark, those teeth were on fire.
Her breathing quickened, and her teeth clenched. “I thought you didn’t want me dead,” she hissed through her tight jaw.
He laughed. “Oh I don’t my dear,” he assured her. “But I don’t want you gone, either.”
With dawning horror, Sam realized she now smelled burning skin. The worst part was that the smell came from the singeing flesh on her own arm. She couldn’t stop the sound that bubbled up in her throat and leaked through her clenched teeth. She violently yanked and pulled at her arm, all pretense gone. Now she only wanted to get away.
But he held on good and strong, letting his burning grip do its job. In a blinding, pain-induced panic, Sam shifted. Her right hand developed long, sharp claws, which she used to lash out at him.
But he moved just a little, and used his other hand to capture that arm as well. Now he had her by both limbs and held her at arm’s length. Her skin continued to burn. Sam moaned helplessly and then screamed, no longer able to contain the agonized wail. Her fangs erupted in her mouth, canines long and sharp and dripping with poison. Whether they were from some sort of normal snake or a legendary venomous creature, she couldn’t even be sure. She could barely think straight through the haze of pain now enveloping her.
Like lightning, she sprouted the fangs, turned her head, and sank them gum-deep into the Hunter’s forearm. He made a sound like an exhaled hiss, and she felt his tendons tighten under her bite. But he wasn’t releasing her, so she withdrew her fangs and prepared to strike again.
That was when he let her go altogether. Sam was barely comprehending the release and the end to the source of burning pain, when he drew back his arm and backhanded her across the face. The impact came so unexpectedly and so fast, she could not process it. She only heard the blow, a blunt contact that thudded in her head like a brick wrapped in a sock. Next, she saw the ground coming up to meet her.
The pain came a brief spell later as she lay face down and tasted blood in her mouth.
“Little bitch. You’ve made me harm my vessel.”
The world throbbed red around Sam, from her arm to her shoulder to her head. She was in that miserable suffering space where so many different portions of her body were in pain, it was difficult to differentiate between them. Everything hurts. But she opened her eyes anyway, and just in time to see the Hunter leader take a step back.
“You’ve made me harm both of them in fact. My present host, and my future. I’m almost impressed with your capacity for doing damage. It’s been… a very long time since I lost my temper like this. You have just enough spirit; I think you might actually be the one.”
Sam seemed to move in a dreadful dream as sh
e curled on her side and lifted her left arm. The tattoo she’d cut into her forearm was seared to complete ruin, the shape of a large hand burned brutally across it. It actually still smoked, curls of acrid evil rising in small black tendrils from her charred flesh.
She had no idea what to do now. Unless….
“Yes,” the Hunter said with a grin. “You’re thinking about it now, aren’t you little one? Call them all. Bring them running. You would be doing me such a favor.”
And that was why she didn’t do it. She’d already caused Jack Colton so much pain. She’d taken his eye. She’d ruined his life for twenty years. At least if she remained here alone, she and Walker would be the only two to die.
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” said Silence as if he could read her mind. In fact, everything he’d been saying felt as if he’d been reading her mind. He even knew what the tattoo on her arm would do, and that was supposed to be their last, best resort. Their secret plan. One the Traitor had not been let in on.
Maybe she’d been thinking out loud. She laughed at the thought, a strange, high-pitched sound that was also guttural and not at all right in this situation. But it did strike her as funny. Because, at this point, she wouldn’t even know if she’d been muttering aloud. Her life had been turned upside down. Maybe she really had gone off the reservation.
In any case, she was slipping under pain’s filmy blanket now.
The Entity seemed unfazed by her slight hysterics. “Your bravery will not save them. They will die,” she was pretty sure he said where he stood above her. “All of them. But probably not as you imagine.”
Sam closed her eyes for a moment. There was a part of her that wished for unconsciousness. But fate wasn’t being kind today, and she remained stubbornly awake. So she opened her eyes again. No point in dying blindly. Dylan Thomas’s famous poem whispered through her foggy brain. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
“Now then,” came Abraham Silence’s ever more reviled voice. He knelt again beside her, this time so close that he was able to whisper and keep his words between them. “I’ve wasted enough time. I believe I will be making a shift of my own now, little one, before your incredible insolence brings you any further damage.”