Omega's Run (6 page)

Steel grey eyes peered out from beneath thick, bushy eyebrows gone grey with age. A short cut beard covered the lower half of his face and his hair stuck out in all directions. Kind of reminded me of a lion’s thick mane. He had a distinct grace to him, even standing perfectly still. Somehow, the predator in me recognized the predator in him and I am not ashamed to say that I felt cowed by it. I did my best not to let my fear of him show though. It would only increase the already substantial power that he held over me.

“It seems to me that you would want to meet with me, after that unfortunate business with your father.”

I snorted, not even trying to hide my disgust. “‘Unfortunate business’” I sneered. “You mean setting it up so you could murder my father? He may have been acting strange the last few years but I’ve been starting to think that I overreacted in thinking we needed to remove him from his position as Alpha.”

He shrugged again, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Be that as it may, with how that situation ended, and with you being ostracized from your pack, one would think that you would be compelled to seek out some kind of ally in this world.”

“You are no ally of mine,” I snarled and fought the urge to leap at him. With the metal bars between us and the distance he stood from my cage I would never be able to reach him. Didn’t stop me from wanting desperately to tear his throat out though.

“We were, at one point, working together.”

“My father was bringing the pack to ruin. We just want to live and raise our families. He was going to see us destroyed at the pace he was going...” I trailed off and bit my tongue. Damn I was tired. I would never have run off at the mouth so much before but obviously exhaustion and weakness were getting the better of me. I tasted blood in my mouth but refused to let up.

“You can’t honestly expect us to believe that you fucking animals just want to be left alone in peace. That’s why you filthy mutts attack innocent people? That’s why you kill and hunt people, just for the fun of it? Left in peace you’ll get stronger and your numbers will grow until you can kill every last one of us at your leisure.”

I couldn’t believe it. Seriously, that was how the hunters saw us? That was really what they believed? I stared at Ava, completely dumbfounded and confused all at once. How does someone come to believe such vitriol about a people she knows nothing about? How doesn’t she see the comparison to basic racism and bigotry? How can the human race be so damned blind to their own atrocities but so quick to point out others?

I was so fucking glad I was never human to begin with in that moment. In fact, I was pretty sure it would have killed me.

“You don’t have the slightest understanding as to what you’re talking about,” I growled, ignoring the way a trickle of blood escaped my mouth and ran down my chin. “Wolf-kind are nothing like that. And you humans kill yourselves more than almost anything or anyone else.”

She glared at me and I saw a hint of steel growing in Mathias’ gaze. I was bothering them so I grinned, a blood filled rictus, and pushed forward. “The Romans conquering the Druids, The Crusades. The Spanish Inquisition. Slavery in the American Colonies. The Salem Witch Trials. The Holocaust... Do you really need any more than that to tell you that humanity is the real monster here?”

Ava growled, a sound worthy of any wolf-kind, and surged forward, hand darting beneath her Joe Rocket jacket but Mathias’ hand shot out, quick as a snake and grabbed her by the shoulder, yanking her back to stand next to him.

“Touched a nerve, did I?” I taunted and winked at her causing her cold mask to crack with unadulterated fury.

“Leave him,” he ordered. “I’ll come back later, Remus. Perhaps then you will be more willing to discuss your future with us.”

I glared at him as he turned and left without another word, Ava following sullenly behind him. Before she left, she shot a glare at me over her shoulder; her eyes burning with the kind of hatred I had only ever seen before in the gaze of my brother Romulus.

The door shut behind them and I sank to the ground, sitting cross legged with my elbows on my knees. My leg protested the action and I held back the pained groan that wanted to escape me. There was no way in hell I would let on how much I hurt. My leg throbbed and burned, my stomach growled ceaselessly and I could feel myself slowly growing weaker from it. At my best guess, it had been roughly twenty-four hours since I last ate anything, maybe a little less.

I wouldn’t last for much longer without turning feral and getting crazed. Was that his plan? Did he want to drive me to starvation so the wolf would come out? Why? It didn’t make sense. Unless he wanted to use that as some sort of proof to his hunters that I was the dangerous animal they thought me to be.

That still didn’t seem to fit though. It was too straight forward, too simple a thought for what I knew of Mathias Young. His actions always held deeper meaning. Plans within plans, hidden behind layers of agendas and everything he did was shrouded with misdirection. I was never much of a chess player, but Mathias seemed to be a master of the game.

I felt, though, that I might just have a possibility open to me. A weakness in the Hunters’ armor. For a moment. Just a moment, when Mathias grabbed Ava by the shoulder, I saw a look of open revulsion cross her face. Naked hatred and disgust. Before her poker face slid back into place and she was able to hide the seething turmoil I now knew raged beneath. If at all possible, I needed to try to use that because it told me one important thing.

Ava hated Mathias. Almost as much as I did, and the enemy of my enemy might just be my only friend if I could spin it right. If not I was as good as dead.

I looked around the room, taking in as much as I could. Dark stone walls surrounded me, and the interior was lit by way of recessed lighting in the ceiling behind round panels of, what looked like, bullet proof glass. The room was square and at my best guess, roughly fifty feet by fifty feet. In the center of it, a single steel cage open on all four sides, the bars thicker around than my wrist.

That struck me as interesting. Even as thick as the bars were it wouldn’t be impossible for me to break free. I would be able to tear my way through with a minute or two’s worth of work, even injured and half-starved. So what the hell was going on? What good was a cage that I could escape?

I jerked up and winced at the throbbing stab of pain that ripped through my thigh at the sudden action when a scraping sound caught my ear. The door leading into the stone room containing my private cell was heavy wood with metal bars blocking a small window in the center at about head height. I lifted my head and sniffed at the air as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to give anything away.

Two guards, at least. Standing outside the door in the hall. I could smell the scent of gun oil on both of them. That explained it. If I tried to escape there was no way I would be able to without making a significant amount of noise. Those guards probably had orders to turn me into Swiss cheese if I tried it. So, they put me in a cage I can escape but leave the guards to encourage me to be a good little doggie and sit in my time out. That or they thought to tempt me to try to escape, just so they’d have an excuse to shoot me. In self-defense, of course, but in all reality, for their own amusement. These bastards were special, for sure.

I thought about it some more and finally had to shake my head.
Sick motherfuckers, every last one of them. Even her, especially her… Even if she was a stone-cold fox.

“A trap within a trap, within a dungeon,” I muttered and leaned back against the bars behind me. I groaned and stretched my leg out in front of me, feeling the unaccustomed weakness and pain in my limb. For a man that has never suffered injury for more than a few hours before healing up entirely, this was absolute torture. I wondered briefly how humans put up with it without going crazy.

I looked down at the ground and snorted at the irony. There, on the floor was a single red cross with equidistant arms on a perfectly square background of pristine white.

“Alright,” I sighed and looked up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the burning agony in my leg that I could feel expanding through my body. “We’ve always wanted to know where it was the Hunters originated from. If you survive this, Remus, you just might have something to bring back to your little brother. If he doesn’t kill you just for showing your mug.”

***

“Look alive, you son of a bitch!”

I jerked awake and the motion sent shards of pain ripping through my body, a wave of nausea following right on its heels. I moaned and my eyes flickered open. Hunger gnawed at my belly just as exhaustion gripped me and tried to smother me beneath its weight.

“To what do I owe this great pleasure?” I grunted and pushed myself up to a sitting position. At some point I had fallen asleep and slumped over onto my side.

“Mathias says you need to eat something,” Ava sneered and dropped a metal tray laden with food heavily to the floor. Half of it splattered onto the ground and even more slopped over the edge when she kicked it forward and it slid through a slot at the bottom of the bars. “Personally I think you should starve to death. It would be entertaining to see you suffer.”

I ignored the food despite my nose doing its best effort to overwhelm my mind with the enticing aromas of meat, potatoes and creamed corn. “Oh.” I sighed. “You really wouldn’t want to see that,” I drawled with as much casual laziness as I could muster. “There aren’t many things more frightening than a wolf-kind in a state of feral hunger.” I caught her eyes with an intent gaze of my own and let that steep for a moment before I continued.

“You are right about one thing, Babycakes,” I said and winked at her which only caused her to scowl further. “Monsters we aren’t, but we
are
animals. And when you starve an animal it becomes mad with hunger, and even more dangerous. You wouldn’t want me out of my mind with hunger and rage. It would only end with blood... probably yours.”

She glared at me a moment longer before she turned and stalked out of the room, the sound of her boots striking the stone floor was drowned out entirely by the door slamming shut behind her. I waited until her footfalls had receded into the distance before I dove on the food, scooping up all I could and even reaching through the bars as far as I could reach to collect that which had spilled on the floor, desperate to ease the yawning ache of hunger.

Chapter 8

Ava

“Play it again.”

“Ava…” Mason’s voice was full of uneasy chiding as he drew out my name, but I really didn’t give a shit.

“Again!” I snapped.

Lines appeared on the screen as he wound the footage back and instead of lunging forward for the food splattered across the floor, the monster lurched back. I watched myself enter the room and the footage stopped and began to roll forward again. There was no sound, I didn’t need to hear what was being said. I was there and it replayed in my mind’s eye over and over again.

“This ain’t going to bring James back, you know.” Mason said softly. I brought my arm up, bent it at the elbow and snapped it back and felt it connect solidly with Mason’s nose. I felt a satisfying pop through my thick jacket sleeve. Mace yowled, his hands flying off the control panel to cover his face.

“Goddamn it, Ava!”

I glanced back over my shoulder at him and raised an eyebrow, keeping the rest of my expression cold and flat. No one knew better than I did that James wasn’t coming back. Mace’s eyes watered and he pulled his hands away from his face to see them stained with blood. Of course all I could see when I looked at my own hands was my brother’s blood from where I had tried to press his insides back where they’d belonged.

I turned back to the monitor, jaw set in grim resignation. I wanted to kill it. I wanted to kill it so badly, but
Mathias
stood in my way, and truthfully I wanted to kill him too, for sending James practically solo, after those mad dogs.

“Leave us,” his rich, melodic voice wafted over from the control room’s doorway. Speak of the devil, or in this case, think of him…

Mason pushed back from the desk and sniffed, glaring at me contritely. I gave him blank face; gave him nothing. Sometimes, like now, I felt a little bad for being so rough on them but it was for their own damn good. So they wouldn’t end up like so many of the others who’d gone before. So they wouldn’t end up like
James
…

“Resent me all you like, Ava. You know I did what I thought was best.”

Don’t trust Mathias, Baby Sis. Something’s up. I can feel it.

I pressed my lips into a grim line and tried to school my face into a neutral expression.

“I don’t,” I lied, and at the angry expression on the older man’s face I quickly changed tact… “I mean, I do… he was my twin brother, my only blood and family I had left, I understand but…” I crumbled a little on the inside and went for broke, and told the truth.

The truth will set you free, little sister…

“I miss him.” I whispered into the lengthy silence and felt the tears spill hot and salty slick down my face. Mathias’ face hardened.

“I have a job for you,” he said imperiously and I nodded once sharply. I hardened my heart, drew it all in and stuffed it down. Locking my emotions back in the deep, dark footlocker in the deepest recesses of my soul where no one, not even Mathias Young with his prying eyes and manipulations could reach.

“Sir, yes sir.” I said calmly.

“There are reports that one of them has gone rogue in New Hampshire, I want you to follow up. Find out if there’s any truth to the rumors, and if there is, take care of it.”

“As soon as I can conceivably muster the team.” Mathias gave me a pointed look, but I didn’t break stride or falter in my speech patterns at all. “The hunt for this last one took a lot out of them. I would like to be here for whatever you have in store for the bastard. I think I’ve more than…” he cut me off, expression stern.

“You leave tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest. With no delays, am I understood?” he demanded.