Milo was making notes with one finger directed at the pen that wrote on its own.
Tayron was back to a thoughtful phase, scratching his beard as he picked over the workbench, his back to the room.
Jason lay on the soaked floor, on his chest, with all four limbs splayed like a cartoon animal that fell flat on the ice. His chin bumped the floor, head raised enough to breathe through his open mouth with his muzzle downturned. His eyes were shut. Blood trickled constantly from his nose and mouth and ears, seeping into his fur. His beautiful raven coat was cut, shaved, or burnt away in many places, matted with fresh blood in others.
The blood was everywhere. It covered the collar and chain trailing from his neck. A chain not fixed to anything since Tayron enjoyed sitting and watching his reactions while he staggered around the room, talking excitedly to Milo and pointing out interesting details like a certain manner of limping. Thus, the floor all the way around the drafting table was smeared with blood. There was blood along the wall, blood staining the table legs, blood on Tayron’s greatcoat—though he kept cleaning his hands with vinegar—blood on many tools on the table, and blood all over my own hands and sling and clothing where I’d tried to catch him and hold on.
It was like a slaughterhouse. With one living being slaughtered over and over.
“No!” I screamed as Tayron turned back to us with an old pair of hedge clippers.
Milo rubbed his eyes and turned to me. “If I have to tell you one more time to be quiet it will mean you’re due for ‘another’ injection,” he snarled. “A double dose this time.”
I dropped my voice, gasping. “Please, Tayron.” Offering my hand as if to give him something, getting him to glance my way. “Please, he won’t be any help to you like this. Give him a chance. They can’t keep changing. Only a few times in a row. Please—”
Tayron glanced at Milo.
Milo vaguely waved a hand at me and did bother with about a sentence worth of French.
After a minute of discussing their combined notes, Tayron went on about his work.
He stepped over Jason’s back to straddle him, the greatcoat brushing his fur as he bent forward to study the backs of Jason’s black ears.
Jason never moved, hardly seeming conscious, while I kept talking, praying, begging, but very quietly. Milo started another cigarette.
Tayron ran his finger and thumb all around the ears, commenting to Milo as he did, who kept his pointing finger on the fountain pen to write it down. Then Tayron took several measurements with a pocket measuring stick, put that away, and leveled the hedge clippers in both hands.
Jason hardly flinched when Tayron chopped off the top of his ear, the black and red tip tumbling to the black and red floor like a beetle. I screamed, however, and Milo leapt to his feet with an exasperated bang on the table. He whipped around to the medical tray by the door.
Jason hadn’t fought back about the wires or knives or burning. He’d stood how Tayron had told him to, changed into his fur or skin when ordered, and only occasionally cowered or screamed in response to all Tayron did to him. The only time he’d lashed out was early on. After his second change into fur, Tayron had shaved off his whiskers on one side with a razor, the other side with magic, to see if they would grow back more or less on his next change. At the start of this procedure, Jason had lost his cool by going for Tayron’s face with gaping jaws. Another inch and he might have taken out the mage’s eye, done some terrible damage, certainly delayed the experiments.
Tayron had been too quick. He responded with a magic blast in Jason’s face as he leapt back, saving himself by centimeters with the dual motions as Jason was thrown into the wall just as I had been from Milo.
Tayron had raged and stormed for minutes after. He didn’t have to speak English. He shouted Milo to action, grabbed an axe, and winged it on its side across the tabletop to Milo. “Cut off her hand!”
There could be no doubt of the words. Tayron loomed over Jason in his fur on the ground, viciously demonstrating with hand gestures, chopping off his own wrist and pointing to me.
Milo had stepped over to me with the axe.
Jason had fallen on his back. He groveled and rolled, tucked his tail between his legs, licked Tayron’s boots, licked his hands, cringed at his feet and rolled over again, he whimpered and nudged the mage’s hands like an old dog seeking petting.
Until Tayron was laughing, ruffling his fur, patting him while Jason fawned on him.
With a grin, he’d waved Milo back to his seat.
“Yes, yes, good dog,” he said in French. He’d stroked Jason’s head, then stepped along the table, where he tapped the axe that Milo had just set down. He waved the tapping finger to me, then Jason, then tapped his own chest.
Jason had rolled to his back again, wagging his tail through the already bloody floor, waving his paws at Tayron. The mage had gone back to him and Jason lay still while Tayron had shaved off all his whiskers.
That had been an hour or two ago. Jason had not let out even the faintest growl since then, much less snapped.
They had not grown back.
Nothing grew back with the change. Wounds closed, but missing fur and whiskers stayed missing, presumably until enough time had passed that any person would regrow fur and whiskers. So Tayron was progressing from cuts, slashes, burns, and bruises to seeing if the grow-back trick might work for the flesh of ears where it failed to satisfy with whiskers.
Yet Jason scarcely flinched. Until I screamed and Milo leapt to his feet, cursing my noise.
Tayron looked up and so did Jason, his golden eyes unfocused, also bloody.
Milo was crashing at the metal tray behind me by the door, grabbing syringe and vial. I didn’t care what he was doing.
But Jason struggled to his feet. Now he growled. He couldn’t stand, but fell, crawled, snarled at Milo. He forced his forepaws under his chest and lifted, with his hind legs hardly able to obey him. This was not from Tayron having crippled them. It was from the damage that the change itself was doing to him as he had done it now again and again in the past hours. I’d known it could cause coma, damage to internal organs, even death, to change too many times close together. Besides this, the change itself was taxing and savagely painful. Yet I’d had no idea how horrifying it could look on the way toward coma or death.
Jason’s teeth were covered in his own blood from bleeding gums. His whole snarl more terrible for the struggle he had to put into it, not less intimidating.
Milo ignored him, grabbing my shoulder and shoving me sideways so my back was to the wall and he could easily yank up the sleeve on my cuffed left arm to reach a vein.
Tayron was chuckling appreciatively, talking to Milo.
Jason moved in while I tried to push past Milo to reach for him. “Jason, please. You can’t change again—it will kill you.”
Milo jerked the band tight around my upper arm. Jason stumbled forward, snapping for him. Milo punched him in the face with a quick energy ball and Jason dropped, his unsteady limbs crumpling below him.
He scrambled to Tayron instead, wagging his tail, trembling against the older mage as he tried to hold himself up.
Tayron gingerly patted his head, avoiding the blood running off his chopped ear, and Jason licked his hands, pawing at him as if for affection, wagging his tail like a cringing golden retriever.
“Oui, oui … une bonne bête…” Tayron smiled patronizingly down at him. He told Jason he was quite right, then waved Milo away, telling him to go back to his seat. Jason had been such a good wolf, after all, they should leave me alone.
Jason was sliding on the floor in his own blood, nuzzling Tayron’s hand.
But no: Milo only cursed him, finding the vein on my arm.
Tayron shrugged to Jason, not about to get too worked up over the matter.
Jason made a lunge at Milo once more, sinking his bloody teeth into Milo’s cowboy boot.
Milo shouted and kicked out. Jason yelped.
This time, Tayron was
angry, rushing to the wolf’s defense. Apparently Milo was not to go around kicking his test subject on the nose as that could affect data. He stepped over Jason to tell Milo off, gesturing violently until Milo, gritting his teeth, ripped the band free of my arm and returned it and the syringe to the tray, then himself to his chair.
Tayron adopted a crooning note as he first dragged Jason back, slipping over the wet floor, then stroked his head as he returned to the same stance. Jason, panting and shaking, trying to watch me and Milo while his vision failed him and he kept blinking, sank again on his chest. Tayron stood above, felt over the intact ear, and severed the tip by magic.
Jason only flinched as his muzzle reached the floor.
Tayron stepped back, throwing up his hands in what was already a clear gesture. And now! You change! With great excitement. Ta-da!
Jason’s trembling turned to a violent, unnatural shuddering, then spasms that made his teeth click together and his paws scramble as if he could not control them.
Tayron moved away, watching with interest, barking orders to Milo to take notes. Milo also stood up, still glaring, to get a good look.
“Don’t make him change again, please,” I gasped. “You’ll kill him. Do you want to lose all this? Lose your subject?”
Something about my words struck Tayron’s interest this time. He looked at me, frowning for a second, then down at Jason, then asked Milo what I’d said. As far as I could tell, he actually did translate this time.
Tayron nodded thoughtfully as he watched Jason on the floor.
The black wolf was now on his side, scrambling, head back, nose pointed to the wall, all four limbs straining as if to catch hold of a distant prize. His head bent at a terrible angle toward his back, his lips drew rigidly up from his bloody gums. His whole body rocked and convulsed.
The seizure lasted a few minutes—while I curled into a fetal position against the baseboard and Tayron and Milo took notes.
Then, it turned out, Tayron was indeed anxious that his subject should still be alive. Jason was scarcely conscious and completely unresponsive when the spasms subsided. Tayron checked over him, listening to his heartbeat and breathing, examining his eyes, taking many notes before he finally shut his notebook with an air of finality and Milo sprang up as if the school bell had rung. Neither Jason nor I, however, were springing anywhere.
Chapter 38
On the floor in the bathroom, shut in together on the cold tiles in nearly pitch darkness, I held onto him all night: praying, casting. I gave him the shield, the healing, the energy and power of all the strengths I knew to give—as I had given Kage.
Kage had me and the pack, Madison’s home energy, all our power working for him. Jason had a crippled me, hardly able to stop crying, without even my grandmother’s ring left for a power symbol. With blackness inside and out, with a hollowness and failing in my soul that made me want to stop, to end us so there would be no second day in that room for Jason. Clearly, I couldn’t think of getting him out of here in this condition, which left a second day looming.
Instead, I held on all afternoon, all night, however many hours we were there. I gave all I had, all I could, and prayed.
There had been many moments in these past weeks when I’d been unsure about Jason. All so long ago.
I could have been with any of them up here. It happened to be Jason because he’d caught the eye of a mind-scry and been singled out. But could have been anyone. If it had been any of the six besides Jason with me in the top room, I would have received that drug in the first place, without a doubt, and I almost certainly would have lost at least a hand today. Maybe lost my baby. Maybe my life.
They might have groveled, yes. They would have begged or attacked. But not one of the others would have licked that mage’s hands and made him laugh and pet them. Not one could have pulled off what Jason had.
He did not wake up that first night.
What was happening to the others? Were they all right? Were they together? No one had seemed much interested in them.
Leave them alone, please. Let them be okay. Let them be alive.
I knew it was another day or night because Milo came to look in. He ascertained that Jason was alive, but still out, smiled at the news, then said he was going to bed, but he expected “they” would wish to speak to me soon, and slammed the door.
I drifted in and out of sleep, always with that slow drip … drip faintly sounding from the sink. I trickled water onto Jason’s bloody teeth and swollen tongue each time I woke, and held him, casting for him, until I was out. Drip … drip…
We had my coat and his light rain jacket, a bathmat, two threadbare bath towels, and a hand towel that reeked of vinegar. It was not enough to make even one person a bed on a frigid tile floor, but I was grateful at least that Jason had landed in his fur for insulation and he’d thrown his clothes back in here as he’d undressed.
I did all I could to make a nest for him in the dark and with limited materials. It was dark because I had no energy left to light my own palms, pouring all I had into him. Although this magic did produce an occasional small glow off Jason’s black fur.
With my own coat on, I wrapped his clothes and towels around his cold limbs and over him, made a cushion for his head with his jacket, and used the hand towel, with a corner soaked in water and white vinegar to dab the oozing wounds on his ears. I knew the vinegar had antiseptic effects but didn’t trust the towel itself.
Mostly, I tried to keep clear of the wounds, turn his head up to swallow a few drops of water now and then, embrace him to warm us both, and cast over him.
Jason finally woke up that next day … or night? I had lost track already, couldn’t think how long we’d been here. He managed to turn onto his chest, and I gave him water again and again in little bits in my cupped hands.
“Don’t change,” I kept telling him. “Don’t change. He’ll make you start all over soon. Don’t do it now when you don’t have to.”
It wasn’t much different, him being awake with me in the dark, mute and hurting, rather than out. For me, there was the power of relief to know he was alive. Also the power of fear for what would happen next with Tayron.
I held on and kept casting until I was the one asleep for untold hours. Or days.
Again, the door banged open.
Tayron: thrilled to find Jason awake, lifting his head, ready to get back to work. How long had it been? How long a break had Jason’s body had from the change? A couple of days? How much did it matter? How cumulative was it?
It was all much the same, only very little was said, and we didn’t have the preliminaries. Now, though, I could hardly follow anything anyway. The split in my head … the pain in my stomach … the fatigue, terror, and casting had left me hardly there. It was as if Milo had drugged me after all.
He was slow to show up this time. Tayron had to shout for him.
Perhaps Milo hoped Jason had died and he’d be able to get the day off from working with Tayron. He came slouching in after Tayron had yelled a couple times, cowboy hat and cigarette in place, glaring at us. He chained up my wrist without a word—while I sat against the bathroom doorframe in a stupor, so blinded by the electric lights, even after minutes, that I could hardly see.
Tayron pushed the choke chain onto Jason’s head and clipped on the leash.
Jason was sunk in a hunched sitting position on his tail, head down, eyes shut against the light.
Tayron told him to stand up. Milo translated. Jason tried, struggled on the now roughly cleaned floor, with only streaks of dried blood remaining, and managed it.
The two mages tended to their notes and some debate that kept them in a lively engagement.
I could see in the light now, yet … still couldn’t see. Everything blurred, everything painful. Drip … drip… My head … my stomach … my whole body…
Wait? Was the baby okay? This was a higher up pain than that…
“Milo?” I whispered.
Only Jason looked at m
e.
Tayron seemed to be chewing Milo out. Maybe about lackluster note-taking. Milo huffed, snapped back, then said nothing, arms crossed, chewing at the cigarette butt that he rolled back and forth in his lips, glaring daggers at pen and notebook.
Tayron set out some instruments and talked to Jason, which Milo did not translate. I think Jason could understand quite a bit of French, but he certainly didn’t want to show it.
“Milo?” I asked again.
The mage shifted his glare to me.
“It’s been … two or three days since we had anything to eat. Do you think we could—?”
Milo threw up his hands, cursing in French, appealing to the ceiling for all he had to suffer. He turned his chair toward me and leveled a finger before my nose.
“I’m not a damn housemaid or servant. Make the notes, clean the floors, cook the meals—I’m through with it!”
“Okay,” I murmured. My ears were ringing so much it was hard to hear him anyway.
Tayron wanted to know what we’d been talking about.
Milo muttered an answer.
To my mild surprise, Tayron at once began flapping around: “You have not fed my subject?” His message plain, pointing down at Jason, then reprimanding Milo in a fresh lecture.
Milo got up and kicked over his chair. “Fine! Fine!” He stormed out.
Tayron patted Jason and told him to wait. Jason lay down by me, eyes closed, and Tayron went back to going over his notes.
Milo soon returned with a plate containing two cheese sandwiches. He dropped this on the floor beside me and flopped into his chair, where he started complaining about something else to Tayron in French.
I stared.
Dazed, Jason raised his muzzle from my blood-stained jeans and sniffed.
I lifted a sandwich as if it were someone else’s arm reaching and someone else’s fingers touching the soft brioche.
They were large sandwiches, sliced from the center of the brioche, but not burdened with niceties like being cut into halves. I tore off a chunk and offered it to Jason.
Moonlight Whispers: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 8) Page 26
