Hit List(99)

I heard Nicky yelling my name in the dark.





35




IT WAS COLD. Cold and hard. I was lying on something hard and cold, my cheek pressed to the rough chill of it. My hand spasmed and my hands were tied behind my back. My eyes opened wide, pulse shoved into my throat, heart thudding. I could see a darkly stained stone wall. I pulled at the ropes behind my back, but the rope was tight, biting into my wrists when I tugged on it. I moved my legs and realized my ankles were bound together, too. My boots protected my ankles, so the rope didn’t bite into the skin, but they were tied just as tight. My heart was threatening to choke me, as if I needed to swallow it back down into my chest. I was so scared my skin ran cold with it, and it had nothing to do with the concrete floor.

I tried to think through the panic. Was there anyone to see me move? Had the movements been small enough that my captors hadn’t noticed, or was I alone? There was nothing against the one wall I could see. The wall was water stained, which was probably one of the things that made the floor damp. I forced myself to notice things; there just wasn’t a lot to notice. But just taking the time to try had slowed my pulse, helped chase back the panic. I was tied up, but I wasn’t hurt as far as I could tell. I’d come to in worse places, with lots worse happening to me.

I felt movement behind me. Maybe I heard it, but it was as if the air currents stirred behind me and I just knew that someone was behind me, and that they were close. I fought not to tense more than I already had, but it’s almost impossible not to tense when you’re tied up and you have no idea who or what is coming up behind you. Being completely helpless makes you tense.

“If you had just come with me and my master, things would have been so much simpler.” The deep growl of voice was the shapeshifter from the motel, the one that had stabbed Karlton and made her a werewolf. So at least I knew his flavor of shifter; that was something, not much, but something.

I swallowed and found my voice. “Simpler for whom?”

“Whom, you say, whom, when I have you tied up on the floor, helpless.” I heard the brush of cloth now, and small noises that I couldn’t have told you what they were exactly, but I’d have bet money that he was crawling on the floor toward me.

I felt the heat of him behind me, before the white mask and hood of his face peered over my shoulder. He leaned over my face so I could see that the eyes in the mask were pale green, and not human. He had wolf eyes in his human face, which might mean that the reason his voice was growly was because he’d spent too much time in animal form, either because he liked it, or because he’d been forced as punishment. The eyes usually changed first, and then the teeth, and then internal mouth and throat changes so the voice stayed deeper.

His eyes were so close to me that I could see the edges of them and knew he was frowning. “You aren’t afraid, and you’re thinking something. What are you thinking that has helped you let go of your fear of just a moment before?”

I decided that truth didn’t hurt. “Who kept you in animal shape until your eyes stayed wolf even in human form?”

He growled at me, leaning that smooth, white mask close and closer until I couldn’t focus on his green wolf eyes and all I could see was the white blur of the mask. My pulse sped up again; I couldn’t help it. I was tied up and helpless, and he was looming over me. I wouldn’t have wanted a human to do it, let alone a werewolf, though honestly that wasn’t the part that bothered me. It was the white mask, and the speed I’d seen that first night. He was Harlequin, and being at their mercy, that bothered me.

I heard him draw in a deep breath behind the blur of mask. He pressed that smooth porcelain against my cheek and sniffed. “Now you’re afraid; good.”

He curled himself against the back of my body, pressing that cool, artificial face against mine. My vision was filled up with the blur of that white mask. One of his arms snaked across the front of my body, pressing us close together. He was enough taller than me that it was mostly his upper body that pressed so tight against the back of mine.

I fought to control my pulse, my heart rate. He wanted me to be afraid, and anything he wanted I didn’t want to give him. My pulse quieted, heart rate going down. He growled in a low, heavy line that vibrated through his chest and neck along my body. It hit that back part of the brain that still remembers huddling around a fire with the night pressing close, and when that growl came out of the dark, you knew that something out there was going to kill you. I couldn’t keep my heart from beating faster, couldn’t keep it from sending my blood pumping hard and fast through my body. He growled harder, the vibration of it shivering down my spine, warning me that teeth and fangs came next after that sound.