Page 57 of Lost Touch

“Basement?” Ian asked, interrupting Nate’s flow of chatter, mostly about how he needed to make some more coffee and wondered if it’d be safe to go upstairs and find someone he called Arik.

I thought that might be the shaman, maybe? And I really wanted to know why he’d be afraid of going upstairs. But Nate hadn’t exactly let me get a word in edgewise to ask anything at all since we’d gotten in the car.

Nate cut off mid-sentence to say, “Yeah, I think so. Sorry,” he added, turning to me. “The basement kind of sucks. But if he’s really gone nuts, we can’t have him upstairs. Kids come in and out, you know?”

I did not, in fact, know. “Sure,” I said, and followed them through a large living area and down a hall.

Nate opened a door, revealing a narrow set of stairs leading down into the impenetrable dark. Dark, a dead end, I could be trapped. Locked in there.

No one knew where I was. No one but Drew, and he was insane and unconscious and couldn’t protect me, and if they left me with him I didn’t know what he’d do to me. A warlock, locking me up in the dark.

I stopped dead, my feet stuck to the floor even though every cell in my body screamed at me to run, fuckingrun, as fast as I could, get away…

“Ash, Ash, hey, look at me! Ian, I think there’s something really fucking wrong with him too. Ash!”

The words came at me like they’d been spiraled down a long, echoing tunnel, hitting me at odd angles and speeds. My breath rushed in my ears, my chest clenched tight, I couldn’t breathe…and then I managed to suck in air, and my eyes half-focused again.

Nate, a couple of feet away with his hands out like he didn’t know if he should touch me or not.

Ian, lips drawn back in a snarl, maneuvering himself between me and Nate, with Nate shoving him out of the way in his turn. He didn’t have Drew over his shoulders anymore.

Drew, fuck, where was Drew?

Something hard at my back.

The wall. I’d backed up against the wall, and I had my whole body plastered to it as if I meant to try to melt into it and disappear.

“Ash? You with me?” Nate asked, dark eyes wide with concern. For me, or because of me? Almost certainly because of me. “The hell’s going on?”

“Can’t—be—” I choked out. “Locked up. Trapped.”

Ian’s face went hard. “Was this asshole keeping you prisoner?” he demanded.

This asshole? Drew. He meant Drew, and the laugh that tore its way out of my too-tight throat came out more like a sob. I looked around, suddenly frantic to see him. I craned my neck and found him lying on the floor a few feet away, where Ian had probably dumped him the second I started freaking out.

Alpha. Drew was an alpha werewolf. He’d survive a drop to a wooden floor.

I looked back up to find Ian and Nate both staring at me expectantly.

“No, he wasn’t, he—the opposite, I—shit, I can’t explain, I’ll sound like I’ve lost my mind.” Because who in their right minds would believe our story, without knowing us, without having any context at all?

Nate snorted and tossed his head like an irritated horse. “Yeah, you look so fucking sane right now, dude. Sorry, sorry,” he said quickly, “that was a low blow. Sorry. Try us, okay?”

I sucked in a deep breath, holding it until spots danced in front of my eyes, and blew it out as slowly and evenly as I could.

“Drew rescued me. We were both prisoners, I guess we escaped together. But he was in better shape than me, and I wouldn’t have gotten out unless he’d saved me. Some kind of—this seriously is going to sound nuts, but I swear it’s the truth, okay? Some kind of weird magical prison, with warlocks experimenting on us. I don’t know how I got there. I have amnesia. And some other things. Nothing dangerous!” I protested, as Ian shifted his weight, his clawed hands flexing. “Bad for me, not for anyone else. Drew started getting—he’s been, like, like his alpha-ness has been turned up to eleven. He needs help. The way he’s been acting isn’t his fault. They did something to him, and I don’t know what, and—”

“Okay, we get it,” Nate cut in, and I stuttered to a stop. “We get it,” he repeated grimly, with a quick, speaking glance at Ian, who had a similarly shocked look on his face. “What the fuck are the odds? Christ. I think we should get Calder down here.”

Calder? Washethe shaman? How many people lived here? And were they all terrifying?

“Go ahead,” Ian said, without moving.

“I meant you!”

“I’m not leaving you alone with them.” Uncompromising. I knew that tone, and I bit my lip, fighting a wave of misery. Drew sounded like that sometimes when he talked to me, when he wanted to keep me safe. God, I hoped I’d hear him sound like that again.

Nate sighed, muttered, and stomped off.

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