Caged (23 page)

I looked up again at Cooper and saw wildness in his eyes as he stared into mine. I tried to slowly get up and reached for his hand to gain some leverage; he backed away from me slowly, never unlocking his gaze from mine. I assumed he was a little shell-shocked from what had happened while I was in la-la land, so I tried to pull myself up on the wall. My hand instantly slipped and I wound up plastered to the ground again. When I looked at myself I realized that I too was covered in blood.

Far more than Cooper.

It wasn’t until I saw the bits of flesh and questionable matter clinging to my arms and under my fingernails that I began screaming. Since Cooper still seemed a bit gun shy around me, it went on for a good couple of minutes. He must have been getting concerned about the potential for alarming the guards or his auditory health, because he finally came over to snap me out of it, with a backhand across the face. It was painful, but highly effective. I stopped immediately. The wildness in his eyes was gone and the warmth had returned.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wincing at his actions. “I had to do it.”

“It’s OK…I’m sorry. I don’t know…I didn’t expect to…what the hell happened?”

He quickly relayed the events as they had occurred, though I was certain he’d done some Hollywood editing to make the story more ”PG 13” than ”R”. Apparently in my attempt to verbally attack the tree-named-Nicholas, the tree became unamused with the entire situation. He lunged at me and Cooper threw me, literally, out of the way. I did hit my head and it did stun me, but I wasn’t knocked out. Nicholas was distracted enough by Cooper to take the bait for awhile.

“You just sat there, slumped against the wall, looking at me while he was choking me. His back was to you. You must have known on some level what was happening, because the rage that crossed your face was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and that’s when it happened. I don’t know if your concussed state was the perfect amount of forced blackout or what, but you Changed right then,” he said, looking distant. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It was beautiful and horrifying at the same time. And the speed with which you Change…it’s unnatural.”

“Isn’t the fact that I do it at all unnatural?” I joked, trying to again make light of something decidedly not. It wasn’t well received in that instant. He was really freaked out.

“My humor isn’t only a defense mechanism, Coop. It’s handy when I’m scared or about to lose my shit.”

At that he smiled.

“My sense of humor has never abandoned me before now,” he replied. Silence hung between us for the briefest of moments.

“What happened after I Changed?”

“You tore through Nicholas like a sword through paper. I just stood there while you made minced meat out of him in about five seconds. Maybe six.”

“So I did
that
?” I said, dubiously pointing at the pile of Nicholas on the floor.

“Yup.”

“Huh. And you didn’t help at all?”

“I was too busy trying to stay out of the way. Smart people don’t jump in front of freight trains.”

A wave of nausea surged through me with the most horrific thought.

“I didn’t eat him, did I?”

“No,” he said, choking on a laugh. “Just diced him up, walked over to where you are now and laid down like you were going to take a nap. A couple of minutes later you morphed back into human form and woke up instantly.”

“So I never went after you?” I asked.

“I don’t think you even knew I was there. You were on a mission with a one track mind: kill Nicky.”

“Where did all your blood come from then?”

“Are you kidding me? That attack was as messy as turning on a blender without the lid on. CSI techs would have a field day with this mess.”

A huge smile slowly spread across my face.

“Ahhh, and the humor returns.”

30

I learned a valuable lesson that day: you can trick your mind into believing or not believing just about anything, so long as you don’t really have to face it. I knew what I was, and what I had done in the woods to my attackers the night of my Change. What I didn’t realize,
really
realize, was that I was a cold-blooded killer - efficient and effective. Apparently, lying covered in another man’s blood corrected that erroneous neural pathway. I couldn’t rationalize, lie, or evade my way out of that, nor could I spin it in my imagination to be anything other than what it was. My shirt was a shredded, blood-spattered reminder. I had to get it off. Immediately.

I started to take it off when Cooper grabbed my hands and held them tightly.

“You can’t take it off, Ruby. We can find something else for you upstairs, but this will mask your scent even further. No one here will bat an eyelash at the smell of someone’s blood,” he told me. “Violence is part and parcel to the compound experience. We’re not really a warm fuzzy, feel-good kind of family.”

His words were so thick with grief and sadness that they pulled me from the depths of my self-pity. He too had been lying to himself, and for a lot longer than I cared to imagine.

“OK,” I conceded, grabbing his hand to pull myself up.

“We’re going to have to do this now with a little less stealth and a lot more speed,” he said while snapping me upright. “The guards are less than a mile away now. We’re going to have to kill them. There’s no way around that,” he said solemnly.

“That seems to be my current MO,” I quipped. “I’ll have to be human, though. I can’t lay down to sleep even for a couple of minutes afterward. We don’t have the time.”

“What is your strength like in human form?”

“I’m strong, but nothing special. I’ll be of no use in a fistfight if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

“Hmm. Perhaps you’ll just have to be a distraction then. The two guards that are on duty are strong, but maybe not the sharpest. I can easily dispose of one before the other knows what’s happening.”

“When you say distraction, I’m assuming you don’t want me to do my best rendition of “All That Jazz”, right?”

“No, but I would
love
to see that sometime,” he said, his eyes bright. “Can you really sing and dance?”

I wasn’t sure which part was more disturbing - that he again was again laughing during a non-humorous event, or that he really seemed intrigued by my potential ability to do both of those activities.

“Hey Chuckles, could we focus here?” I yelled. Maybe he needed a slap across the face to snap him back into the here and now. “The guards? What exactly do you want me to do? And you’d better keep it clean, smart ass.”

Just as he had earlier, he managed to get himself together and refocus on the task at hand. He looked pensive for a moment; even scratched and rubbed at his chin, though I was completely convinced that was solely for effect.

“You’re going to have to go in alone. Your current state, combined with the fact that you’re loose, will be more than enough cause for immediate alarm and action of their part. They’ll assume you’ve killed both Nick and myself, so they won’t be focused on anything but you. If you can draw them back, effectively cornering yourself, I can get them close enough together to make fast work of them. Neither will have a chance to react.”

It sounded like a solid enough plan, but he was leaving one small detail out.

“Didn’t you say they were armed?” I asked with a heavy dose of skepticism.

“What?”

“Armed…you know, guns with real bullets - the kind that can kill.
That
armed.” He looked confounded for a moment before blowing off my concerns.

“Yeah, there’s that. That won’t be a problem. They won’t shoot you, and won’t see me coming. They’ll be dead before they draw.”

His ambivalence was awe-inspiring and wicked annoying.
Yeah, no biggie. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan.

We jogged the rest of the way down through the stone tunnel. I was too weak to both run and talk, so Cooper mainly just babbled beside me about everything and nothing. The light started to dim as we neared what I assumed to be the end. Cooper was silent for the last fifty or so yards, but what he failed to mention in his silence was that the door was rapidly approaching and that perhaps it would be a good idea to slow down. No such good luck for me - ran full speed right into it. I staggered back away from it, giving myself a full view of the solid oak door that stood before me, ominous and foreboding.

So much for the element of surprise.

Now instead of getting a chance to quietly rehash the plan with Coop, I was being thrust through that door into a large foyer of sorts by my unhappy companion.

It was much brighter in there and it took me a moment to get my bearings. The room was circular in shape with four egresses, each equally spaced out along the wall. The ceiling was at least four times the height of what I’d just traveled down with an enormous lantern-esque light fixture hanging like a chandelier in the center. The walls were still stone, but much more inviting in that amount of light.

What wasn’t that inviting were the two meat-heads directly across the room from me about twenty-five feet away. They seemed to be as startled by my appearance as I was by my surroundings. I completely panicked and forgot the game plan.
Was there a game plan?

I ran at them with as much wildness and craziness as my energy stores could provide. They took the bait and lunged towards me, coming slightly at me from each side. I ducked to the right, hoping the door there might be unlocked, but no such good luck. Seeing that I had nowhere to go they slowed their pace to an intimidating walk now, each with their own pleased look on their face.

Where the hell is Cooper?

The taller one on my right got to me first. He said nothing but slid the back of his hand down the side of my face, and then slowly brushed it back up again. His buddy stayed a couple of feet back from him, just out of his periphery. He appeared to be watching the taller one’s behavior, studying it as if he were his mentor. Up and down, up and down, the hand caressed the side of my face. He didn’t say a word.

WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU, COOPER?

There are many different types of scary. This guy was serial-killer-scary. The kind of psychopath who would take his time gutting you, then sit across from you at the dining room table and tell you about his day while you slowly bled to death. He would enjoy his meal, too.

Has Cooper chickened out? How could he leave me here with this sociopath?

Tears were starting to sting the back of my eyes. Cooper said these guys wouldn’t kill me, but I was getting concerned by how closely they might like to push the envelope. I wasn’t really in the mood for permanent damage. As those thoughts went through my mind, I felt the darkness coming.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…

As my vision tunneled I saw a flash of movement cross the room, but I was unable to focus. My Change was coming and there was nothing I could do. Though I knew it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, I was afraid my lanky caresser would be forced to shoot me, and that
would
be the worst thing.

Again I saw a something blur through my periphery, but much closer this time. I heard a loud crunch, a faint grunt from one of the men, and then something loud fall on the floor. The hand immediately left my face.

I could more clearly see the fight now, but it was gray and fuzzy and pixelated-looking. Cooper was in a knock-down drag-out fight with Lanky. It was hard to watch with this unfamiliar vision. Everything appeared less defined, with a lack of clarity to their movement. It almost made me nauseous to watch. I started to wonder if stress affected my eyesight as well; it would have been par for the course.

Suddenly, I saw a flash of metal. I knew they were fighting over the gun, the gun-that-wouldn’t-have-time-to-be-drawn in Cooper’s plan. I had no idea what to do. They seemed evenly matched, but that gun was trump, and I had no clue as to who had the better handle on it. I knew I couldn’t just mold myself to the wall and hope for the best, maybe cheer Cooper on. No, I had to help somehow.

I watched for a bit longer, waiting for Lanky to turn his back to me. Cooper may not have known my plan but right on cue, he twirled his attacker a few steps sideways, giving me exactly what I wanted. I surged towards him, mouth open, hands ready. I sprang up and latched on with my nails dug into his shoulders and feet pressed into the small of his back. Before I knew what I was doing, I had my mouth buried in his carotid region and was tearing at his throat with all my resolve. He screamed like a rabbit caught in a trap. It was a bloodcurdling sound that made my insides squirm with delight. I released him, expecting to come crashing to the ground, but instead landed elegantly. On four feet.

I had Changed and not even known. I felt nothing but the raw emotions that fueled it in the first place. There was no pain, nothing like I had seen Eric experience with his.

When I looked back up at Lanky, I saw that the fight hadn’t fully left him while he struggled with Cooper for control of the gun. The floor was rapidly puddling with blood due to the arterial spray that rained around us, making it a balance hazard for the two fighting in it. Cooper went down hard and fast, bringing his opponent down on top of him. He was securely pinned under the other werewolf with the gun still up for grabs.