by Michelle Kay
When dealing with a normal trio of officers, the type that didn't include her personal terror, she was relatively confident, sure she could feed them a lie, or outrun them if that didn’t work. But she felt like she was in the vipers' pit already, and she hadn't even made it into the building yet. If something went wrong here, she knew her chances of escape were nonexistent.
Eventually, the imposing grey building came into view, the words "Bureau for Werewolf Control" marked in massive bronze letters across the wide entrance. It was impossible for her to guess how many floors there were, but its immense size and the way several streets merged into the round drive at the front made it feel like the literal heart of the city. As they neared the entryway, Elliot turned and caught her by the arm again, whispering quickly to her.
"Don't say anything to anyone. Don't look them in the eyes. Even if someone is talking about you, keep your mouth shut." He rattled his directions before filing into the massive rotating doors. "People will be staring."
She did as she was told, trying to keep her curious glances to a minimum. But why would anyone stare? She looked the part, didn’t she? And at least a quarter of the crowd was made up of tan uniforms.
The entrance area gave Clover a bad case of vertigo. The clear atrium hung some ten stories above her head, glass elevators and stairways winding their way up every wall. Just as she knew every turn in her freight car towers, Elliot seemed to be at home in this massive building. She followed him to a tightly packed elevator that took her up past the atrium, the clear walls looking down on the empty cylinder formed in the building’s center.
Once they had migrated into a long, unmarked hall, she began to notice the staring. This hall was not as crowded, but every person, without exception, watched them pass with more interest than she'd expected. Most of them looked surprised, though a few seemed amused. She fought the urge to ask him what their strange reactions were about, afraid that maybe her disguise wasn’t as good as she’d thought.
Taking a quick turn into a smaller set of offices, the staring became more intense. Clover was surprised by how mild the space was. The room was simple and white, with desks on either side separated by thin cubicle walls. It was hard to say what exactly she'd imagined the inside of the Bureau to be like, but she supposed a few torture devices and spatters of blood would have made it more accurate. Ignoring the workers on either side of them, Elliot marched straight through to an office in the back.
Outside the door, they were met by a middle aged woman with a blue shoulder pad.
"Elliot? It's unlike you to stop by on your own. Can I help you with any—" Her voice cut out abruptly, and as Clover raised her eyes she realized why.
The woman stared at her like she was a bomb.
"What is that?"
"Don't worry about it, Monica. Is he in?" Elliot seemed even stiffer than he’d been when she’d had him at knife-point.
"Your father, Elliot." Monica was shaking her head. "He's going to..." She seemed unable to finish.
"I know. It'll be fine. It's better than him finding out through the gossip chain."
She covered her mouth with slender, painted fingers as she looked Clover up and down, then she sighed. "He's in," was all she said before returning to her desk and paging them into the office.
Something about the office seemed more intimidating than the rest of the building, though it may have been Elliot’s rigid posture.
"Dad." He positioned his body so it shielded Clover from his father.
"What did the doctor say?" Montgomery Sr.’s voice was deep, intimidating. It made Clover sweat.
"Some minor bruising and scrapes. Nothing serious. The bite was clean." His lying was surprisingly good.
"What do you need then?"
Elliot paused this time, the lie seeming thick on his tongue. "A new laptop. Mine was damaged when I fell."
"Damaged? What the hell kind of dog did you—"
Clover immediately recognized the pause in his sentence. He'd seen her, but this time she thought better of sneaking a peek.
"What is that?" The same question seemed harsher coming from him than it had from his secretary.
"Please don't make a big deal out of it, Dad."
"Excuse me?" The sound of his chair scraping the ground made Clover jump and grip her bruised arm again.
"I'm just trying it out," Elliot insisted.
"I'm surprised at you, Elliot." His tone made it clear that 'surprised' wasn't so much what he meant. Maybe 'disappointed' or 'disgusted' was more accurate.
"It's only temporary. I probably won't keep her." Elliot's voice was weak.
"I see." There was something about the tone of those two small words that said much more than Clover could hear. "Let me have a look then."
"She's still jumpy."
Montgomery Sr. walked so quickly toward Clover that she stumbled over her own feet in an attempt to put distance between them. The hand that latched onto her chin a moment later was like a vice.
"She is still fresh, isn't she?" He pulled her head to the side to get a good look at her blistered numbers.
Clover kept her eyes shut, knowing it was the only way to hide the disgust and fury she felt as he turned her face back and forth to get a good look at her. She felt like a piece of meat. She could also hear whispering coming from the open door, and figured it was curious workers peeking in at them.
"Which school did you get her from?"
To keep her eyes averted from his, Clover trained them on a small shadowbox hanging behind his desk—a gun with three bullets lined up beneath the barrel. Silver bullets—a salute to a time when werewolves were slaughtered in the streets. Clover hadn’t been born then, but she’d heard the stories. Countries all over the world depleted their silver stores to make bullets. By the time they realized regular metals killed them when they weren’t in their wolf form, silver had become rare. Bullets like those were hard to find any more. Seeing them in person made the fire in her stomach burn that much hotter.
She turned her eyes back to the Director, wanting to see what a man who would display something so horrible looked like. His jaw was strong, broader and harsher than Elliot’s and covered in a trim, salted beard, but the resemblance was still there.
"Does it matter?" Elliot dismissed. "About my laptop, though..."
"Relax." Montgomery finally released Clover's face. "After all these years, Elliot. I can't believe you folded like this."
"Can we please just carry on like normal?" Elliot asked, his face surprisingly flushed.
"Your brother is going to be very disappointed." He leaned against his desk, his thick arms folded across his chest.
"I don't give a damn what he thinks." Elliot's voice was suddenly hot with an aggression Clover hadn't heard from him before.
"Good. Then you can explain it to him right now."
Clover looked up in time see the older man's eyes move to the door behind them.
"Come see what your little brother has, Dominic." He ignored the subtle cursing Clover heard from Elliot.
"Oh god, the rumors were true?"
The new voice that entered the room made Clover's blood run cold. The heat of anger in her puffed out like a candle in a storm. Her stomach clenched so hard she thought she might vomit, and her body began an immediate tremor.
"Is this thing seriously yours?" Dominic asked as he came in behind them, sounding amused and disgusted all at once.
It was hard for Clover to keep from crying, or screaming, or running from the room. She dared an unnecessary glance, praying that this man, who sounded so familiar, was someone, anyone else. From the corner of her eye she saw his red shoulder guard, though, and his neat, black hair and immediately knew that she'd been right.
It was Rainer.
- 11 -
It had crossed her mind that Rainer would be working in the same building, but for him to know Elliot personally? To be his older brother? What had she done to deserve such miserable luck? Was she not even going t
o get to see her family? She figured this was what she got for making things up as she went.
Determined to play her role to its inevitable end, she held fistfuls of her skirt to keep her shaking under control. She hoped her performance as a new, frightened slave would make them less suspicious of her increasingly erratic breathing.
"I thought we'd talked about this." Dominic Rainer's tone was stern but less hateful than she remembered.
"People change their minds." Elliot was hardly convincing.
"Sure you weren't just lonely?"
As fake as Elliot's emotions were a moment ago, the hardening of his stature seemed very genuine now. Rainer's suggestion was only barely veiled. Given that most indentured werewolves were women or girls, it wasn't surprising that many of them suffered more than physical abuse. Clover took stock of how many girls she'd seen, just that morning, with male owners strong enough to subdue them, and felt a spike of anger shoot through the cloud of fear.
"Mind your own business, Dom." His face reddened as he turned back to his father. "Dad, please, I just need a laptop."
Rainer scoffed at the slighter boy's obvious attempt to avoid the subject, turning his cold eyes toward Clover instead—the exact thing she wished he wouldn't do. She tried her best to keep turned away from his cold stare, hoping her now-clean face would be difficult to recognize if he wasn't allowed a proper look.
"Wait a second." The informal tone in Rainer's voice had evaporated, leaving the dangerous edge he'd had on the streets.
The agent's hand latched onto Clover's chin and, like his father's, his grip was immovable. She went still, her mind whiting out with terror as he forced her face in his direction.
"I know you." His voice sounded distant, like he was still combing through an internal database.
Clover locked her eyes shut, trying to block out the icy stare. She'd done everything right. She'd not met his eyes in the park, she'd let her hair obscure her face. She'd even blocked her face from cameras when she'd passed by them. Had she not done enough?
"Of course you know her." Elliot snapped, sounding annoyed in a way that couldn't be faked. "You're probably the one who picked her up."
Clover couldn't decide if she found Elliot's attitude toward her personal nightmare impressive or stupid, but he seemed to be on her side now, and she was glad for it.
"What school did you buy her from?" Rainer didn't seem convinced yet, but looked confused now as he turned Clover's face back and forth.
"It doesn't matter which school I got her from."
"This branding looks shoddy." Dominic took a closer look at her injured neck and Clover swallowed, hoping she hadn't messed up the numbers when she'd thrown the iron onto the carpet.
"Will you get your hands off my property?" Elliot snatched Clover away from the other man with enough force to almost tip her off her feet. The sudden explosion shocked Clover, but didn’t seem to faze his family.
The small group of office workers at the doorway dispersed and the room fell quiet. Clover tightened her fists, reminding herself that he was playing his roll, even if the word “property” made her ill. Heat and electricity passed between the two young men and, by instinct, Clover tried to inch away from them. Just as the tension seemed to be reaching its snapping point, though, their father's voice cut between them.
"Knock it off." In one motion, Montgomery Sr. knocked the back of Elliot's head and shoved Dominic's face in the other direction, forcefully breaking their line of sight, and their battle of wills.
"I'll deal with your laptop later," he said to Elliot. "And you, get your ass up to dispatch." He dismissed his older son with a wave of his arm.
As Dom left the room, Clover boldly glanced toward the door, hoping to get a glimpse of his back. Instead, she found him watching her. He wasn't fooled. It seemed he hadn't placed her yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Clover raged as she followed her new 'owner' down a deserted hall, finally free from Montgomery Sr.'s office.
"Tell you what?" Elliot snapped, not slowing down.
Clover grabbed his arm, yanking him around to look at her. Hitting Rainer wasn't an option, but hitting Elliot might be satisfying.
"That you having a slave would be such an upset? And that your brother is a famous werewolf killing machine!"
"And when was I supposed to tell you that?" He shook her hand off. "Before or after you bit me?"
Clover was taken aback by the anguish in his voice. He'd seemed to be handling the situation well, but she guessed it wasn't surprising he'd been hiding his real panic.
He must have seen her shock—recognized the transparency of his emotions—because he stifled them again, and turned away. "Come on, you're going to draw attention."
As they reentered a more populated area, the distraction of other workers was welcomed. Instantly, Clover noticed that most of the uniforms now shared the white shoulder guard Elliot wore, and figured they were close to his department. She wondered what Elliot did, exactly. They were working against the clock, though, and with Rainer on her heels again, she didn't have time to waste on curiosity.
She hoped the red-shouldered agent had made a bigger impression on her than she'd made on him. The time it took between being picked off the street and being sold to an owner was her shield right now. Some werewolves spent months in the finishing schools where they were broken, then retrained as obedient slaves. She knew he would recognize her eventually, but for now he was wracking is brain for a girl he'd met months ago, not someone he'd chased down a sewer a few days ago. She only hoped she could find her family and be gone before he saw through her.
As they turned into a wide room with lines of small cubicles, Clover expected to march to the back and into an office like the one Elliot's father had. They did pass a few rows of tiny cubicles, unfortunately, they weren’t going to an office. In the back corner of the room there was a larger cubicle with six desks set up in it, each with its own computer. Elliot set his bag down beside one of the middle monitors.
"What is this?"
"What do you mean?" Elliot’s replacement bag looked limp without its laptop as it slouched beside the computer screen.
Clover had expected some sort of privacy. He was the boss's son, after all. She'd assumed someone with his status would have a real office—or at least his own damn cubicle.
"It doesn't matter," she decided, reminding herself that they didn't have time to worry. "Let's just get this over with." Clover peeked outside the group cubicle, relieved that they had gotten there early. At least she wouldn't have to worry about the flock of eavesdroppers they'd dealt with in Montgomery's office. "What are you waiting for?" she demanded when she realized Elliot had only been watching her from his chair. "Look them up!"
"What do you mean 'look them up'?"
"Are you stupid?" Clover leaned over him and jabbed her finger against the computer mounted over his desk. "Get on there and find them!"
"It doesn't work that way."
"Well what do you need? I have all their information. My parents are Weston and Laurel Rhodes. R-H-O-D-E-S. You also need to look for Reed and Anise Rhodes."
"Wait, Clover..." Elliot’s voice took on a subtly apologetic tone that she didn't like. "It doesn't work that way. I can't just look them up."
"No. No, it's fine. I have more than just their names. What do you need? Their height? I can estimate that. I can tell you what they look like. Their birthdays. Whatever it is, just tell me what you want."
"I..."
Clover could see in his face that he was trying to be gentle with his words. She wasn't angry any more. Panic wasn't the right word either. She was desperate, and sad because she already knew what he was going to say. "I can't just pop on here and search them. The records are all locked and classified. I don't have that kind of clearance."
"Isn't your dad the boss or something?" she shouted before she could censor herself.
"Shhhh." He looked around her to be sure
they were still alone. "That doesn't mean anything, alright? I’m not even a full employee yet. I’m still doing my residency."
“No. No, no, no. Because if that was the case, wouldn’t you have one of those stupid little triangles on your uniform?”
Elliot’s hand moved to his pocket, then presented a small yellow pin to her in the shape of a triangle. “I don’t like putting it on until I’m here. People don’t treat you as well if they know.” He sounded embarrassed.
“You are seriously kidding me, right now.” Clover stood up again and swore furiously, digging her knuckles into her forehead, trying to put her temper on lockdown. “God, you're so useless." She closed her eyes to hide the sting of angry tears. "I should have bitten your dad or something. Then at least I'd be getting somewhere."
"You'd be dead already if you'd tried that." Elliot's tone was icy at best as he pinned the triangle beside his name on his uniform.
Her comment must have boiled his sympathy away, but her temper hissed to get out and she didn't care how he felt. She opened her mouth to remind him that—considering his currently situation—he wasn't really in a position to question her hostage-taking abilities. She was interrupted by a voice she didn’t recognize before she got the chance.
"So the rumors are true."
Noisy heels filled the space and Clover found herself irrationally annoyed by the repetitive reactions she was getting. Didn't these people have anything better to do with their time?
"Mrs. Pierson." Elliot’s posture changed as the woman approached them. He slouched, like he wanted her to know that she wasn’t worth his full attention, and his voice cooled to the point of disinterest.
"Elliot." She returned the favor, flipping her intricately braided and greying hair over her shoulder, coming to a stop on one hip by the entrance to the cubicle. "Any reason you didn't report this to me sooner?" She spared half a glance for Clover.
