Wolf: To Your Bones (Wolf series Book 2), page 25
Josh.
I found his number—and with the first look at the black writing, I began to sob.
369 - burnt out
370 - poisoned
371 - intact
372 - intact
373 - intact
...
M01 - intact
M02 - intact
Whatever they had done to him the past two weeks, Josh was still alive.
The clarity almost swept me off my feet. I had to close my eyes and concentrate on the darkness for a long time so I could pull myself together. My pulse raced in my ears.
“Josh is alive,” Liam said to Hunter and Keith. “And if I’m not mistaken, he should be here.”
I covered my mouth to stifle my crying. My breath was interrupted by short, heavy sobs that I had to struggle to push down. My control was threatening to collapse on me. I couldn’t stop thinking about all these horrible things. The things they could’ve done to Josh. It drove me mad.
“How do we proceed?” Hunter asked. He was visibly overwhelmed with the situation.
“Like werewolves,” Keith replied. His tone was full of disgust. “We’re tearing this damn lab apart.”
Maybe I should’ve objected. I was reluctant to put the people who worked here in danger. I didn’t know them, and they might have families or friends who would miss them terribly. As hard as I tried, however, I couldn’t make myself want to keep them alive. All I could think of was what they had done to the captive werewolves. People like Josh, Hunter, Liam, and Keith.
Keith was right. They weren’t people. They were monsters.
“Let’s keep going,” I whispered. “I’ll be right behind you.”
After I had spoken, the pack members looked at each other. Then Keith grabbed his gun from Hunter and ran to the next door. This time he held the gun ready to fire—and I wasn’t going to stop him.
Everything after that went incredibly fast.
We stormed room after room, looking for Josh. I saw Liam put countless samples and documents in his case, found Hunter constantly next to me, and simply ignored the shots that Keith fired. They rumbled in my ears four or maybe five times, but I didn’t pay them any heed any longer. I let Keith kill whoever he thought needed killing. Everything in me was focused on saving Josh.
We rushed through the corridors and kicked in every door, penetrating deeper and deeper into the horror of this place. It didn’t take long until we found the first cages. They were made of pure silver, and they were empty.
“They use silver to keep the werewolves in,” Liam growled. “I’ve never seen anything crueler.”
The cages had no solid floors. The undersides were instead covered with silver grids, which I knew would cause painful burns to a werewolf at the slightest touch. I couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to be trapped in it—always upright and anxious to keep your feet between the bars. Even as humans, they wouldn’t be able to sit or lay down.
“Go on,” Keith whispered nearby, looking shaken. “Or we’ll end up in one of those things.”
Our steps echoed through the corridor. By now, everyone in the building must had noticed our unauthorized access. I saw cameras in the corner, from which even Josh’s hood could probably not protect my face, and still heard the whistling of the gunshots when Keith opened new doors. Nevertheless, no resistance awaited us. We had seen three or four men in white running away, and I thought Keith shot some of them. Where were the rest? Could it be that only about a dozen people worked here? That seemed illogical.
There was something about this situation that made me feel uneasy, but I attributed it to our lack of preparation. We had too little time to plan. There was not even any to process all the terrifying details of this place. We had to keep going so we wouldn’t get caught.
A few minutes later, we finally found what we had been looking for.
At first sight, it was a room like any other. I saw an apparatus with several switches and an office chair in the corner—nothing I didn’t know from the other rooms. I almost missed the cages. They were placed on the walls and partly stacked on top of each other to save space. I needed a second look to discover the werewolves.
We’d found them. Yellow-eyed monsters that remained upright in their silver cages. They couldn’t sit or rest, just like Liam had said. They just stood there staring into space, and their almond-shaped pupils seemed entirely empty. The sight left me speechless, but the strange light distracted me. It came toward us since Keith had opened the door, and it made me anxious. That was no ordinary fluorescent light. It emitted from a roundish bulb on the ceiling and cast long shadows across the floor. Compared to the cold glow of the other lamps, it seemed much more intense, much warmer, and much softer. I had never seen such a light before.
Instead of rushing in, we stopped and stared through the door frame like we were seeing an incalculable danger.
I shoved aside my doubts. Josh didn’t have time to wait any longer for me. He had to be here. He just had to.
When I set one foot forward to enter the room, Liam held me back.
“Wait, Ruby.”
Until a moment ago I had seen the pack in the corner of my eye. Now Keith, Liam, and Hunter stepped back so far that their backs almost touched the opposite wall of the corridor. However, it wasn’t the movement or distance that unsettled me. It was their pupils. The three men had lost the normal color of their irises. Instead, six bright yellow lights shone toward me. Werewolf eyes. They were as bright and as cold as the eyes of the caged monsters.
“Ruby.” Liam’s voice sounded as if he were afraid that I didn’t understand him anymore. I could see his fist trembling. Something seemed to be tearing at the pack’s self-control—so much that they were about to transform. “The light in that room is moonlight.”
I looked up and still didn’t understand. That was impossible. My head jerked around to catch sight of the lit room.
“This is how they force werewolves to turn,” Liam said, and his voice was tight. “They have artificial moonlight.”
Hunter punched the wall with his fist. The noise made me flinch.
“When we get one step closer, we change.” He cursed.
I gazed at Keith, but he was no different. He had stopped speaking and turned away, as if he couldn’t stand the mere sight of the lamp.
“I’ll go myself,” I said mechanically. I didn’t take the time to think about what a room with moonlight could mean. We had to get out of here. All of us. I just wanted to find Josh and get the hell away.
I was already setting foot in the doorway when Liam held me back once more.
“Wait,” he said. “Think it through.”
My steps died.
“That light is much more intense than the moon could ever shine,” Liam added. “I doubt there’s any werewolf it won’t transform.”
For a second, I didn’t know what he was getting at.
“Don’t you understand?” Hunter growled. “If you are infected, the light is going to change you.”
He held out his palms. A gesture of powerlessness.
“If that happens, we can’t help you. We can’t go in there!”
Now I fully understood. The days surrounding Josh’s abduction had been so traumatic that my own infection had all but slipped my mind. My desire to save him had eclipsed everything else. I thought of the strange werewolf on Josh’s windowsill, of my fear of the full moon, and of Josh’s late-night visit to his bedroom when I had been there.
My stomach cramped. I had to bend over to bear the pain, staring blankly into the interior of the room. The silver of the cages threw the light back and directly into my eyes. It was as if it was threatening me. Stepping into its shine didn’t just mean maybe finally finding Josh. It also meant that I would learn once and for all whether I was a werewolf or not. And if I was, I’d be trapped, unable to save him.
I swallowed. My legs trembled like leaves. Suddenly the room no longer seemed like a goal—it had become an obstacle my body was telling me I couldn’t overcome. Everything inside me was reluctant to move forward. If I kept walking, maybe it would all be over. My parents, my friends, my boss. They would all never see me again. They’d think I’d been kidnapped, or that I’d ran away, or that I was dead somewhere where they couldn’t find me.
Just like Josh.
I felt tears on my cheeks. There was so much fear about what might happen that it overwhelmed me. I stared into the bright room, hands clenched in fists, and cursed my cowardice.
“Come,” Hunter mumbled. “Maybe we can find a way to turn off the lamp.”
I shook my head. We didn’t have time to go through the entire lab all over again, search for a switch that could look like anything, and test to see what it was connected to. “No. I’m going in.”
I wouldn’t back down. Not today and not at this moment. I had spent the last few weeks doing everything I could to save Josh, no matter how risky and unreasonable it had been. It was out of the question to give up now. Josh had never hesitated. Not when saving my life in the alley that night, not after the accident, and not in the barn. He had always run headlong into danger to help me.
Your noble intentions of rescue obviously end when you have to get your hands dirty.
Keith was right. If I wanted to find Josh, I would have to make sacrifices. I was willing to risk everything, so I took another deep breath. Then I forced myself toward the door. The harsh light seemed to swallow me when I stepped into the room.
I felt nothing. No flicker, no whirring. No inner turmoil. No sinister urge to chase prey through the night. I didn’t even feel anger, although I had just found out so many horrible things. There was only compassion, because I saw the werewolves standing in their cages. Emaciated, debilitated creatures that seemed only shadows of their former selves. Nothing about them reminded me of the fearsome beasts that terrorized the forests every full moon. Not even their gazes were the same. Their clear, yellow eyes hardly noticed me. They slept standing up, or maybe some of them weren’t asleep and had simply lost their minds. Only two of the fourteen werewolves in the room lay curled up in their prisons. They didn’t react to the contact with the silver, so I assumed that they must have died.
I tightened my jaws. I couldn’t understand it how people could think that the werewolves weren’t the same as other creatures, as other humans. I understood the urge to study and learn about them, but I didn’t get how a person could be so cruel to another being, no matter if that being was human or werewolf.
With this thought, I noticed one of the cages. I sensed a look from it that seemed familiar. It seemed less rigid, less wild, and it wasn’t as tired. The werewolf was missing an eye, but in his remaining one more soul was written than in all the others. It made my heart pound and my muscles shake.
Josh. The way he fixed his gaze on me wasn’t that of a werewolf. It was a person with fur who was simply looking at me there. He noticed me, so it had to be him. I couldn’t see his back to convince myself, though. The shaggy line of fur between his shoulders would have proved it was him. It made no difference, because I decided to trust my gut.
Without further hesitation, I grabbed the office chair, lifted it, and threw it with all my strength against the lamp. The clang and shatter echoed through the corridor, and the room darkened. What was left behind was an ordinary neon tube on the ceiling, whose shine seemed almost muddy and dark now. I had to blink a few times to see properly again because the difference was so vast.
Two of the werewolves immediately transformed back. They fell to the ground as naked men and began to scream deafeningly when the silver touched their skin. I was looking for a way to open the cages, but they had no handles. Only then did I see the switch beside the door.
I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn’t thinking. In my panic, I forgot to distrust the werewolves. Instead of being careful, I saw Josh in them and wanted to free them. The desperate cries made me throw my reason overboard and pull the lever. Then chaos broke out.
Pulling the lever seemed to have activated a mechanism. The cage doors opened with the loud snorting of a hydraulic system, while somewhere a siren started. It was a drifting, unpleasant sound that reminded me of a fire alarm. It hurt my ears and pierced through the rooms. The noise almost made me forget what I had done.
Now, three, five, and then nine werewolves jumped out of their prisons, only to immediately run amok. They screamed in my direction with boundless rage, scratched the walls, and destroyed the furniture before they fell upon each other without further warning. Within a heartbeat, I was surrounded by fighting werewolves, under whose claws even the tiles exploded. The ceiling rained debris and made me lose track of everything.
I crouched into a corner and raised my arms over my head to avoid being hit. Meanwhile, several werewolves rolled across the ground next to me, grabbing each other with their teeth and shaking their massive heads to cause as much damage to each other as possible. Their claws barely missed my face. I tried to find a way out, but there wasn’t one. Every inch of the room was full of hateful werewolves. The space around me was full of blood and fur. The footfalls of raging monsters shook the lab and drowned out Hunter’s voice in the corridor.
There was no getting through. The noise of the werewolves filled my ears and numbed my senses. Instead of looking for Josh, I got on my knees and saw my end approaching.
A howl at the door saved my life.
The pack had turned and was now trying to lure the other werewolves out of the room. I never thought it would work, but Keith and the others were right. No sooner were their voices heard in the hallway than most of the black beasts stormed through the door. They followed the challenge blindly and without any suspicion—just like Josh must have done six years ago.
Two wolves remained behind, still involved in a fight. I saw the blood splashing on the walls as they clamped their jaws onto each other, and I just closed my eyes to the worst. Then, a pain-filled rattle revealed that one of the two had not survived the fight. The victor raised his paws and shrieked at the ceiling. For a fraction of a second, I thought he was taking aim at me, until he rushed past me and out of the room. I was left alone, with a trembling heart, and with a very last werewolf that hadn’t yet left its cage. It was the one who I thought was Josh.
My legs wouldn’t carry me. I sat there, felt the sweat beading on my forehead, and had to suppress the sobbing with every muscle in my body. What was I thinking? I had just almost lost my life, and that out of sheer negligence. It made me freeze, for the danger of the werewolves still seemed to be all around me. I couldn’t get up and couldn’t walk. My teeth clashed because I couldn’t control the tremors.
Josh.
Only the one-eyed werewolf managed to bring me back to reality.
He hadn’t changed back into a human, and he didn’t try to escape either. He stayed in his cage and looked at me as if waiting for me to take the first step. I returned his gaze for an eternity until I finally stood up. It was difficult to put one foot in front of the other.
“Josh.”
Calling him by his name made my lips tremble. I had to bite my tongue to keep from sobbing loudly. The werewolf’s left eyelid was closed by a scar that seemed to have healed long ago. His other eye wouldn’t stop watching me.
“Josh.”
It was just a whimper—a plea that he would finally transform and take me in his arms. It broke my heart to see him with only one eye, but I would accept it. If Josh was alive, then we could deal with anything. I wanted nothing more than to finally throw myself at his chest and to cry out all the pain.
When I mentioned Josh’s name, the werewolf’s ears suddenly pricked up. He watched me, concentrating and appearing somehow alarmed, and he slowly started to move. A cautious step freed him from his prison. Another one brought him closer to me. It was the first time in my life I’d been approached so slowly by a werewolf. I held my breath as the glow of his single pupil wandered across my face. The heat of his breath and the dull heartbeat in his chest made me shiver. I didn’t dare move.
The werewolf fixed his eye on me for three or maybe four seconds before he turned away. Soon he was on his way down the hall to leave the lab, without struggle and without raging anger. He didn’t even pay attention to Hunter, who was standing right by the door and waiting for me in human form. One last time the werewolf tilted his head to glance back at me, then he left the lab with quicker steps. As he disappeared into the corridor, I realized that the gray line on his back was missing.
That werewolf wasn’t Josh.
Chapter 22
My hope shattered. With the one-eyed werewolf, the last of the black creatures had gone. Instead of jumping up and continuing, I sunk down further and stared at the broken floor. There was nothing in this room that the werewolves hadn’t reduced to rubble.
It didn’t matter to me. Nothing did. I didn’t care if I had just set a whole pack of werewolves free. I didn’t have the strength to get up and carry myself out. I had scraped together every bit of my remaining courage to enter that room, but I hadn’t found Josh.
He had to be somewhere—maybe here or maybe at the end of the world. But despite forcing myself to think optimistic thoughts, this last defeat took my energy. I knew I had to keep looking. I couldn’t give up, but my legs just wouldn’t obey. The longing for Josh drowned me. I didn’t move, and I stared into nowhere until Hunter’s legs suddenly blocked most of my view.
“Get away.”
His words weren’t meant for me, so my head popped up. Only now did I notice that two naked, emaciated men still shared the room with us. They were the ones who had changed back immediately after the moonlight lamp had gone out. They were a picture of misery. I could see huge burns on their legs and shoulders that looked like burns of silver. The men were also terribly skinny. Every single rib stood out, and their skin was pale and empty. They were each too weak to stay upright, so they were trying to support each other. The hair on their heads had been shaved off almost completely.
