Stolen

PRISON

For hours, I fought to regain consciousness, rousing enough to know something was wrong but unable to pull myself awake, like a swimmer who sees the water's surface above but can't reach it. Each time I jetted toward awareness, the tranquilizer's undercurrent dragged me back. Once I felt the rumbling of a van. Then I heard voices. The third time all was still and silent.

On the fourth round, I managed to open my eyes and kept them open, certain if I closed them I'd be lost. For at least an hour, I lay there, winning against the urge to sleep, but without the strength to do more than stare at a beige wall. Was it beige? Or taupe? Maybe sand. Definitely latex. Eggshell latex. Scary that I knew so much about paint. Scarier still that I was lying there, paralyzed from the eyelids down and trying to figure out what shade my captors had painted my prison. My encyclopedic knowledge of paint was Jeremy's fault. He redecorated obsessively. I mean obsessively. He had his reasons, which were no one's business but his own. If wallpapering the dining room every two years quelled whatever ghosts haunted him, I bit my tongue and pasted. As for why I was thinking about paint at such a ridiculously inopportune moment, well, there wasn't much else I could think about, was there? I could fret and worry and drive myself into a panic wondering where I was and what my captors planned to do with me, but that wouldn't change anything. I couldn't lift my head. I couldn't open my mouth. I couldn't do anything but gaze at this stupid wall, and if brooding over the paint color kept my nerves calm, so be it.

Taupe. Yes, I was pretty sure it was taupe. My upper lip tingled, like dental anesthesia wearing off. I wrinkled my nose. Slight movement. A smell. Fresh paint. Wonderful. Back to the decorating again. I inhaled deeper. Only paint, the scent so strong it drowned out anything else. No, wait. Something else mingled with the paint. Something familiar. Something… Blood. Mine? I sniffed again. Not mine, which wasn't terribly reassuring. As I rolled my eyes up, I could see dark splotches under a hastily applied layer of paint. Blood-sprayed walls. Never a good sign.

I screwed up my face. All muscles functional. Great. Now if someone attacked me, I could bite him, provided he was helpful enough to put some vital body part in my mouth. The tingling moved down my neck. I looked up. White ceiling. Distant noise. Voices. No, one voice. Someone talking? I listened closer and heard the hyper-babble of a DJ. After a Guinness-breaking feat of long-windedness, he stopped. A guitar twanged from the far-off radio. County music. Damn. They'd resorted to torture already.

Hand and arm movement. Hallelujah. Digging my elbows into the bed, I propped up my torso and looked around. Four walls. Three taupe. The fourth mirrored. One-way glass. Lovely. By my feet, a bathroom. I could tell it was a bathroom and not a closet because I could see the toilet, not through the door, but through the front wall, which was clear glass. Grade-school bathroom peeping had left someone with a very disturbing fetish.

More smells. A woman. The room was permeated with her smell. The bed on which I lay had been fitted with fresh, lemon-scented sheets, but the other woman's smell had soaked through to the mattress below. A note of familiarity. Someone I knew? The woman who'd drugged me? No, someone else. Teasingly familiar… The association clicked. I recognized her scent because it bore overtones from the smell of the blood on the walls. Not a good way to make an acquaintance, and judging by the quantity of dark splotches under the paint, a face-to-face meeting wouldn't be forthcoming. Not in this life at least.

Hold on. I had hips. Well not really-my baggy-seated jeans always proved otherwise. I mean my anatomical, curve-free hips had movement and feeling. Then legs. Yes! I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and pitched forward onto the floor. Okay, the legs weren't quite back yet. Nice carpet though. Industrial-weave loom. A pleasing blend of gray and brown, great for hiding those pesky blood splatters.

After a few minutes, I was able to struggle to my feet. I looked around. Now what? Assuming these were the same people who'd captured that shaman, there should be other prisoners in adjoining cells. Maybe I could communicate with them.

"Hello?" I said. Then louder. "Hello?"

No response. Doubtless the walls were too thick for jailhouse whispering. Even the air coming through the foot-square ceiling vent smelled filtered and processed. Still, if I could hear a radio playing… I looked around for a speaker. There was an intercom by the door, but the music didn't sound tinny, so I doubted they were piping it in. As I listened, I caught the sound of someone shouting, voice raw, screaming barely intelligible curses. I gauged the distance of the noise. Very muted, probably more than fifty feet away. So it was good soundproofing, but it wasn't werewolf-proof.

As the shouter took a much-needed vocal break, I heard scratching. Rats? Mice? No, I'd smell them. Besides, my cell was nothing if not clean, as sterilized as a McDonald's kitchen on health inspection day. I rotated my head to pick up the sound. It came from the corridor. Scratch, scratch, pause, scratch, scratch, scratch, swoosh. The swoosh of paper. Someone lifting a page, shuffling it, then scratch, scratch-pen on paper. Someone writing outside my cell. I stood, turned away from the hallway, walked three steps, then whirled to face the door. The noise stopped. I bared my teeth, snarled, then inclined my open mouth closer to the mirrored wall and picked at a piece of imaginary food caught between my teeth. Frenzied scribbling ensued. Okay, now I knew what the note-taker was watching. And I didn't recall signing any consent forms.

I strode to the door and pounded on the glass. Though it didn't budge under the onslaught, my fists boomed with each strike. I didn't shout. If they couldn't hear my pounding, they certainly wouldn't hear my yelling. A long minute passed. Then the intercom above my head buzzed.

"Yes?" a woman's voice. Young. Studiously neutral.

"I want to speak to someone in charge," I said.

"I'm afraid that won't be possible," she said, pen scribbling.

I pounded harder.

"Please don't do that." Calm, approaching boredom. Pen still scratching.

I drew my fist back and slammed it into the glass. The blow shuddered through the glass and my arm. The pen stopped.

"I understand you're upset, but that won't help. Violence never solves anything."

Says who?

I turned away, as if backing down, then whammed a roundhouse kick against the side wall. One chunk of plaster flew free, revealing a strip of solid metal. I hooked my fingertips behind the metal and gave an experimental tug. No give. But I wasn't really trying. Now if I ripped away enough of this plaster, I could get my fingers behind the metal and give a real good pull…

Heavy footsteps clomped outside my cell. Ah, progress.

The intercom clicked.

"Please step away from the wall," a male voice intoned.

He sounded like one of those car alarms from the [41] '905, where if you made the ghastly error of walking within six inches of some yuppie's Beemer, a mechanical voice warned you to move away, like you might brush against it and leave fingerprints. The last time we'd encountered one of those, Clay had leaped onto the hood of the car, leaving much more than fingerprints. The car owner had been within hearing distance. You've never seen a pudgy forty-something move so fast. Then he'd seen Clay and decided the damage really wasn't so bad after all. Following Clay's example, I did not step away from the wall. I smashed my fist into the plaster between the metal brackets, leaving a nice hole into the adjoining cell.

The door flew open. A man's face flashed into the room, then withdrew. The door slammed shut. A radio squawked.

"Base one, this is alpha. Request immediate backup to cell-block one, unit eight."

"You messing with my girl?" a lazy Midwest drawl asked, voice hissing with static. Houdini. "You sound a wee mite panicked there, soldier-boy. Want me to come down and hold your hand?"

"Reese? What the hell are you doing in the-Never mind."

Click. End of static.

"Cocky bastard."

"No kidding," I said.

Silence. Then "Shit," and a snap as the intercom died.

"Get me someone in charge," I said. "Now."

A muttered exchange, indecipherable through the glass. Then boots stalking away. I decided not to worry the hole in the wall further. Not yet at least. Instead I hunkered down and peered through it. I might have been gazing into a mirror, a reverse image of my own cell. Only this one was empty. Or so it appeared. I thought of calling through the opening, but hadn't heard the note-taker leave, and there was no sense talking to a potential cell-mate while I had an audience. So I waited.

Twenty minutes passed. Then the intercom clicked on.

"My name is Doctor Lawrence Matasumi," a man said in perfectly unaccented American, the region-free tones usually heard only from national news show anchors. "I would like to speak to you now, Ms. Michaels." As if it was his idea. "Please step into the bathroom, lower the seat, straddle the toilet facing the tank, place your hands outstretched behind you, and do not turn your head until instructed."

Somehow he made such ludicrous instructions sound perfectly rational. I thought of a comeback, but squelched it. This didn't sound like a man who'd appreciate bathroom humor.

While I was sitting on the John, the exterior door whooshed open, like breaking a vacuum seal. Footsteps entered. One set of loafers, one set of low heels, and two-no, three-pairs of boots.

"Please do not turn your head," Matasumi said, though I hadn't moved. "Keep your hands outstretched. A guard will enter the bathroom and secure your hands behind your back. Please do not resist."

He was so polite about it, how could I disobey? Especially considering the twin snaps of gun safety catches that accompanied his instructions. Someone walked into the bathroom and grasped my hands, his touch firm and impersonal-just business, ma'am. He pulled my arms together and clapped cold metal bands around my wrists.

"The guard will now lead you into the main room. You may take a seat on the chair provided. When you are seated comfortably, the guard will secure your feet."

Okay, this was getting tedious.

"You sure you don't want him to secure my feet first?" I asked. "Throw me over his shoulder and carry me to the chair?"

"Please rise from the toilet and proceed into the main room."

"Can I look now?" I asked. "Maybe you should blindfold me."

"Please proceed to the main room."

Geez, this guy was scary. As I walked from the bathroom, I saw the man from Paige's picture, short, round-faced, doe-like eyes watching me impassively. To his left was a young woman with spiked burgundy hair and a snub nose adorned with a diamond chip stud. She kept her gaze on my chin as if not wanting to look higher. Both were seated in chairs that hadn't been in the room five minutes ago. Flanking them stood two guards, more military types. Like the guy accompanying me, they wore fatigues, had buzz cuts, carried guns, and looked buff enough to give WWF champs a good whupping. They stared at me with expressions so blank you'd think they were guarding the chairs instead of live people. I caught one's eye and gave a shy half-smile. He didn't even blink. So much for seducing the guards. Damn. And they looked so cute… in a GI Joe, molded-plastic, automaton kind of way.

Once I was seated, my escort secured me to the chair with arm restraints and leg irons.

Matasumi studied me for at least three full minutes, then said, "Please do not use this opportunity to attempt escape."

"Really?" I looked at the metal bands strapping my wrists and ankles to the chair, then at the trio of armed guards behind me. "There goes that plan."

"Good. Now, Ms. Michaels, we will skip the denial phase and begin our discussion based on the premise that you are a werewolf."

"And if I refuse that premise?" I asked.

Matasumi opened a teak box filled with bottles and syringes and tools, the uses of which I preferred not to ponder.

"You got me," I said. "I'm a werewolf."

Matasumi hesitated. The young woman lifted her pen from the pad, glancing at me for the first time. Maybe they'd expected me to resist. Or maybe they were just hoping for a chance to use their toys. Matasumi ran through some baseline lie-detection questions, the sort of things anyone who'd done the most basic research would know: my name, age, place of birth, current occupation. I wasn't dumb enough to lie. Save that for the big stuff.

"Let me begin by telling you that we already have a werewolf in custody. Your answers will be compared against information he has already provided. So I would suggest you tell the truth."

Damn. Well, that changed things, didn't it? So much for wholesale prevarication. On the other hand, it was possible that Matasumi was lying about having a mutt. Even if he did, I could pepper my lies with enough truth to keep them guessing which of us wasn't being completely honest.

"How many werewolves are in this… Pack?" Matasumi asked.

I shrugged. "It depends. It's not static or anything. They come and go. It's not a close-knit group. Kind of arbitrary, actually, who the Alpha lets in and kicks out, depending on his mood. He's a very temperamental guy."

"Alpha," his assistant interjected. "Like the Alpha in a wolf pack. You use the same terminology."

"I guess so."

"Interesting," Matasumi said, nodding like an anthropologist who's just discovered a long-lost tribe. "My knowledge of zoology isn't what it should be."

Behind me, the door clicked and air whooshed out. I turned to see the woman who'd lured me into the car.

"Tucker told me you'd started early," she said. She turned a pleasant smile on me, as if we were new acquaintances meeting for cocktails. "I'm glad to see you're up and about so quickly. No lasting effects from the tranquilizers, I hope."

"Feeling peachy," I said, trying hard to smile without baring my teeth.

She turned back to Matasumi. "I'd like Doctor Carmichael to check her out."

Matasumi nodded. "Tess, please call Doctor Carmichael from the hall phone. Tell her to bring her equipment down for a checkup at seven o'clock. That should give us sufficient time with the subject."

"The subject?" the older woman laughed and glanced at me. "Please excuse us. Our terminology isn't the most civil, I'm afraid. I'm Sondra Bauer."

"So pleased to meet you," I said.

Bauer laughed again. "I'm sure you are. Hold on, Tess," she said as the assistant headed for the door. "No need to buzz Doctor Carmichael. [42] She'd expecting us in the infirmary."

"Infirmary?" Matasumi frowned. "I don't believe this subject-"

"Her name is Elena," Bauer said.

"I prefer Ms. Michaels," I said.

"I'd like Elena checked by Doctor Carmichael immediately," Bauer continued. "I'm sure she'd appreciate the chance to stretch her legs and have a look around. We can continue our discussion with her in the upstairs room. She'll get tired of these four walls soon enough."

"May I speak to you privately?" Matasumi asked.

"Yes, yes. You're concerned about security. I can see that," she said, lips twitching as she looked from my restraints to the guards. She slanted an eye-roll at me, as if sharing a joke. "Don't worry, Lawrence. We'll make sure Elena is properly restrained, but I don't see the need for excess. Handcuffs and armed guards should be quite sufficient."

"I'm not sure-"

"I am."

Bauer headed for the door. My picture of the power structure here was developing fast. Research assistant, guards, half-demon, all roughly equal-the hired help. Scientist above them, mystery woman above scientist. And Ty Winsloe? Where did he fit in? Was he even involved?

My guard unstrapped me from the chair and removed the restraints from my arms and legs, then herded me into the corridor. My cell was the last one on the end, across from a recessed metal door with two red lights above it. At the other end was a matching door with matching red lights. Twin rows of one-way glass flanked the hall. I counted doorknobs. Three more on my side, four opposite.

"This way Elena," Bauer said, walking right.

Matasumi gestured to the closer door. "This route would be quicker."

"I know." Bauer gestured me forward, smiling encouragingly like I was a toddler taking her first steps. "This way please, Elena. I'd like to show you around."

Really? A guided tour of my prison? Well, I couldn't argue with that, could I? I followed Bauer.