Crimson (The Silver Series Book 3) (2 page)

“
It’s a dead end,” I said,
trying to keep the panic that was rising in my chest out of my
voice.

“
What?” she asked in a
detached tone.

Her numbness to the situation finally pushed
me over the top. “It’s a dead end,” I yelled. “Can’t you see that
there’s nowhere to go? You’ve led us to a dead end and they’ll find
us and perform more horrible experiments on us!”

“
A dead end?” she
echoed.

“
Look!” I shouted. I turned
her face toward the wall and the window that was too small for us
to get through even if I did manage to break the bars. She stared
blankly, her face not even registering my rough touch, and I
dropped my hands in horror. “You’re blind,” I whispered. The
sightless cast to her blue eyes was unmistakable.

She blinked and another tear slid down her
cheek. “There was an accident during one of the experiments about a
month ago,” she said quietly.

I backed away from her to the wall, my mind
reeling. “What do we do now?” I demanded more to myself than to
her.

She touched the door beside her and her
hands slid down to the doorknob. She yanked on the handle and it
gave an audible snap, then the door opened inward. I stared at her
with my mouth open.

“
What’s in there?” she
asked urgently.

I glanced inside. “An empty room.”

She slipped in and I followed. I closed the
door behind us and propped it shut with a chair. “What are you?” I
whispered, glancing around the room for an escape route.

“
A werewolf like you,” she
replied. “You did the same thing to my door, remember?” She stood
in the middle of the room with her hands slightly out, feeling to
make sure she didn't run into anything.

“
I’m not a werewolf,” I
replied distractedly. “They must have messed up your mind along
with your eyesight.”

She smiled and sniffed the air. “You’re
definitely a werewolf. I guess their experiments worked.” Sadness
swept over her face but she pushed it away. “You smell different,
though, like there’s something strange with your blood.”

“
There’s something strange
with your head,” I muttered. I walked to the window and glanced
out. The ground was two stories below, but a sloped roof the next
story down made escape possible. “We can go through here if I can
get the bars off.” I grabbed them and pulled. The first bar came
free and I tossed it to the floor.

“
Quiet!” she hissed at the
clatter. “They’ll hear you.”

“
With their werewolf
hearing?” I mumbled, ripping off another bar and setting it quietly
on the floor this time.

“
They’re not werewolves,
you idiot,” she said in an exasperated tone. “We are. Why do you
think they want us here?”

“
I haven’t figured that one
out. I’m supposed to be dead,” I replied, ripping off two more
bars. One more yank and the last one was gone. I pushed up the
window and grabbed the girl’s arm. “You first.”

She put a hand on the windowsill, then
froze.

“
What’s wrong?”

“
I can’t do it,” she said
in a tight voice. I could smell the fear radiating from
her.

“
Are you afraid of
heights?” I asked before I remembered that she couldn’t
see.

Her mouth twisted into a small smile.

“
Sorry,” I
whispered.

“
It’s alright. Will you
help me?”

I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me
and said, chagrined, “Definitely. The ground’s not far. We just
have to drop to the lower roof, crawl to the edge, and jump to the
ground.”

“
That easy, huh?” she asked
in a slightly ironic tone.

I rolled my eyes. “Just go already.”

She grabbed my hand and I hoisted her out
the window. She clung to the sill and stared back at me with
unseeing eyes. “I’m right behind you,” I reassured her.

More footsteps pounded down the hall and
someone tried the doorknob. I grabbed the window sill and lifted
myself up, then took the girl’s arms.

“
Don’t drop me!” she said,
her voice high with terror.

“
Trust me,” I replied. “I’m
going to lower you down and I won’t let go until you can land on
the roof below without getting hurt, okay?”

She grabbed my arms so tight the skin turned
white. “Alright. I’m ready.”

The door behind me rattled as someone tried
to force it open. I lowered the girl slowly from the windowsill.
When she was about four feet from the lower roof, I whispered,
“Okay, I’m letting go. Bend your knees when you land.”

She nodded and I dropped her. The door
behind me flew open and I barely had time to make sure she landed
safely before I jumped down after her. The drop to the roof should
have hurt a lot more than it did, but bullets started to pepper the
shingles around us and I didn’t have time to think about it. “Come
on!” I said. I grabbed her arm and we ran down the slope of the
lower roof. “Jump!” I shouted when we neared the edge. She jumped
with me and we hit the ground, stumbled slightly, then were up and
running for the far fence.

Dogs barked in the distance and we ran
faster than I had ever run before. We reached the fence just before
the dogs. “Step in my hands and I’ll help you over,” I said.

The girl put a hand on my shoulder and
fumbled with her foot for my hands. I lifted up, passing her up and
over the fence with ease. Branches snapped and I turned as the pack
of dogs came into view. The animals formed a circle around me,
growling and showing sharp teeth and lots of angry drool.

A shiver ran through my skin followed by a
surge of adrenaline so sharp it hurt. “What’s happening?” I shouted
at the girl before my bones bent, pulling me down on my hands and
knees and tearing my clothes.

“
You’re phasing,” she said.
Her hands linked in the fence and she shook it, trying to reach me.
“It’s instinct, to protect you!”

A yell tore from my throat as my bones
contorted, muscles shifted, and dark red fur sprouted from my arms
and legs. My teeth elongated and my ears lengthened. I tried to
control it, to fight against the phase and get over the fence, but
I was too far gone. The dogs growled and whined, uncertain of what
was happening.

I vomited on the ground when the phasing
ended, then lifted my head and looked at the dogs. I was bigger
than them, thick-chested Rottweilers, sleek Dobermans, and one
menacing brindle Mastiff with gaping black jowls. My lips lifted of
their own accord and a snarl rumbled in my throat. Fierce pleasure
rose in my chest at the power that surged through my veins. I met
eyes with the Mastiff and growled. A rush of feral instincts
clouded my thoughts until I could only focus on doing what was
necessary to survive.

“
Don’t kill them,” the girl
pleaded.

I glanced back at her. The sounds of pursuit
neared. I growled once more at the dogs, then gathered my legs
underneath me and leaped the fence.

“
Is-is that you?” the girl
asked, a tremor in her voice as she reached toward me with an
outstretched hand.

I couldn’t talk in the animal form, and
couldn’t figure out how to phase back, so I touched her hand gently
with my nose. Her fingers ran along my muzzle and over my eyes,
then down my neck to tangle in the thick fur of my dark red ruff.
Men cleared the trees behind us and the metallic sound of guns
being lowered and cocked echoed loudly in my ears. I started to run
and the girl ran beside me, her bare feet slapping the dirt in
cadence with my paws.

A command rang out and guns fired. Bullets
hit the trees around us and I dodged left, then right. Something
stung the back of my leg. I tried to ignore the fiery pain and
ducked my head, pushing us as fast the girl could keep up. We ran
through the trees, across an empty black paved road, then through a
starlit field. I took us parallel to the lab, certain they would
expect us to keep fleeing in a straight line as far as we could
go.

I found a shallow river wash and led the
girl down. We splashed up the muddy water in the hopes that the
dogs wouldn’t be able to track us through it. The water eventually
dried out and it was a scramble to get back up the side to flat
ground. We kept pushing far after my reserves of strength dwindled
and we both dragged our feet, our minds numb and fear still pushing
us further.

Shades of lighter gray touched the horizon
by the time I found a small, abandoned barn and took us inside. The
girl stumbled to a dusty pile of straw and collapsed in a heap,
tears streaking her cheeks and her eyes shut tight. I paced near
the door, wondering if the animal form would go away if I calmed
down, but worried about leaving the girl unprotected. She fell into
a troubled sleep when the sun neared its peak. I sat near the
crooked door and stared out at the multitude of grays, blacks, and
whites that made up my animal vision. My back leg ached, but I
ignored it the best that I could. I settled down gingerly and tried
to pretend I wasn't a monster.

Chapter 2

I must have fallen asleep somewhere between
evening and nightfall. When I awoke, I was in my human form again.
Fear and disgust filled me at what I had turned into. I tried to
tell myself that it wasn’t real, but the throbbing in my calf said
otherwise. I opened my eyes to find that I was naked. I felt
momentarily relieved that the girl was blind, then guilt clouded
the thought.

“
Sleep well?” the girl
asked.

I glanced at her. She sat in the doorway a
few feet from me, her face turned toward the moonlight. Her long,
dark brown hair had been freed of the rubber band and hung to her
waist in slow waves. Moonlight played off her soft skin,
accentuating a pert nose, full lips, and a graceful neck. I guessed
that she was my age, though she definitely acted older than I felt.
She turned her head and the light shone on faint tear tracks down
her cheeks although she was done crying.

“
I’m sorry about Gabe,” I
said quietly. I searched the night for comforting words, but came
up lacking so we sat in silence for several minutes.

“
What’s your name?” she
asked, her voice worn.

“
Kaynan, Kaynan Anderson.
Yours?”

“
Grace Chapman.” Her voice
softened, “It was going to be Grace Locklow.” She fell silent
again.

A stray breeze slipped into the barn,
bringing with it the scent of a lazy, winding river filled with
fish and reeds, cows grazing in the pasture next to our field, and
an animal odor that made my heart speed up despite my efforts to
ignore it. My limbs ached at the promise of a chase and I gritted
my teeth.

“
What happened to me back
there?” I asked, trying to keep the disgust out of my voice and
failing entirely.

Grace turned toward me. “You’re a werewolf
and you phased. It’s instinctive to protect yourself from danger
like dogs and armed men. You’ll learn to control it
eventually.”

“
I don’t want to control
it, I want to get rid of it,” I spat out. “I didn’t ask for
this.”

“
As I recall, you were
suppose to be dead,” she said softly.

My heart slowed and I picked at a splinter
poking up from the rough wooden floor. “That’s right.”

“
Do you want to talk about
it?”

Her voice was soft and understanding, but
talking about what should have been was the last thing I wanted to
do. I stood and looked around the empty barn. “I need clothes.”

“
Don’t worry about modesty
on my behalf,” she said with a slight hint of humor to her tone.
“I’m not looking.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s not you I’m worried
about.”

“
The cows won’t mind;
they’re naked, too,” she pointed out.

I couldn’t help the smile that came to my
face, but shook my head. “We need to get you home, and I’m not
about to go traipsing through town on full display.”

Her lips pushed together as though holding
in a smile. “Traipsing?”

“
My mom’s an English
teacher,” I replied. “We were raised with a dictionary in the
middle of the kitchen table.”

“
You’d use traipsing over
walking, jaunting, or frolicking?” she asked with a dimple showing
in one cheek.

I laughed, feeling slightly better. “Fine;
let’s go frolic to town, shall we? It’ll go well with my current
state of distress.”

“
You mean state of
undress?” she teased.

“
Just be grateful you can’t
see me,” I snapped.

“
Oh believe me, I am,” she
replied, rising to her feet.

She held out her hand and I took it. A
slight thrill went up my arm at her touch, but I attributed it to
my heavily taxed nervous system and led us out into the
moonlight.

“
You’re limping,” she said
after a few steps.

“
It’s nothing,” I lied. “I
must have twisted it when I jumped over the fence.” But in truth,
the bullet wound in my left leg had closed over. It throbbed
painfully with every step and it was all I could do to keep
walking.

“
You’ll have to be more
careful,” Grace said, her tone neutral.

I bit back an ironic smile. “Next time we’re
chased by angry dogs and armed guards and have to jump over a
fence, I’ll pay more attention to how I land. Thanks for the
advice.”

“
Anytime,” she said with a
smile that lit up her face.