Page 1 of Lost and Bound
Chapter 1
Together
When they didn’t take me out of my cell for a few weeks, I knew my time was up.
Or maybe it was a couple of months. I’d long since stopped bothering to scratch marks into the walls of my cell—or into my own flesh, since I healed too quickly and the entertainment value of hurting myself paled after a while.
There’d been that time a while back…sometime, in the past…when I hadn’t healed. When I’d clawed my own arm and then watched, glazed and still too sedated to care, as the blood didn’t stop welling up. That had been after one of the trips to the lab.
And that had lasted for a few weeks. Maybe.
And nowthishad lasted for a few weeks, maybe, the guard only opening the door once a day to slide in some food and maybe a sliver of soap or a roll of toilet paper, and then slamming it again without saying a word to me.
My cell had concrete walls and a concrete floor, a mattress in one corner and a toilet and sink in the opposite one. The concrete had a hairline crack to the left of the door. It split into a Y-shape near the end.
It was by far the most interesting thing in the cell, and I’d examined it in detail, day after day, staring until the light from the slits along the top of the other wall faded away, and I had to imagine the crack there, tracing it in my mind over and over.
Some days, I’d thought about getting a tattoo of the shape of that crack if I ever got out.
I knew I wouldn’t be getting out.
Either they needed me for something—the endless vials of blood, the occasional injections that left me itchy or screaming or unable to heal, or once, shifting back and forth from wolf to man over and over again within minutes, uncontrollably, until I didn’t know my own skin and could only scream in both my voices until I lost consciousness—and they wouldn’t let me go, or…they didn’t need me anymore.
Footsteps echoed distantly from the hallway.
I looked up from my lap, where I’d been idly contemplating the shape of my knuckles. Gloomy gray light filtered in, so it was still barely daytime. Whatever that meant. Not food time, though. That had already come and gone.
My heartbeat started to lift out of its usual slow tempo, skittering into an unsteady reel. I’d thought the prospect of death didn’t matter to me anymore, but apparently my body disagreed.
The footsteps stopped; the door opened. Two guards stood partially framed in the doorway, the blond one who usually didn’t hit me and the bald one who usually did. No matter what I’d tried, I’d never been able to get either of them, or their several equally laconic colleagues, to give me a name.
“Get up,” the blond said.
I got up. Slowly, though, or as slowly as I dared, anyway. There was a fine line between pissing them off and not rushing to get my throat slit. My heart pounded away, double-time.
“Sometime this fucking year,” Baldy grunted.
My feet felt numb, but I got on them and crossed the cell to the door. The blond took me by the elbow and tugged me out and along the hallway, the concrete out here rougher against my bare soles than in the floor of my cell. Maybe from all the jackbooted assholes marching around out here and scuffing it up.
The hallway lacked windows, but dim fluorescents hung at intervals along the ceiling. One of them kept flickering. I resisted the urge to fight, to struggle, to try for a few more minutes of living. It wouldn’t matter, and I’d end up beaten or tased into unconsciousness. I’d never even see how they were going to end me. Somehow that seemed worse than at least knowing how I was going to die, for the few seconds between finding out and actually, you know, dying.
Blondie led me to the left, and I stumbled, my legs trying to carry me the other way. The labs were to the right, along the hallway and up the stairs. I’d been heading that way on autopilot, even though every time I’d been there I’d been some combination of bored, hurt, and terrified.
But we went left, and the bald guard fell in behind us.
The urge to fight hit me again. A couple of years—I thought? But I couldn’t be sure—of living in that cell, alternately experimented on and ignored, had left me thinner and weaker than I’d been. But werewolves were resilient, and I’d started off tall, muscular, and able to fight.
I could still fight.
Except that every time I’d fought, I’d lost. They had weapons, and these guards might not smell like much except the sharp, acrid tingle of magic that obscured their natural scents, but they weren’t human. They were stronger than me, and armed. I’d lose again.
I walked down the hallway, the blond’s grip on my arm firm but short of punishing. He knew I wouldn’t run. He knew I wouldn’t fight.
Somehow, paradoxically, that drained the last of the impulse to fight right out of me. I didn’t used to be like that. I used to be a contrary bastard.
We reached the end of the hall, and Baldy pushed past me to put his hand against a panel set into the wall by a metal door that stank of magic. The panel glowed faintly purple for a moment, and a heavy thunk and click echoed from inside the door.
The blond pulled it open. The room beyond lay in murky shadows, and I could only see a glint of something metallic. He shoved me through, and I stumbled and tripped a few steps inside.
