The Wolf Within (Purgatory 1)

That was the question she’d hoped he wouldn’t ask. In the back of her mind, she’d wondered if Pate wanted to completely eradicate all of the vampires by making them human again. No choices. Just a cure.

“Pate was holding back on me.” Anger beat in Shane’s words.

Now she was the one to grab him. Her fingers locked around his arms, and she forgot her fear. “Wouldn’t you go back, if you could?”

“Hell, no,” he said with absolute certainty. “Why do that? I’ve got more power than most can ever imagine. I don’t age. I don’t die. I can control any human I want. I’m not decomposing in a grave. I’m not—”

“But everyone around you will die. All of those you love.” Her fear.

A muscle jerked in his jaw. “When I find someone to love, you can bet that I won’t let her die.”

There was a cold promise in his words.

She believed that promise. “What if she doesn’t want to live forever?”

He didn’t speak.

Maybe he didn’t have an answer for that question.

“Look, Shane, I need—”

The lights flickered over them. Flickered, then flashed off as the room sank into darkness.

She jerked away from Shane.

“What the hell?” His footsteps shuffled away from her.

“The generator will switch on,” she assured him, fumbling as she made her way to the desk. Vampires didn’t have enhanced vision like werewolves. They couldn’t see in the dark. Unfortunately. Vampires were physically strongest during the time when their vision was weakest.

When the sun rose, their strength depleted. That was why she tried to sleep during the day and spend all of her late nights in her lab.

From a few feet away, Shane swore. She heard a bang, as if he’d run into something.

Seconds ticked by, and the generator didn’t come back on.

It should have come back on. Protocol was that the generator automatically took over power control in five seconds.

It had been thirty seconds. She’d counted every second.

“It’s not coming on,” he muttered. He was farther away now, a good ten feet by the sound of things.

Then, before she could speak, Holly heard a howl. A long, angry howl that seemed to shake the building.

“Connor said that Duncan would lose everything,” she whispered. And Connor’s pack of wolves had attacked the facility before. Were they doing it again?

She rushed for the door. Rushed for Duncan.

But found herself caught in Shane’s tight grip.

***

The lone light in the room shut off. The darkness came, surrounding him. Duncan lunged forward instinctively. His hands slammed into the wall. The silver burned him, and he yanked back his hands.

He remembered another time. Another place.

More darkness.

More walls that held him inside.

Only then…then there had been blood, too. The wet blood that had slid under the door.

Help me! Duncan!

He’d heard that cry, but hadn’t been able to help.

Because…

His hands lifted again. Slammed into the door. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, adjusted so quickly, and he could see clearly now. When he’d been blinded before…

I couldn’t help because I was already in the closet. She locked me in.

The screams for help had been coming from outside of the closet. From outside, where his mother had been dead.

Where his brother had watched her die?

A howl echoed from deep in the facility. Long, angry.

The beast in him wanted to respond.

He wanted out of that room.

Out of the darkness.

His fists pounded into the door. The silver burned, but he kept pounding. Kept pounding.

Help me! The scream that he could still hear.

The door wasn’t giving. The collar around his neck f**king burned.

Collared. Like an animal.

Because he was.

The silver bit into his skin, burned hotter as if…as if someone had increased the intensity.

His hands rose to his neck. Clawed against the collar. The silver was hotter, and the collar was tightening around him.

Now he knew why the other wolf had howled.

He was crying out, too, screaming and howling in fury.

Because some bastard was torturing him in the dark. And that torture, it drove the man back, even as the beast clawed for his freedom.

Chapter Nine

“Let me go!” Holly yelled as she fought against Shane.

“I’m supposed to keep you safe!”

But there were more howls now. And those cries…they didn’t sound like the beasts were attacking.

It sounded as if the beasts were being attacked.

“They’re hurting!” Holly told him. “Duncan could be in trouble!”

“And you have to save him?”

“Yes, I do.” She kicked him as hard as she could. Considering her vamp strength, it was pretty damn hard. “Now let me…go!” She head-butted him.

He barely grunted, and his hold just tightened. “Werewolves can see in the dark. The moon is full tonight. They’ll be at full strength—”

More howls. More pain. More suffering.

He had to hear their agony. “Don’t you get it? Someone is hurting them!”

“Like the collars they wear don’t hurt?” His cold tone mocked her. “What do you think has been happening during all of their containment time?”

“The collars don’t make them scream like that, not unless…” she broke off, then whispered, “not unless someone has increased the intensity of the silver.”

“Someone who hated the wolves? Bet we got a long list of folks like that at the facility. Especially after the last attack when so many human guards died.”

Someone could want payback. Revenge.

She wrenched free. Stumbled back to her desk. Holly found the collar remote that she had locked in her top drawer. “If you won’t let me leave this room alone, then you take me to Duncan.”

“Now that’s a better plan.” Then his hand was on her elbow as he steered her out of the med unit and through the hallway. With every step, the howls become louder. But even though the howls were wild and desperate in their intensity, they were the only sounds that she heard. There were no shouts from the agents and guards who should have been on duty that night. No rushing footsteps as people went to check on the prisoners.

What the hell?

Just howls. So many howls.

Duncan, hold on.

Because she knew he was trapped in that darkness. Trapped as he’d been before, when he’d been just a child.