Kitty in the Underworld

Chapter 7

I DISCOVERED, GRATEFULLY, that my little pocket cave sloped slightly downward, away from the door. When I finally gave in and had to relieve myself, I went to the farthest end to do it. The urine pooled there and didn’t trickle back to where I was spending my time. Small favors. My jeans around my knees, I’d contorted myself into a crouch, thinking how much simpler this would be as Wolf. If I could just Change, squat to piss, howl at a moon I couldn’t see …

After pulling my jeans and panties back up, feeling gross and wishing for home, I curled up on the ground, back toward the door, and tried to think. If she wouldn’t make a sound while I was digging nails into her arm, how could I get her to talk to me?

Just to be doing something, I started pounding on the door again. “Somebody better come let me out or talk to me or I’m gonna start singing show tunes!” I didn’t really know many show tunes, it was just the worst thing I could think of right at the moment. A sad state of affairs.

That only lasted a couple of minutes. My voice was still hoarse from the last round of shouting. Nothing had changed. Not the light, not the smells, not the sounds coming from outside. Except that my prison now smelled like an unflushed toilet. My headache was worse. I curled up on the floor and wrapped my arms around my head, because that seemed to still the pounding in my temples.

If they hadn’t taken Tom, then the cavalry was on its way. I held on to that thread, slender as it was. My captors weren’t going to kill me, they had no reason to kill me. I just had to hang on.

Somehow, I slept again.

THE TURKEY sandwich was rotting, slowly. It was still good, would still be good for a few more hours, and even then my lycanthropic immune system could handle just about any fun bacteria growing on it. Wolves were fond of carrion, after all. The ripe sandwich and old urine became part of the background odor of the place, and I tried to ignore them. I still wasn’t hungry.

But that changed when they offered me something other than an aging sandwich.

A sudden new scent of fresh blood cut through it all and fired my hindbrain, bringing me fully awake. Steaming, rich blood. I could taste it on the back of my tongue. My nerves fired with the imagined flavor. God, I wanted to hunt. Run, break out of here and make my way to open sky, track my prey, rip into it. Flesh shredding, organs bursting within my powerful jaws—

The scent of blood awoke memories, dozens of memories, dozens of hunts in which I’d feasted. Wolf lived for the hunt; it was what we were made for.

The walls of my cage seemed to grow smaller. My imagination, surely. Unless my captors had found some way to move the stone. Maybe they had. Maybe this wasn’t a mine at all, but a room, and they were closing the walls on me. Anything was possible. My captors, my enemies, my prey, if I could only find my way out of this cage, I would tear into them all, devour them. I licked my teeth and snarled. I could almost taste them.

Dizziness turned my vision soft, wavering. Might have been hunger, might have been fury.

The smell grew thicker, bloodier. Steaming, the blood rushed from a still-beating heart. I took another long, testing breath. The male wolf was there, in human form, invading the tiny territory I considered mine even if I couldn’t defend it. He had blood on his hands as well as the fur of prey—rabbit, he’d slaughtered a rabbit right outside the door. Finally, my stomach rumbled; I was starving. I gagged at the thought of pouring that blood down my throat. I needed it …

No no no, they were doing this to me on purpose, this was another manipulation. I should have eaten that sandwich, just to take the edge off, so I could think about something other than filling the hollowness in my belly.

The panel in the door slapped open. I jumped back, startled, but then lay flat and pressed myself close, to try to see out. The slight slope to the ground meant a rivulet of blood ran through the opening toward me. A thin stream of cooling blood that picked up dirt and grit as it went. It might even have contained tiny flecks of silver. It hardly mattered.

I stopped the trail of blood with my finger, let the thick stuff collect on my hand. Took a good long sniff of it—I would have smelled it, if it had been poison. But it didn’t smell like poison, it smelled so good. I licked my hand, my tongue spreading to take in every drop. The taste flared through my nerves. Even after that trickle was gone, I licked my hand again, tasting the memory of it. So sharp, perfect, intoxicating.

The man, the wolf, was still there, right outside the door, holding the slaughtered rabbit. So close, I could just take it. I resisted reaching through the opening to grab the meat from him. That would have made me far too vulnerable; it would have meant entering the territory that he controlled and leaving my own. Had to guard my own small space.

But I wanted to kill. I wanted that meat.

A wet thud slapped the stone as the dead rabbit fell outside the door. Just out of my reach. I could stretch my arm and brush the fluff of its fur but not take hold. They were teasing me. They could, because I was in the cage. Because I had no way out, and I was helpless.

No, let me out, not helpless at all, let me fight—

The bars of a cage inside my gut snapped, shattered to dust. Wolf was free now. She howls, and the piercing sound breaks from my own throat. Her claws slash at the inside of my skin.

I double over, hugging myself, groaning. No, please, not this, I can’t shift, I have to keep it together, stay in control. How can I stand up to them if I can’t keep myself together?

Finally, it’s over. I scream, and all the rage that’s been building rips out of me in a throat-splitting howl. Reflexively, I pull off my shirt and sweater, shoving my jeans off in a panicked, violent seizure. Have to get free. The howl just keeps going, a lungful’s worth that doesn’t stop until I tear out of my own body—

There is a tiny opening to her cage, and if she fights hard enough, she can break free. She snarls, spit flying. Digs her snout and paws through the opening. Almost fits her whole head through. Almost. Her body flops, back claws scrabbling against rock, trying to push herself out. A male stands outside—an enemy. She can almost see him.

Almost almost almost. She can’t do anything. The snarls turn to howls. The sound echoes against rock. The wood of the door bites into her skin, and she can smell the silver in the rock pressing toward her.

A voice from her gut speaks: Calm down. Please be calm. This isn’t helping.

She’s furious, but the other half of her being pleads. The weaker, two-legged half. This territory is strange, the situation is strange. She doesn’t know what to do, so she listens to the calming voice. Backs away from the opening, shaking out splinters caught in her fur.

She lies on the ground, looking out to the dim light. The man is there, the other werewolf. Standing, watching. If she could see his eyes she would challenge him, but she can’t. If she could leap at him, she would tear out his throat. She pants, her tongue hanging from her mouth. Blood still stains the ground.

When the man moves, taking a step back, she perks her ears. Tries to guess what will happen next.

Calm.

He kicks the dead rabbit through the hole in the door, right in front of her. She jumps back, stares. Her mind tumbles. It has to be a trick. It doesn’t smell like a trick. A soft whine, in the back of her throat. Her other half is silent.

Blood wins out over all.

She eats the carcass, kneading it with jaws and teeth. The blood and flesh sings through her. She forgets about all but the blood and flesh.

Soon it’s gone, all of it but a few scraps of fur and bone. Her awareness has collapsed to the space of her own body. She paces, yawns. Wonders where the light is, there should be light, there should be a moon.

Her mate should be here. But no, not in the cage. He’s safe, and that’s good. But she longs for him, to feel him curled beside her, breathing into the ruff of her neck. The meat feels heavy in her gut. She doesn’t want to sleep, but she doesn’t have a choice. The walls hold silver. She cringes away from them, curls up in the middle of the floor, her muscles taut. It’s all so wrong.

She dreams of running.

I’D BEEN moved. The smells I woke to were different, slightly. While I still smelled the musty damp of underground, the dust and rock of the tunnels, the air had opened up. I wasn’t breathing my own waste anymore. A glow pressed against my closed eyelids.

Starting awake, I saw a rocky room with a half a dozen small, battery-run camp lanterns resting on the floor around the edges. I squeezed my eyes shut, rubbed them, opened them again and reveled in the feeling of being able to see something, anything, clearly. This wasn’t a cave so much as a junction, a place where two tunnels came together. I was still in the mine; the pale granite walls were even, blasted out by dynamite and hammers. The lamps didn’t give much light, and the arcing ceiling was dark, the jagged surface forming weird shadows.

I wanted to believe I was dreaming. But no, I wasn’t, because I was naked, and the cold grit of the cave floor bit into my skin. I checked myself for cuts, open wounds. Nothing that I could tell. I was alive, so the silver hadn’t gotten to me yet. But I could still sense it, in the itching on my spine.

While propping myself on an elbow, I stayed low, curling up, sheltering myself as best I could. I didn’t know where my clothes were. I didn’t know where I was in relation to the cave I’d been in before. I looked around for an exit, for a hint of sunlight. Didn’t see anything. Two tunnels leading out, that was it.

Four people stood on the far side of the space, maybe twenty feet away. Two women, two men, one of whom was old, decrepit. My nose flared, taking in their scents. I sneezed. Too much to process all at once.

While I’d slept off my Wolf, they’d brought me here so they could have a look at me. No—I realized what had really happened. The rabbit, and being out of that cage, were a reward. Finally, I knew what they wanted from me. They wanted my Wolf.