Secret Worlds (514 page)

Loki’s scent led me in the opposite direction of the elevators and the surly guard, towards the stairs.

Where the hell is he going?
I wondered as I tracked him to the fire door leading into the stairwell.

I was nearly blind with panic, but still had the wherewithal to question how he’d gotten out of my room and why he would have gone to the stairwell. Driven forward by a visceral need to make sure that my best friend was safe, I hit the door at a jog, slamming my hands into the release bar and pushing it open. I stood on the landing long enough to be sure that his scent led downwards before propelling myself after him. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, drowning out the sound of my footsteps as I pounded down the concrete steps.

How did he even get in here?

Taking the steps two and three at a time I let the wolf’s strength and stamina carry me forward at a whirlwind pace. I passed a guilty looking housemaid sneaking a cigarette in the stairwell but paid her no mind, locked on to Loki’s trail that continued down to the first floor. I followed his path out of the stairwell and into the lobby where I stumbled to a halt, overcome by the sounds and fragrances from dozens of people bustling to and fro. Spinning around in a dizzying circle, I fought to find his scent, muddled by the passage of a multitude of feet crisscrossing over its path.

A passing bellhop pushing a cart laden with luggage eddied the air, circulating the scents at my feet. Catching Loki’s sunny aroma again I darted after it like a kitten after string, following it out the revolving door and onto the sidewalk. Somewhere behind me someone was calling my name, but I couldn’t stop, I had to chase the thread before I lost it again.

Biting cold wind flowed through the thin fabric of my shirt, chilling my skin and freezing my still damp hair into stiff curls. Loki’s winding path led along the front of the building and down a side alley. Halfway down the alley, amongst the dumpsters his scent finally disappeared, lost in the stink of rotten garbage and car exhaust.

“No, no, no, no,” I chanted, fisting my crispy hair as I spun in frantic circles, tears already rising in my eyes as panic and loss fought for dominance in my chest.

I HEARD THE scuff of a footfall on the wet pavement a second before I caught the scent of cigarettes and sweat, but it was already too late. Something solid and heavy struck me across the back of the head, my vision wavering as I fell down to my hands and knees, grit from the pavement grazing my palms. I struggled to get back up, fighting through the dark spots dancing across my eyes, but a sharp kick to my stomach took me down to the ground, my breath rushing out of me in a rasping wheeze. The dirty slush soaked through my jeans and shirt, freezing my skin and covering me in the stink of trash and road dirt.

“Stupid wolf bitch,” someone snarled seconds before another kick was delivered to my ribs, driving the air from my lungs to leave me gasping like a grounded fish.

My lungs burned with the need for oxygen and yet I couldn’t seem to make them work. My fingers curled in the gritty garbage juice, scrabbling at the pavement beneath me as I willed my lungs to move. A sharp kick to my shoulder worked to kick-start my breathing, a rasping breath flooding my lungs with cold air that seemed to burn all the way down to my gut.

The smell of vomit hit me a moment later, sour and acidic, and it took me a second to realize that it had come from me. I tried to get my hands under me to lever myself up, but it didn’t seem like they wanted to cooperate. I had barely managed to lift my chest off the pavement before the shiny toe of a shoe collided with the edge of my jaw. The steel grey clouds flashed by overhead as my head collided with the pavement, my skull reverberating from the impact. I felt my lip split open and blood fill my mouth, and for a moment I wondered if all of my teeth were still intact.

“Why won’t you stay down, you dumb cunt?” the man looming over me demanded, his face lost in the sparkles skipping across my vision, though the ashtray smell clinging to him was all too familiar.

Johnson. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like the fat prick
.

“Fuck you…asshole,” I sputtered, spitting blood and vomit at his shoes in defiance. I missed by a mile, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

A growl of impotent rage was all he uttered in reply, opting instead for a little nonverbal communication. By the time he was done treating my ribs like a soccer ball, my breaths were coming in short gasps that sent burning fingers of pain through my chest.

Ouch
.

Determined not to let Johnson take me down, I tried to push myself up to my hands and knees, settling instead for my knees and one elbow as I was forced to wrap one arm around ribs that I was quickly beginning to think were broken.

“Suck it…mother…fucker,” I wheezed, my head swimming with the effort of speaking.

A sharp stab of pain in my ass made me yelp. Looking up through the tangle of my hair, now matted with god knows what, I saw Johnson stuffing an empty syringe in the pocket of his coat, he’s eyes alight with satisfaction.

Oh, that can’t be good,
I thought as my mind began to grow foggy.

“Ow!” I exclaimed belatedly. “You stabbed ’ee. In the ash. Joo…tool!” I growled, or at least tried to, my lips moving sluggishly. “Wha did joo gib ’ee?” I slurred, my mouth refusing to cooperate.

“Wolfsbane. Just enough to keep the wolf at bay,” he said. “Though I wonder if I gave you too much,” he added as an afterthought, smacking my cheek hard enough to bruise.

“You’re sush a doush…” I continued to rant, my voice suddenly giving way to a piercing scream of pure agony.

Collapsing to the pavement, I curled up like a spider set to a match, the muscles in my limbs contracting painfully. It felt like my blood was boiling in my veins, setting every nerve ending and synapse on fire. I’d never experienced such searing agony before. Even the pain of Samson ripping into the soft meat of my belly paled in comparison to the agony coursing through my body now.

Through the haze of tears, I saw Johnson coming at me and tried to move away from him, but the crippling pain kept me from doing anything more than rolling onto my side. Rough hands grabbed me by the hair, turning my face towards him. A rag smelling of gasoline and oil was wedged into my mouth, cutting off my scream to leave me moaning helplessly as tears streamed down my face. The next few minutes were a jumble of flickering images as fire raced through my body, burning me up from the inside.

I couldn’t do anything except whimper and mewl like a helpless puppy as Johnson bound my wrists in front of me with a zip tie, pulling the plastic tight until it bit into my skin. He grabbed me under the arms and dragged me down the alley, the heels of my boots bouncing along the asphalt and ice. I tried to struggle, to twist in his grip or kick out, but the wolfsbane seemed to have paralyzed me. I fought to stay conscious but time was starting to come in disconnected pieces like a movie skipping frames.

A white car sat idling at the end of the alleyway, and I knew what Johnson planned to do even before he propped me against a nearby dumpster to pop open the trunk. Listing sideways, I hoped to use my momentum to escape, but before I knew it Johnson was back, his hands maneuvering me roughly, tossing me about like a sack of potatoes, as he dumped me into the trunk. The edge of a tire iron dug into my shoulder, but the drugs pulsing through my veins made me too weak to make any use of it. I cried out in a wordless plea for mercy as he reached to close the trunk.

God no, please don’t lock me in here! Please don’t!
I wailed internally, trying to express my terror around the oily rag that made me gag, but pity was not something he appeared to be acquainted with.

“Shut up, bitch. You’ll have plenty to scream about later,” he said, his beady eyes gleaming with sadistic glee.

I let out another plaintive wail but it was no use, the drugs left me paralyzed, unable to kick out at him or stop him from closing the trunk. As I watched the sliver of grey clouds shrinking, I wondered if I’d ever see daylight again.

***

Sensation slowly trickled into my awareness as I drifted back up to consciousness, struggling through the cobwebs in my mind to make sense of what was happening. My head felt as though it had been packed with cotton. There was a faint ringing in my ears that, combined with the stab of pain that shot through my skull when I tried to open my eyes, made me think I probably had a concussion. Nausea twisted in my gut, and I decided that perhaps it was best to just keep my eyes closed for a while.

What the hell is going on?

I was glad to discover that the foul smelling gag had been removed, and moved my tongue clumsily to lick my lips. My hiss of pain at the burning throb in my lower lip came out more as a wheeze. Probing the wound with the tip of my tongue, I tasted blood, knowing it should mean something but with my thoughts sluggish and muddled, I couldn’t seem to put the pieces together. My chin rested heavily on my chest, the muscles in my neck aching from the awkward position, but the effort of trying to raise my head left me dizzy and exhausted, pushing me back down into the murky waters of unconsciousness.

***

A soft scraping noise cut through the darkness, rousing me from a dreamless sleep. I couldn’t tell if I had been out for only a few minutes or a few hours, time having lost all meaning in a haze of unconsciousness. Gritting my teeth in anticipation, I dared to crack my eyes open, relieved when the wave of nausea that hit didn’t instantly knock my ass out again. I took several shallow breaths and pushed through the dizziness, having to swallow several times to keep from puking all over myself.

Yay me!

I concentrated on focusing my vision, the pounding in my head making it hard to bring my eyes into focus. I had to blink a few times before the blur of blue directly in front of me resolved into the shape of my legs, the knees of my jeans torn and covered in dirt. Trying to stretch my legs, I discovered that my ankles were bound to the chair, the position spreading my knees wide in some sick facsimile of a striptease. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I should’ve been panicking, but I was too dazed to care. An attempt to move my arms found them similarly secured to the arms of the chair with thick white zip ties.

A prepared kidnapper. Just my luck.

Looking past my knees I saw a patch of concrete floor, layered with dust and debris. Scrabbling through the detritus was the source of the noise that had woken me: a mangy, skinny rat searching for some scrap of food. If the abandoned atmosphere I was picking up on was any indication, I didn’t think he was going to have much luck.

I guess that’s why he’s skinny.

Of course, that also meant help wasn’t likely to be close at hand.

I reached down inside to where the wolf slumbered and found her disturbingly absent. There was an aching hollowness in my middle as if a piece of me had been ripped out and cast away. Panic tore through me with enough force to make my already throbbing head swim. Nausea burned in my throat while my hands trembled where they were tied to the chair. I hadn’t been so alone in my body for almost a decade, and found myself filled with terror at the thought that the wolf might be gone.

“No, no, no,” I sobbed, digging deeper into the hollow in my middle where the wolf resided.

I envisioned questing fingers scrabbling in the darkness, pawing through inky mire and filth in search of a precious diamond. The more time that passed the greater my panic became, tears blurring my vision until, nearly at the far reaches of hope, I finally felt something. It was little more a whisper, weak and muddled, but she was there. A relieved sob rose in my throat, and I swore that I’d never again wish for the wolf’s absence.

My head still felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, but, bolstered by the reassurance that she was still there, I managed to lift it enough to get a better view of my surroundings. They weren’t much more impressive than my friend, the emaciated rat. I appeared to be in the basement of someone’s house, but it didn’t look like anyone had been living there in a very long time. Water stains dappled the bare concrete walls and ceiling, the black smears on the damp surface no doubt the beginnings of mold.

Classy joint.

A long wooden workbench ran along the length of the wall on the opposite side of the room, the top covered in a haphazard pile of rusting tools and trash, all of it overlaid with a thick coating of dust and grime. I could see several items in the clutter that would have cut through the zip ties binding my hands and ankles, but I had no way of retrieving any of them. Impotent rage burned in my gut.

How dare he do this to me! What is that sick prick planning to do, anyway?

I shuddered at the thoughts that sprang to mind. It was all too easy to envision several very nasty things he might have in store for me. Desperate for something to distract me from the horrifying images dancing through my mind, I looked around the room some more, hoping to see something that might give me a clue as to where I was, or—better yet—a way out of this mess.

A small window above the workbench had a broken pane that let in gusts of cold air. Aside from the window and the stairs leading upwards, there didn’t appear to be any other ways out of the basement. Twisting in the chair, I tried to look behind me, but my attempts halted at the sound of the door opening at the top of the stairs. A weak shaft of light spilled down the wooden steps, eclipsed a second later as someone stepped into the doorway.

Johnson’s staggering steps thumped down the stairs, raining clouds of dust and rat shit. I smelled the booze wafting off him before he even reached the bottom step.

Drunk
and
crazy. Always a great combination,
I thought bitterly, a snarl already curling my lip as he lurched to a stop with a bottle of Jack in his hand, and turned to look at me.

“’Bout time you woke up,” he slurred, surveying me with bloodshot eyes. It looked like he’d been drinking for a while, and I was struck by his transformation. The professional and tightly wound FBI agent had been replaced by a slovenly, wild-eyed drunk. Either he was an excellent actor and had fooled everyone into thinking he was just a normal guy, or something had happened to make him lose his shit.