Page 2 of Under a Wicked Moon
Someone cut off his clothes. The scissors were handled with the care of a barber using a dull razor on his genitals. A slice here, a scrape there.
Three cleansing breaths helped push away some of the head pain. He needed focus to call forth his telekinesis power to control the scissors. Perfect weapon. This skill to move objects with his mind wasn’t inherently lycan, but instead a side effect of a paranormal chase gone wrong a few years ago. The scissors didn’t move for him.
Well, shit.
He wanted to lash out. Craved it. Fantasized about it. But his muscles remained unresponsive. He wouldn’t give these assholes the benefit of seeing him cower. As he smoothed his facial expression, he calculated the manner of death for all three humans once he had the information he sought.
A burst of water knocked him from behind, its cold a shock. The water’s purpose remained unclear, but obviously the collar was waterproof. Using a mop, they slathered him with some sort of perfumed body wash. Another blast of water rinsed him.
They wanted him clean and stinking of soap? Strange.
Bindings were lowered and unhooked from the wall. As he hit the ground, his legs held. Shaky but strong enough. Someone removed the bindings. Another chance to attack. Someone threw clothes at him.
All three humans smirked in a superior way that said they now had the upper hand.
The collar was about control.
“Dress,” he was ordered in German. “Move an inch toward us, and you’ll pay.” The speaker, a diminutive man dressed in a starched button-down shirt and khaki pants, held up a small black remote.
Ky stepped toward the man.Do it. Hit me with the collar.
Not knowing the collar’s capability was far worse than whatever pain it delivered. Couldn’t be more painful than the catastrophe going on already in his head.
Blinding electricity tore through him and dropped him to his knees. Different than a taser, but powerful enough to incapacitate him. It didn’t worsen the headache, but nausea kicked in.
No puking.
“Get on your feet. Dress. Disobey again, and I’ll crank up the settings,” the German said.
Stomach roiling, Ky managed to fit the hospital scrubs over the shackles in a deliberate manner to hide his shakiness. Cloth caught on his wet skin, making the clothes hard to get on. The fabric was too light to provide any sort of insulation in the frigid facility. He couldn’t make out the color of the material, since he was color-blind. Maybe red or green, but he couldn’t differentiate.
Someone pushed him. He froze at the uncalled-for force. With a direct-eye evil glare, he refused to move. Instead of activating the collar, the man jabbed him with the blunt end of the cattle prod straight into his stomach. It sent him backward—if he hadn’t been still buzzing from the electrical hits, it wouldn’t have moved him. His mid-lumbar spine struck a hook protruding from the wall.That broke skin.
In an instant, he punched back, which launched hisattacker across the room. The guy smacked against the wall and collapsed, unconscious. He could still hear the human’s heartbeat. Electricity tore through him from his neck again. He tugged at the collar, ineffective in removing the metal device. His body jolted convulsively until he was on his side on the ground. Guess this was level two. Although it sucked, he’d learned long ago how to compartmentalize physical pain. The use of potential pain as a deterrent didn’t work on him. Psychological pain, however, still got to him—the kind that used those he cared about or other mental weaknesses against him.
He didn’t remember getting back to his feet. Dragged and pushed, he moved down hallways until he heard deadbolts unlocking. He swallowed convulsively to prevent the vomit working its way up. A few clicks, and his armbands, even though not connected, disappeared. Someone leaned in and said, “Don’t transform. You do, and the collar will crank up to maximum.”
He should’ve done it. He should fight, but he concentrated on not spewing and not falling over. He despised weakness like this in himself, but more than that, he hated vomiting.
A solid push from behind landed him on his knees in a dark room with two cement benches and linoleum flooring.
With athunk,the door closed him inside the dark eleven-by-fourteen space, which was clean to the point of sterility. Light from two skylights and one red bulb on the wall barely illuminated the room. The skylight windows weren’t wide enough for him to fit through and too high to reach. He gauged time to be a bit after dusk. The storm outside provided little additional light.
Two deadbolts slid into place.
He pulled himself onto the closest concrete bench and slumped his back against the wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The need to heal, and sleep off the pressure inside his head, tugged hard. Cold from the concrete seeped through thefabric into his skin.
The smell in here…
That scent. He went on high alert.
In the midst of his agony, he sensed that on the other side of the room, on the far edge of the other bench in the shadows, sat something fresh. Something exquisite and exotic. Something forbidden.
Oh, hell.
Not good. He could imagine little to be worse on a full moon night. His brain could spin some doozy badness that they might have cooked up for him, but he’d never conceived of this.
He focused through the wet strands of his hair that obstructed his view.
