Azure (The Silver Series Book 5) (14 page)

“
What should we do with the
body?” Jeff didn't bother to hide his disgust.

“
Throw him in his cage. If
he survives, we'll start over next time,” came Rob's gruff
response. A door slammed and his footsteps faded away.

I was dragged from the room by the handcuffs
and vaguely aware of the cold tile floor of the werewolf room, a
dim difference to the cold, porous cement in Rob’s torture center.
The guards grumbled about getting blood on themselves before they
bent and chucked me heavily into the cage. The burn of the
silver-coated bars under my skin felt like a lover's caress
compared to the red, fiery pain of my back. I listened
partially-conscious as the guards' footsteps left the room,
returning it to the silence that had met our entrance.

“
He didn't phase,” Jake
said from across the room. His statement carried such amazement and
disbelief that if I could have found the strength to speak, I would
have told him there was a point where phasing was the only thing
Rob couldn't take from me. Through the pain, I would have told him
the location of Two, of my parents, even of the dead Hunters'
bodies, but the agony was so intense I couldn't even remember where
they were. That I would have betrayed everyone burned in my heart
with fierce shame.

“
He must be an Alpha,” Gem
said quietly next to me. “Only an Alpha could have resisted, and
even then, I've never seen it happen.”

“
They kill Alphas as soon
as they find out that's what they are,” the werewolf on my other
side pointed out.

“
Then maybe we're lucky he
was strong enough not to phase,” Gem concluded softly.

A hand touched my side, pulling down the
blanket they had thrown over my back and shoulders to keep me from
bleeding down the hallway as they dragged me.

“
Oh my goodness,” she said
with a gasp.

“
He'll bleed to death if
those wounds don't heal,” the woman further down
replied.

“
What do I do?” Gem asked
with a tremor in her voice.

“
Let me die,” I forced
out.

Her hand paused on my shoulder, then her
voice strengthened and her touch was sure. “You're not dying if I
can help it. You didn't give up in there, so you sure better not
give up out here. I'm too young to watch my friends die.”

“
You know the wolves that
never come back are dead, right?” Jake asked in a tone meant to be
humorous.

“
I've never watched them
die,” Gem shouted with a surge of anger that cut through the fog of
my pain. “And I'm not about to,” she concluded sharply with such
agony in her voice that I was taken back to when I sat next to Nora
in the shower, consoling her at the loss of her friends that I had
helped kill.

They were both too young to see what they
had seen. I would do whatever I could to lessen that. The irony
that I wasn’t much older than either of them sent a surge of
determination through my body.

“
It burns,” I said softly
through teeth clenched with the remaining strength I
had.

“
It's the silver,” the
woman down the row replied. “Gem, you've got to wash it out the
best you can or his wounds will fester and never heal.”

The sound of metal touching metal followed,
then cold water was poured on my back. More water followed as
werewolves passed their water rations through the bars to Gem's
cage. The cold water eased the pain and the burning agony gave way
to the relief of unconsciousness.

“
Hang in there,” Gem said
before the black void took over.

Chapter 12

I awoke slowly. Someone clanged on metal
bars a few cages down, bringing back the harsh truth that what I
had thought haunted me as a nightmare had been reality. I took a
testing breath of heavy air tainted with blood, old sweat, and the
scent of unwashed bodies and fear. The lash marks across my back
throbbed, but with a healing ache. A knot formed in my stomach. I
opened my eyes.

Gem smiled down at me from a few feet away.
The bars between us didn't mar her cheerful countenance. “Hey
there,” she said, her blue eyes twinkling.

“
Hey,” I managed to get
out. I pushed myself up slowly and noticed the brush of cloth
against the wounds on my back. I glanced over my shoulder and saw
that someone had torn a blanket into strips and used them to bind
the lashes.

My heart slowed at the implication and I
looked at Gem. She sat on the bars without anything to protect her
from the harsh bite of the coated silver. I rose quickly to give
her the blanket I had slept on. “You shouldn't have done that,” I
said before my knees weakened at the sudden movement and I had to
catch myself against the bars.

Gem rose to help steady me, but wouldn't
accept my blanket. “You needed it. It's alright.”

I shook my head. “You didn't need to do
that. It would have healed.”

She gave a small shrug. “Maybe,” she replied
noncommittally. “You were bleeding pretty bad after all the silver
washed out.”

“
But still.” I couldn't
fathom why she would do such a thing. I didn't know how long I had
been out, but for every second of it some part of her had been
touching the silver bars. The bottoms of my feet that contacted my
own cage burned and I knew she hadn't spent the whole night on her
feet. “Take it,” I demanded.

She lifted an eyebrow at my tone and stepped
back. She crossed her arms on her chest and tipped her head to one
side tauntingly. “You gonna make me?”

I let out a frustrated breath. “If I have
to, yes.” I threw the blanket into her cell, then took one of the
cloths from my back, tore it into two, and bound my feet so that
they didn't have to touch the bars.

Gem watched me for a minute and I could tell
she wanted to argue, but I stared her down until her werewolf
instincts wouldn't let her argue. “Fine,” she muttered. She turned
to pick it up and my stomach dropped at the angry red burns that
ran in lines across her legs where her pants were too short to
cover them.

“
You shouldn't have done
that,” I whispered again, sick at the thought that she had suffered
for me.

She spread the blanket on the floor of her
cell as if she hadn't heard me, then sat in the middle facing me
like a girl in a field of flowers. “Happy?” she asked.

I rubbed my eyes and crouched to slow the
dizziness that swam through my head. I reached out to steady myself
against the bars, and remembered where I was at the last minute. I
took another of the cloths from my back, tore it into two, then
wrapped it around my hands. “I'm not happy that you got hurt
helping me,” I said.

She shrugged and I saw burn marks on her
arms where she had touched the bars when she tended my wounds. She
noticed me looking and folded her arms again. “I was in better
shape to take it than you were,” she said with a slight touch of
defiance. Then she gave another cheerful smile. “And you're better
now, so it was all worth it.”

I wasn't so sure, but I didn't want to make
her sacrifice seem less. I used the rest of the strips of cloth to
wrap a few bars in a corner so I could sit down. I eased to a
sitting position and glanced around. Jake met my eyes from across
the aisle, then dropped his gaze.

“
You're an Alpha, aren't
you?” he asked sullenly.

“
Does it matter?” I
questioned, curious.

His eyebrows rose and he looked just to the
right of my face. “You're kidding, right? Rob and the other
extremist Hunters thrive on finding and destroying Alphas.
Apparently it's their life goal.”

The term caught my attention. “Extremist
Hunters? I thought all Hunters killed werewolves.”

The werewolf on my right side rose to his
knees. “Thanks to Jaze, most Hunters work with werewolves now
instead of hunting us. He created peace between the races and saved
numerous lives, included my family.” He gave me a look of
disbelief. “You haven’t heard of him?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been a bit distant
from werewolf news,” I said, unwilling to divulge more than that.
“Tell me about him.”

The others listened in with the attention of
pained souls looking for any distraction. The werewolf thought for
a minute, then let out a breath. “He has a team of Alphas and grays
that works better than any pack I’ve ever seen. They’re like
S.W.A.T., but for werewolves. They save troubled werewolves from
situations like fighting rings, hostile neighbors, and territory
problems. They’ve helped relocate thousands of families after
Jaze’s uncle tried to wipe out all of the Alphas.”

“
His uncle?” I asked to be
sure. I wondered if it was the same werewolf who made my parents
keep me in hiding at Two. So many Alphas were killed, the purity of
Alpha blood barely survived.

The werewolf nodded. “His uncle killed
Jaze’s father and nearly succeeded in taking him down as well.
We’re lucky he was smarter as well as stronger.”

“
I’ve always wanted to meet
him,” the older werewolf near the door said. Her voice shook
slightly. “He rescued two of my boys from a fighting ring and
brought them back to me.”

“
A guardian of werewolves,”
I said with a touch of humor. The thought made me smile with the
absurdity of it.

The werewolf who first spoke glared at me.
“Yes, a guardian of werewolves,” he said in a growl that begged me
to smile again.

I held up a hand, lacking the strength to
defend myself against his rage at the moment. “Alright, I’m sorry.
So what’s keeping Jaze from finding this place?”

“
He’ll find it,” Gem said
with stark certainty. I glanced at her and she grinned. “If anyone
can find Lobotraz, he can.”

“
Since your parents aren’t
having any success,” a werewolf a few cages down
muttered.

I changed to the subject to distract her.
“Lobotraz. Who came up with that stupid name?”

She laughed, the sound bright amid the grays
that filled the room. “Rob, I guess. He likes the way it rolls
dramatically off his tongue.”

I chuckled, then held my side. “Tell me
about the extremists and why they’re still around if Jaze united
the Hunters and werewolves.”

“
Not all Hunters were eager
to resolve concerns, as you can imagine,” the werewolf next to me
answered. “But the extremists are worse than the Hunters ever were.
They're cruel as well as vigilant. I've never seen anything like
it.”

“
Tell me about it,” another
werewolf said from further down. “They burned my house with my
family in it while they made me watch. Luckily I made an escape
passage they didn't know about or my children would be dead. They
got away.” He sighed. “At least I think they did.”

The door at the end of the room opened and
two women dressed in tattered blue clothes came in. The first
carried bowls and the other ladled foul-smelling food into each one
before shoving it under the small gap at the bottom of the cell
door. The werewolves closest to the door ate their food hastily,
but the further down they went, the slower the werewolves ate. At
my questioning look, Gem gave a sad smile.

“
Beating day comes once a
week. Those closest to the door are first. If they don't eat
quickly, their food is taken away when they're beaten.” The
resigned note in her voice warred with the forced cheerful smile on
her face. I know I didn't imagine the glint of fear in her eyes at
the coming beating.

“
This can't go on forever.
Someone's going to find us,” I said with a surety.

Jake let out a growl. “Don't fill her head
full of hope. Look where that's gotten all of us. Forever is a long
time when you're subjected to the whims of people like Rob and his
men. They've given a new meaning to cruel and unusual
punishment.”

“
Punishment for being a
werewolf.” The werewolf next to me let out a deep, humorless laugh.
“We aren't the first race hated for what we were born being, and we
won't be the last.”

“
That doesn't make it
right, Rex,” Gem replied calmly as though they had argued the issue
many times.

The women slid a bowl under my door and my
stomach turned at the scent that wafted from it.

“
Pretend it's beef broth
with bread crumbs,” Gem whispered. She hunched over her soup with
her eyes closed.

“
What is it really?” I
asked.

“
Probably whatever scraps
he finds from the slaughterhouse down the road. They get pretty
inventive with the ingredients,” Rex replied. He grabbed his bowl
when it cleared the door and slurped down the contents without
pause. He threw the bowl down and looked like he was going to throw
it all back up, but he took several breaths, then gave me a
triumphant look. “That's how it's done.”

“
Lovely,” I muttered under
my breath. I took a few quick swallows of the foul-smelling stuff,
then my stomach brought it back up and I retched in the
corner.

Several werewolves protested, but Gem gave
me a sympathetic smile. “Don't worry. The hungrier you get, the
better it tastes.” She sipped hers delicately as though it truly
was beef broth.

My stomach growled, but I couldn't bring
myself to even look at the soupy mixture again, let alone drink it.
I sighed and lifted it towards Gem. “Want it?” She hesitated, but I
could see the hunger in her eyes. “I'm not going to finish it, and
you might as well eat it now before it turns into an even more
delectable delicacy.”

I passed it through the bars and she took
the bowl with both hands. She studied me for a second, then downed
the soupy mixture quickly. She used a finger to clean the remaining
glop from the edges and threw me a grateful smile. “I don't
remember the last time I was full.”