Snow Fright

by Kaye Draper

  I stood, shaking. What had they done to him? He was so powerful. What could they have done? And how the fuck were we going to get out of here if he hadn't been able to tell Cloud where we were? Madness pressed in on me, but it wasn't wendigo madness. It was the realization that I might never get out of here.

  Cloud will come, I reminded myself. She'll be here soon.

  The soldiers came shortly after that. They dragged a long fire-hose down the hallway, turned it on, and proceeded to blast everything in my cell with ice cold water—including me. The blast knocked me off my feet and pummeled me with bruising force. It went in my ears and up my nose and I had the brief thought that they might kill me like this. Then it was over.

  They sprayed Cal down too, causing him to twitch and whine in his sleep.

  Then they left and we both sat there shivering as the last of the water flowed down the big drain in the center of each cell.

  I curled up into a ball and rocked.

  I was interrupted from my rocking by the return of the good doctor. He had the sledgehammer with him again. And a tray of scalpels.

  "Fuck you," I said, not moving from my place on the damp floor.

  He deactivated the magic on my cell and placed the barrier behind him and his goons. "Ah, I see the room service crew cleaned up your mess."

  I growled.

  I knew fighting back wouldn't help, but I made a huge effort and picked myself up to fight anyway. It was who I was. I kept getting up. Every time life knocked me down. I got up.

  I pushed myself to standing and launched myself at the doctor, fangs and claws bared. They darted me twice the moment I moved, and I was weak enough by the time I reached them that I didn't get more than a token punch in. I hit one of the guards, grinning when his skin immediately bruised. He probably had a cracked jaw.

  They broke both my legs this time. And the doctor kept slicing me with those damned scalpels, timing my healing with a stopwatch and jotting it down in a notebook.

  "You read that at night when you masturbate, you sadistic fucker?" I panted, feeling my legs starting to knit back together. I was healing super fast due to my recent feeding.

  If they kept this shit up, I would need to feed again soon. Healing depleted me. And... well, shit, that was probably exactly why they were doing this, wasn't it?

  I let my head drop back to the stone floor with a thump and wished for unconsciousness. I wasn't depleted enough though. My damned powers kept me conscious through all the pain.

  "Are you fertile?" The doctor demanded. I realized he had stopped slicing up the skin on my stomach long enough to study my c-section scar.

  "Fuck you," I slurred, new terror shooting through me. No. No. No.

  He planted a hand low on my stomach.

  "Rape!" I called breathily.

  The doctor removed his hand as if he'd been stung. "I would never." He waved a hand to the assistant beside him. "Start making a list of potential mates. I wonder if the bear would work? What a creature that would be...." His voice took on a dreamy note.

  Panic clawed at me. Fuck no. They could lock me up in here, torture me, break my bones, draw my blood. But they would not do this to me.

  I tried to get up. But the venom was still working, and I didn't have control of my body. The doctor sighed and handed the scalpel to his assistant. "Bleed her out. I'll go find another meal."

  "No!" I panted. "Not. I'm not... going to make… another wendigo. I'll just kill them."

  The doctor turned to me, looking down at me with a perplexed gaze. "You don't like killing humans, do you? I think your file indicated that you try to avoid it at all costs." And I knew just where he was getting information on me. Bob. The fucking watcher was so dead when I got out of this.

  The doctor patted my lacerated leg fondly with his gloved hand. "I suggest you just give us what we want. Otherwise you will have more deaths on your conscience. But then," he looked as if he were really pondering one of life's great mysteries, "can an animal like you really have a conscience?"

  He strolled away as I cursed him. All the while, I bled from the deeper cuts the assistant made—right over the veins, to weaken me faster.

  Chapter 13

  The next human they brought was a woman. She was small and scared. I was shaking with hunger and need and rage.

  She wouldn't talk to me. Wouldn't tell me her name. She only cowered and shook and cried. I tried to be gentle with her, tried to kill her quickly. But I don't know if I succeeded because I lost myself to the monster for a while. When I came back to myself, I could hear screaming. But it wasn't the woman's high-pitched shrieks.

  It was a cracked, masculine scream.

  I wiped my mouth on the back of my arm and turned toward the sound.

  Cal was awake. He sat at the back of his cell, pressed against the wall, hands over his face, shaking and crying and screaming.

  I stood and paced to the bars. "Cal?" I said over the screaming. "Hey, Cal?" He wouldn't stop the racket long enough to get a word in edgewise. "Stop that fucking noise!" I shouted, a growl lacing my voice.

  He stopped, hiccupping and gasping. He lifted his head, his blue eyes wide and fearful. "Please," he whispered. "Please don't hurt me."

  I tilted my head and studied him. His slightly changed magic, his altered scent. "Oh, come off it, Cal," I said, impatient. "You've seen blood before. And, well... yeah... that was pretty gross. But you aren't some pansy little girl. You're a fucking battle-witch or something. Man up."

  He blinked at me with those big, round eyes, then started sobbing again. "I want out of here," he sobbed. "Please let me out. I want to go home." He lifted his hands and studied them as if seeing something strange. "Why is it so big? It’s so angry. I want out of here."

  He cried and shook and mumbled more of that nonsense, while I used a corner of my shirt to try to clean the gore off my face and horns.

  I looked up suddenly when he spoke again. "Tess?" His voice was pitched lower. Nervous, but not hysterical the way it had been a moment before. "Where... the... how long have we been here?"

  I blinked at him. "Done having a meltdown now princess?" I asked.

  He stood and paced to the bars, grabbing them with shaking hands, hissing at the wards. "What? I was just...." His shoulder's slumped. Then he tensed and started shaking his head. "Get the fuck out. Get. It. Out!" He collapsed to the floor, seizing.

  I yanked at my cell bars. "Cal! Jesus!" I used all the force I could, but the bars wouldn't give. I turned to the camera. "Hey you stupid fuckers. Your witch is dying!"

  No one came.

  I watched, unable to help, as Cal had three seizures then lay on the cold stone floor, panting and bleeding from where he'd bit his lip. He didn't move again for a long time.

  The assholes came with the hoses again. This time it woke Cal up and he struggled weakly to keep his feet as he got blasted.

  "Thanks!" I called after the retreating soldiers. "I'll make sure to find you when I get out of here, so I can show my gratitude, you cock-sucking-shitwads." My grip on my humanity was slipping.

  Cal was crying again.

  "Hey, there big witch," I said in my best attempt at a soothing voice. I crouched down, so I'd be at eye level. "What's got you so down?"

  It was seriously creeping me out. Of everything, this was the scariest thing I'd witnessed so far. They had done something to his mind.

  Well almost the scariest. I think it tied with them wanting me to mate with a bear monster and carry its creepy bear-wendigo-human babies.

  "Are you the wendigo they told me about? The one who protects us from the hunters?" The voice was not Cal's. Sure. It sounded the same on the surface, but the cadence was different, and it was lighter, just a smidge higher.

  I shrugged. "I'm doing a great job of it now, aren't I? I fucking told everyone I was the wrong monster for that gig."

  Cal blinked his eyes at me in confusion.

  "Who are you right now?" I asked.

  Cal wiped at his eyes
with a shaking hand. "Trapped," he breathed. "I am trapped. I don't know...." He started to panic, and I held up my hands. I also held my breath. His terror made my throat burn with hunger, even though I had just finished my meal.

  Anxiety washed over me in sharp waves. I had eaten people. Killed them in a cage like a pet python gifted with feeder rats. My hands started shaking and I couldn’t put my claws away.

  "Shh..." I shuffled as close as I could to the bars and reached a hand through. Oh, that was dumb. Hurt like a million bee stings. But I survived. "Cal? Hey Cal, are you in there?" I forced a smile. "It's Tess. Remember me, Cal? I made your little brother into a ghoul? We had some really good sex and then you tried to murder me?"

  I banged my head against the bars, fighting the creeping madness. "I need you to get a hold of yourself and help me figure out how to get the fuck out of here."

  And I realized that was just it. Under the fear, I was still clinging to hope. I was so damned happy to have someone else here with me. Someone who would know what to do... once he got a grip, that is.

  His whole body shook. "I," his voice grew deeper and more even, like the Cal I knew. "Tess? Where's Elena? Where's my little girl?" Then he was crying again.

  And. Well, shit.

  "Cal, listen to me," I said, forcing calm. "When did they capture you? Did you... did you get a message to Cloud? Does she know where we are?"

  He looked at me blankly for a moment. "I... no? What? They took you. And then... the watcher. It was the watcher!" He stood and started to pace. "Tess." His face was suddenly stricken. "Oh, Gods Tess I'm so sorry. No."

  He collapsed onto his ass and ran his hands through his hair. "And then they... I'm... I can't think. There's no room to think. Get it out!"

  And then the rocking and crying started again. He banged his head on the wall until he split the skin and started to bleed. Then he slumped there, breath coming in harsh pants. I thought he had knocked himself out and I really hoped he didn't have brain damage or something.

  He lay there for a few seconds, then sat up and scrambled backward to sit against the back wall and look at me with wide, fearful eyes. "Get me out of here," he said in that other, softer voice. "Please?"

  I shook my head. "Sorry, Toots," I said, standing to stretch my back. "I think that goes beyond my abilities. First, we just need to get out of the fucking cages."

  I paced, listening to him—her, maybe?—ramble about the trees and the water and home.

  Cloud, I pleaded in my head. Cloud will come and get me. She had rescued me before, when the shadows of the night became monsters and my world was turned upside down. She had rescued me from myself when I wanted to lie down and die. She would rescue me now.

  But I knew, even as I tried to tell myself the lie. I knew she wasn't coming.

  The next person they brought me was a man. And he screamed about how he had a wife and kids and how could they do this to him.

  I tried to escape again. But even though I did manage to nearly rip an assistant’s arm off in the process, I was still magically caged.

  They seemed to realize that I was killing my victims on purpose. They had tried injecting my saliva into humans, the doctor told me. But it seemed that the curse only took if there was an actual bite. Probably something to do with my “innate magic.” I seethed at the fact that they had taken parts of me away by force and tried to use them to create more monsters.

  But that was nothing compared to what came next.

  They brought the screaming, crying man into the cell. And they stayed.

  I fought the hunger. So, they shot me with a big motherfucking gun and let me bleed out for a while until the wendigo’s survival instincts kicked in, and I couldn't stop myself.

  I hung on to enough of my humanity to know I had to kill my victim to prevent the org from carrying out their plans. But they shackled me magically. They poisoned me, tied me down with warded chains, and held the man close enough that I could only chew on his arm.

  He begged. He pleaded. He said he didn't want to be a monster.

  I couldn't stop myself from biting him, from taking what I could get, because the monster knew we would die if we didn't feed and it didn't give a single fuck about anything else.

  They took the man away and left me on the floor, drugged, but healing.

  When I was able to sit up, I tried to vomit, but my body wouldn't let me. I gagged and cried.

  I clung to the futile hope that my bite wouldn't work. That I wouldn't be infectious like the wendigo that had created me. But I knew better. Cal had told me, what seemed a lifetime ago now, that when I bit him he had to use magic to burn the taint away. My bite was infectious to humans. Hunters had resistance. Witches could magic it away. Humans like the one I had just blood raped were vulnerable.

  I had just turned him into a raving monster. And he wouldn't have the benefit of a couple of knowing and sympathetic hunters keeping him alive like I had. No, he would be trapped in a cage, tortured, used. Either starved, or made into a monster that knew nothing but hunger.

  I howled.

  I felt the other creatures around me. Not too close, but in the vicinity. In their own cages. My power reached out to them in my panic. I felt their lights. Some dim, some enraged.

  And then I felt something more. As Cal mumbled and starting having one of his seizures in the cage across from mine, I thought I felt my creatures—out there somewhere, far away, calling for me.

  It terrified me. Because I thought I was losing what was left of my mind. Maybe getting more in touch with the spirit side of the world in preparation for a non-stop trip to monsterdom.

  "Cal," I whispered. "Do you feel it Cal? They're coming to take us away. To take it all away. The pain of being human."

  I smiled softly in the dark. "Shh...Cal. Let it come," I advised. "Just let whatever it is inside you take over. It's easier that way."

  I remembered a cold voice. A distant reminder. "Don't choose the dark," I muttered. "But there isn't a choice. Where is the light?"

  Chapter 14

  Cloud's heart clenched when she finally saw it.

  They followed Ahanu, as the spells Caldwell had cast tying the bird and the dogman together led the small army of witches and hunters right to the compound. There was fear at the back of her throat, making it hard to swallow. What if they brought the dogman here, but they had taken Tess somewhere else?

  She pushed the fear away. How many research facilities could they have in Michigan? And surely they would take the monsters they caught here to the closest one. She stood straight and took a moment to get her feet under her mentally and physically. She could feel the press of so many different auras around her.

  All of the hunters in the state, and the entire Whitehall coven. Plus a few others called in from the outside. Their powerful magic—different, but complimentary—swirled about her.

  The place was strongly warded, and Cloud was afraid they would lose the dogman the moment he was taken inside, no matter how confident the witches were. But the enchantment held. The bond between the dogman and the raven let them see the place, sense its occupants.

  Cloud shifted her weight from foot to foot, trying to stay loose, arms at her side, tomahawks in a grip that wasn't too tight or too weak. Ready. Relaxed. There was a flow to fighting. Like a dance. She breathed in deep, anticipation filling her. This was what she was meant to do, hunt monsters. That these particular monsters were also human made no difference to her. Her blood sang.

  And her heart pounded. Tess. I'm coming Tess. Just a little longer.

  There had been so many damned delays. The watcher had slowed down everything and nearly destroyed the tentative peace between the hunters and the witches. He had come to them, saying he couldn't stand to hide. That he wanted to help. Wanted to do something. And Cloud knew that feeling very well. She warned him of the danger a human with no magic would be in. He said he was prepared.

  She should have known he was a traitor. But she was too focused on getting
Tess back to care much about one human watcher.

  Then the fighting broke out. One of the witches was killed by a hunter blade. One of the hunters was killed by witch magic. It had nearly ended then and there, in a battle between the two sides. But Ahanu had startled them all out of their imminent war by attacking Bob.

  The chubby, unassuming human watcher—the one with no magic and no hunter training—had changed before their eyes, using magic and surprising physical skill to escape the deranged spirit bird.

  And of course, the ghost had spoken. Testified that he had seen the human set the whole thing up.

  Cloud killed him herself. It had happened in a snowy clearing in the woods, and the gush of his human blood had been so similar to the day she killed her grandmother.

  She was tired. So very tired.

  But she wanted... needed Tess back.

  She waited for the signal. Ahanu glided across the sky from the far side of the building, giving two sharp, short caws. Cloud felt the swell of magic as the strongest witches in the coven brought down the wards. She lifted a hand and waited, then when the magic broke, dropped it. The hunters surged around her, attacking the building from the front and back.

  Cloud charged into the fray, kicking, chopping, tilting her head back in a war cry. They had her soul mate inside those walls. They would pay for every second they had been apart.

  She reached the inside of the building and led a group of hunters and witches down a hallway to the stairs, heading to the lower levels. The entrance had looked like the lobby of a nice hospital or a ritzy hotel. Clean—upstanding. But she could feel energy signatures below her.

  She charged down the stairs, their force taking out a dozen guards along the way, as they were rushing upward to check on the commotion at ground level. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the security to get into the building wasn't technically complex. There were no locked steel doors or anything like that. Everything was reinforced with magic, which the witches handled efficiently.