Souljacker (8 page)

My scream peters out with the fade of the
pain and I sag against the table. My entire body’s trembling,
tremors that race up and down my arms. I tilt my head, blearily
looking at Lylan, whose jaw is set.

“You like that?”

Is he fucking kidding me? I’m so weak, I
can’t even manage to sit up. I just lay there, panting. I shake my
head slowly and a dull throb starts at the back of my head.

“I’ve injected you with a Shockchip. Lucky
for you, you’re testing the prototype. The queen will be pleased.”
He flashes a grim smile and holds out little metal device with a
thumb pad. “Any of your brothers can use it. They’ll each be issued
one. They’ll be under order, starting now, that if they see you
with that girl again, well… I think you can figure out what happens
when I place my thumb here.”

I shudder in response.

He frowns and shakes his head. “Sorry, pup.
It’s for your own good. Turn the lights off when you leave.” Then
he pockets my own personal bane and strides out the door, which
slams shut behind him. I press my eyes shut against the glare of
lights and focus on breathing.

I’m screwed. So. Totally. Screwed.

Cue panic, roiling up my throat like
bile.

Breathe in. Breathe out. I force them
through, shoving myself to a sitting position. My arms feel wiggly,
but that’s because I just had who-knows-how-many volts shoved
through me, full blast.

Lucy… I can still see her secret smile, still
taste the salt of her tears. Why is she so afraid of hurting me?
What could a human possibly do?

But this isn’t the end. Far from it. They can
only zap me if they catch me. I’ll just have to get smarter.
Faster. My fingers curl around the edges of the table and I shove
myself off, landing on my feet. My knees threaten to buckle, but I
get stronger with each step I take.

I don’t bother to turn the light off. What
are they going to do? Electrocute me?

I shift, and with the power of my change
comes renewed strength, my fears turning into fury that fuel me. I
run until I can’t run anymore, but I don’t go back into the
city.

***

I’m roused from sleep with an insistent
beeping in my skull, enough to drive a man insane. I stretch,
rubbing my face roughly with both hands to try and wake up before I
realize my Pack is trying to communicate with me. I focus on
opening the link.

“Yeah?” My voice is clogged with sleep.

“Seriously?” Raziel’s voice is sharp. “I’ve
been tryin’ to get your attention for the past freakin’ forty-five
minutes, Io. Damn, boy.” Raz is one of the younger cyberhounds, one
of the pups I was raised with in the Nursery. We’ve been sort of
friends all our lives, but he’s much more serious than me about
Pack duty, so he’s climbed up the ladder. I’m still low-man on the
totem pole.

“Sorry. Long night.” I stretch the kinks from
my back and shoulders, rolling out from under the tree I’d crashed
beneath as a hound. I lazily get to my feet and shake my head. My
hair flops into my eyes. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve actually got a mission.” He’s excited
now and I can almost feel him bouncing from foot to foot. “Lylan
wants the entire Pack to follow up on this, so we’re totally in.
He’s waitin’ at the railway tracks. Says to come ready to kick some
ass. So move! Bet I can get there faster than you.”

“Bet you’re right.” I laugh and there’s a
click as he ends the transmission. I shift, shimmering into my
hound form, and get a drink from the river that winds through the
forest. I splash through the water, the cold soaking into my
fur.

Man, I’ve come a long way. I doubt I’m even
in Lylan’s territory anymore. I stretch and pick up a lope, the GPS
in my head leading me back to the abandoned rail station, where the
majority of the large Rogan City Pack is gathered, little blue dots
on a map.

Raziel and Sariel greet me with slight tail
wags. I drop my head as Lylan stares at me, reminding me of the
chip embedded deep inside my neck. Warning me to tread lightly
while he’s still angry. I drop back and watch in silence as he
changes and addresses the Pack with his human voice, bold and
strong, just like always. His hands are clasped behind his back as
he paces back and forth.

“Our queen wants us to investigate another
power surge in East Loren. She gave the warning that the creature
we’re after might be dangerous. We need to be alert and ready. If
we find the creature, we’re to detain it and bring it back to our
queen, unharmed. Understood?”

The Pack breaks into a chorus of howls and
yips. I stay silent—I’ve only ever heard tales of hunts like these
from the older hounds. Raziel and I are just now past our
initiation. I glance over to Raz to find he’s grinning like a
maniac. He’s been waiting all of his life for this moment. But I
feel a coil of nerves.

Lylan grins, the flicker of his hound form
taking over. He throws his head back with a yowl and takes off
thundering across the gravel, headed east. Excitement bubbles
through the Pack, zinging off their pelts as they race after him,
bumping shoulders and nipping at each other. I pull up the rear at
a quick trot, dread welling in my stomach. I just have a bad gut
feeling about all of this and my gut is typically right.

We slide through the forest, the only sounds
being our footfalls and pants as we careen down the hill and
through a field. The grasses tickle the backs of my legs and I want
to stop and roll for a minute, to ease the painful fist around my
heart. Normally, Lylan’s so wrapped up in duty that he wouldn’t
notice if one of his lesser hounds was MIA, but I have the feeling
that with the circumstances, he’d kick my ass just for the fun of
it.

Sariel swings around, bumping against my
flank. I growl at him, but it peters out in a moment. His too-blue
eye is knowing. He sympathizes with me, about the Shockchip, about
Lucy. I drop my head and turn away from him.

I can’t think about her right now, but it’s
so hard not to. She really is a virus, burned deep inside of me. I
hear her laugh, low and sultry, without even thinking about it. I
pin my ears and push harder.

The Pack moves in unison, our legs pumping,
tongues lolling out of our mouths as we run. Loren is a massive
city of steel and magic, but we move right through it. The people
of Loren look nervous, as if we’re reapers coming to end their
lives, big black hounds with gleaming metal parts.

I hear a woman give a small whimper, cradling
her toddler close to her. The toddler looks at me—straight into my
soul, an angel sent from heaven—and I wish I could stop and
reassure her that everything is fine.

But it’s not fine. I don’t even know what
fine is anymore.

Lylan stops, his body rigid. I ease to the
edge of the Pack, taking in our surroundings: Brick buildings with
graffiti tags scrawled across their faces, bullet-hole windows and
doors boarded up. A homeless man with ebony skin is leaning against
a building, watching us with a look of wonder on his face as his
cigar burns slowly into the clouds.

But what catches my eye is the girl. She
stands in the street, young and bony. Her knees and elbows seem
especially pointy, and so does her expression. She’s wearing a
monster’s snarl, lips peeled away from flat human teeth, her eyes
so winter pale that I don’t see a pupil in their depths. Her hair
is tangled around her face in brown snarls.

The transmission beeps in my head and I hear
Lylan’s voice, low and ready. “This is it. This is the creature our
queen wants.”

What? My stomach sinks. That little girl? She
can’t be more than thirteen. What about her parents? How can she
possibly be dangerous? I glance to Sariel, but his expression is
unreadable. Raziel’s hackles are raised and he’s quivering, as is
most of the Pack.

Lylan steps forwards with a low growl and the
girl shrieks. Her scream is louder than anything I’ve ever heard,
piercing my ears with a sharp whistle. I buckle, trying to cover my
ears with my paws as the sonic sound drills into my brain, leaving
an echo.

A glance shows the rest of the Pack is
rolling in agony, but Lylan’s pushing through it. He lunges at her,
fangs exposed. She raises a hand and as if by magic, Lylan is torn
off his paws and thrown across the street. He slides, skidding on
pavement, and doesn’t move.

I feel a trickle in my ear. Blood? I can’t
hear anything now; her mouth is open in a silent howl and static
hisses in my head, painful. Raziel lurches forwards, her wrist
snagged in his mouth. He spins her, then jerks as if the girl has a
mental hold of his scruff. His leg snaps, bone punching out through
skin and he’s rolling on the ground.

I back away, ears flat, shaking my head. This
isn’t good. Is she even human? Is that even possible? I think to
Lucy, afraid of hurting me. Is Lucy a mutant? Is that what this
girl is? Some sort of freak mutation?

Three more hounds circle her, snapping.
Blood’s drawn, speckling the ground, but if it’s hers or theirs, I
can’t tell. One of the hounds, Gabriel, is writhing on the ground
in a pool of blood, his eye filled with agony as he twists and
contorts.

The girl flings a hound over my head and I
barely duck to avoid it. Then our eyes are locked. Hers are so
pale, so cold…so afraid. She’s fighting out of fear, not fury. I
drop my head, taking a step back. No way in hell I’m fighting her,
even if that marks me a traitor. Cyberhounds are dropping like
flies on a summer day. I’m not about to be one of them. I shift and
back away just as something whizzes past my head.

The girl throws her head back, a dart
sticking out of her neck. She twists, her legs buckling as she goes
down. Lylan steps forwards, human now, a tranq gun in one hand. I
still can’t hear anything, but he doesn’t even look at me as he
passes. The Pack members still on their paws creep forwards. I
glance around, half-expecting the girl to have backup.

The girl is slumped against the ground, face
down, her hair spilling around her in waves. Lylan hauls her up and
throws her over his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here before she
wakes up,” he says through transmission. One by one, the hounds
follow him out of the warzone, limping along.

Gabriel is motionless, blood a steady flow
from a tear in his abdomen. I bend down and feel for a pulse, but
he’s gone. The homeless man is slumped against the brick wall,
blood trailing from his ears. What the hell
was
she?

Raziel lies panting, the bone still sticking
jagged out of his skin, slicked with crimson. I bend down next to
him, my ears still throbbing, but sound is now trickling through
“You okay?”

He moans and tries to get to his feet. He
staggers, screams, and falls again. I cup his head in my hands.
“Can you change? Raziel, look at me.” His eye darkens and presses
shut. It takes him a moment, but a lean boy of seventeen lies on
the bloody pavement where the hound was a moment before. I hoist
him up into my arms and he whimpers, clutching at his arm.

“It’s okay. We’ll get you fixed up, Raz. It’s
okay.”

I take off on foot after Lylan and the
Pack.

My gut was right. This was a disaster, and
all for what? So we could bag a little mutant girl with a
supersonic scream? But she flung the hounds through the air with
just her mind. Maybe she is dangerous, but still…

Somehow, I can’t help feeling like we’re the
bad guys.

Chapter 10:

Lucy

English class can’t get here fast enough.

I’m exhausted from everything: My failure of
a date, my mental anguish over never being able to touch the guy I
have a crush on, the fact that Iofiel isn’t human. Yeah, I still
can’t wrap my head around that one. Up until now, I’d thought that
cyberhounds were just Faerie creations. Not a freaking human who
can turn into a beast. I wrap my arms around myself, the scene from
Saturday night playing through my head, a tape set on repeat. I
haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

I rub at the violet rings beneath my eyes,
staring at myself in the mirror. I tame my hair back into a loose
ponytail and add another layer of black eyeliner, as if that will
hide the exhaustion from prying eyes. I look like a raccoon. And my
back still hurts from my tussle with the cyberhound.

My body buzzes with Need, tugging at me, a
pleading child. I just need to snag a little bit off Jale, enough
to get myself through the day. Not enough to hurt him.

I shove through the doors, eager to get this
over with as I plop down in my seat. The class bustles around me,
chairs scraping on tile as everyone settles in for the lesson. I
watch the door from my peripherals. Jale’s seat remains empty.

Mr. W. clears his throat and begins his
lecture. My heart twists, hope dropping out as the hour rolls past.
Jale’s not coming. My Need screams at me and I bury my hands in my
hair, tugging at the roots until the pain overrides the energy
gripping me. No. Not good.

“Miss Swift?” My head jerks up at my name and
I zero in on Mr. W. What? I must stare at him blankly because a
couple of people chuckle, not even bothering to cover their
laughter with coughs or something. “Do you have the answer, or were
you zoning?”

I feel heat creep up my neck. “Um…” I have no
idea what he’s even teaching today.

He shakes his head and returns to the front
of the class. He calls on a girl with her hand raised and she
smugly answers his question. I still have no idea what he’s
teaching. I just know that there’s no way I can make it through the
day without a little soul.

The bell rings and everyone gathers to the
cafeteria for lunch. My stomach lurches, but not because I’m
hungry. The girls in front of me are yapping away about who is
showing more skin today and I can’t help but brush up against her,
just the barest touch of fingertips to her arm, pretending to trip.
I feel the Need rip through me, dragging her soul into my body. I
only get a taste before she jerks away and glowers at me with
smoldering eyes. “Freak.”