Page 68 of Witchblood

The whole house, its rooms filled with stench, blood, and discarded bits, looked like a ghoul den. Except for one thing. Normally ghouls piled bodies up to eat later. It was almost organized, like an ant farm might be. They’d carry them in, set up a hoard of food, and hunker down. Here the bones and bits were thrown about, nothing whole to be found anywhere. But many choice pieces left at random. Hearts, livers, a thigh with most of the meat still on it. Even as I forced my eyes to take in the horror of every room I passed, I catalogued the memories. Maybe I’d be able to help a family find closure after this. Rescue enough pieces of someone to put them in a proper grave.

Fuck.

Monsters. This wasn’t instinct or a dominant species making a claim. This was slaughter for the sake of blood lust.

When wolves go mad, they are nothing but killing machines,Apahad told me more than once. He’d done his best to scare me away from his aging wolf pack when I was very young.They lose what it means to be human. They forget how to feel. They become nothing but hunger and rage. They feed on life because they have lost theirs.He’d always sounded like he’d spoken from experience, and I had assumed he’d seen it from a lot of his wolves. Only now did I wonder how many times he, himself, had gone mad, lost in blood lust. How had he come back? Was the madness permanent for most? If an alpha went berserk did that mean the whole pack followed?

Were the rogue wolves berserk? Or just Felix? Perhaps both?

I found a room in the back of the house which despite all the cast off body parts and blood, still pulsed through my borrowed pack senses with something alive. Though when I entered the room it was just as empty of life and desolate as the rest of the house. The sounds of the fight had faded into the distance. I could still hear the shrieks of wolves, and prayed they weren’t any of the ones I cared about.

My heart throbbed, a sluggish beat. I focused on it, trying to link the feeling of exhaustion and pain to something. Was Liam hurt? I almost turned back. Would have if I hadn’t heard the faintest scuffle of sound.

A door off to the side, looking much like a closet had been shut tight. It wouldn’t open when I pushed at it with my paws or nose. I hated to shift in the middle of the mess, but had to. The change flowed over me like water. Smells that had started to fade from overexposure returned with a vengeance and I sneezed for a good minute. I had to fight back a gag as stomach acid backed up in my throat. My eyes burned with the intensity of the smell.

Find Dylan, I reminded myself and reached for the door.

It was a walk-in closet. Or had been in another life. I was surprised when the light switch worked and filled the room with a brightness so intense I nearly went blind for a minute.

Dylan was chained to a metal chair. Rungs of the chains had been slung through the floor of the house and around what looked like a large wood beam. I blinked at the set up in confusion. It took a minute to realize that the arrangement was new. The chains, as thick as they were, were only locked with a single small lock. Though they were wrapped in a way that would make a shape change near impossible. A werewolf of normal strength could have broken the lock or even some links of the chains without much effort.

After a month in captivity, Dylan was far from at normal strength. Both of his eyes were swollen shut. His face limp on one side, like a bone in his cheek had been broken. He was nude, covered in bruises from head to toe. Cuts everywhere. He appeared gaunt, skin sunken and stomach caved inward. I could hardly look at him and not shudder at what they’d done. Kept him alive just to torture him? Why?

To get back at Liam? To lure me here? None of this made sense to me.

“Dylan,” I whispered. I hadn’t heard anyone else in the house, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone I missed. When I reached Dylan’s side, he flinched. “It’s Sebastian, Dylan. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.” I wouldn’t be able to free him either. Super strength was not one of my magic powers. Though I wondered briefly…

“I’m going to try something to get you free. Okay? Liam and the Volkov are downstairs fighting the other wolves. You’re safe now. We have Sean back at Liam’s.” I tried to tell him soothing things as I squatted beside the lock. Could I make the cold as a human? Or did I have to be fox? Maybe I could break the lock that way. Shatter a chain or something?

I focused on the sensation for a minute, trying to bring the cold with me, but nothing happened. No snow, no cold, just me and Dylan. Both naked, and terrified. I changed back to the fox and tried again. Still nothing. Fuck.

“It’s okay,” Dylan whispered, voice barely audible, but raspy like it had been ages since he’d had water.

I glared at the chain, the complicated weave of it around the chair, him and the beam, then the wood beam. A full strength werewolf could have shredded that wood with its claws in a few minutes. Sure he’d have to hope he could get Dylan free before the weight of the house caved inward due to the broken support, but hey, minor technicalities. If I could get Dylan out of the chain, maybe he could change and start to heal a little.

I began to rake my tiny claws at an area near the chain. For a minute or two, it seemed to be working. Only I wasn’t a wolf and my nails just weren’t that sharp. The first broke and I cursed, pain traveling through one toe and up my arm. I must have whined at the pain because Dylan jerked at the sound.

I dug at the beam until my paws bled, front and back. Nails torn to the quick, but still no more than an inch or so through a thick slat of wood. I leapt onto the beam a few times, trying to crack it with my weight, but neither fox nor human was enough to do anything but wiggle it a little.

Twice more I tried for ice and even fire, but nothing happened. Neither human nor fox worked, and I just exhausted myself with all the shape changes. Even I had a limit. Maybe I needed Liam close to use this new power. Maybe I just had no real clue how to use it at all. That was the more likely answer.

The sounds of battle had faded, and I wondered if they were waiting for me, or would be coming into the house.

Liam?I tried calling through the pack bond. Nothing. Frustrated, I found my way to a nearby bathroom and prayed the water worked since my hands ached. It wasn’t warm, and it burned like acid on my mangled hands, but I rinsed away some of the blood, then found a small cup to bring Dylan water. He sucked it down quickly, choking the first time. Three times more I brought him water and prayed Liam was coming.

It was my third trip to the bathroom that I thought to look under the sink. Cleaning supplies plus alchemy. Within minutes I had an arm full of bottles that could help me break the chain. Starting with a toilet rust remover, a lot of bleach, and some basic alchemy. The stench made Dylan flinch.

“Sorry,” I told him. “Just trying to weaken one of these links.” I worked on the one near the lock, soaking it with chemicals that made it hard to breathe and tugging. The metal began to give a little where the chain had been welded on one side.

“I know you’re weak, but if I direct you to tug on a section of the chain, can you try?” I asked Dylan. He nodded weakly, his breathing labored. I struggled to get the chain to a place he could reach that wouldn’t strangle him if he tried to pull.

“Okay,” I told him. He pulled with one hand. I watched the muscles in his whole body go rigid with the attempt. The chain began to buckle, but then he stopped, wheezing like he’d run a mile.

“Sorry,” Dylan whispered.

“It’s okay,” I assured him using my foot and a well-placed towel to try to tug more at the loosening chain. “It’s starting to break. I’ll just work on it a little more.” I worked in silence for a few minutes. Tugging and praying the metal moved, though if it was, the shift was so gradual I couldn’t see it.

“You should go,” Dylan said. “He’ll be back.”