24. Daphne

CHAPTER 24

DAPHNE

T he car came to a jolting stop, and once again, I was unable to brace myself for impact. This wasn’t the first time the car had moved like this since Missy had taken over as the driver. I had a feeling she didn’t know how to drive a stick shift, and once she got behind the wheel, things were anything but smooth. The jerking motions that plagued the rest of the ride made what little food and wine I had in my stomach slosh around nauseously. I was afraid of what might happen if I threw up while my mouth was taped shut, so I tried very hard to concentrate on my breathing and not think about anything that would set off my gag reflex. When she slammed on the brakes this time, however, I nearly lost control. I squeezed my eyes shut and drew in one deep breath after the next, praying to a god I wasn’t even sure I believed in.

Thankfully, I not only kept my dinner down, but the car didn’t move again.

Missy put the car in park and sighed happily. “We made it.”

She got out of the driver’s seat. The door to the back opened, and she grabbed me first by my pant leg. I was wearing thin pajama bottoms, though, so she couldn’t get a very good grip. She pulled as hard as she could, but I wasn’t budging. At this rate, she would sooner rip the pants from my body than move me an inch. Groaning, she gave up fairly quickly.

“Get up,” she snapped. I stayed perfectly still. “I said get up! I know you’re awake. You really don’t want to fucking test me right now.”

I huffed, unable to speak, and still didn’t move. She climbed into the car and rolled me over on my back. “Ah, yes. I forgot you had this one.” She smiled as she tore the piece of tape from my face in one quick move. “Now, what were you trying to say, dear?”

“I can’t fucking move,” I spat. “You drugged me and tied my hands behind my back, or did you forget?”

“Last I checked, your legs weren’t broken. Come on—get up!”

“No way. It’s not my fault you got in a fight with your muscle and don’t have the strength to lift me up. You should’ve thought about that before you let the guy walk away.”

She slapped me. It wasn’t too painful, but god, did it hurt my ego. There was nothing quite as humiliating as being slapped when your hands were tied behind your back, and you could do nothing to stop it. “I didn’t ask for your opinion. I told you to get out of the car!”

Again, I didn’t move.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll do this the hard way.” I watched Missy reach underneath the back seat and take out a solid black box with a little lock on the side. She laughed. “I don’t know why he bothers with this kind of thing. He has to know that I’ll figure out the code. It’s the same fucking one he uses for everything.” She spun the numbers around on the padlock, and it clicked open. From the box, she retrieved a shiny silver gun. She checked to make sure there were bullets inside the pistol, then switched the safety off and held it directly up to my forehead. The metal was cold, sending a chill down my spine.

“Are you ready to cooperate now?”

“You’re not going to pull that trigger. If you kill me, you won’t be able to sell me, and then you won’t get the money you’re so desperate for.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said with a gleeful look in her eye. “These black market sellers like to have live creatures, but they take pelts as well.”

“Pelts?” The words seemed so foreign at the moment, so disconnected from anything that I, as a human being, could comprehend. I didn’t know how to absorb this information.

“That’s right,” she said. “And based on the brown growing in at your roots, I bet you have some very pretty fur.”

“You still couldn’t kill me!” I tried to argue, even though I had no idea how any of this worked. “I’d be in human form.”

She clicked her tongue. “You really don’t know a fucking thing, do you? I can still take you out, right here, right now, and get the pelt. All I’d have to do is keep your body cold and your blood artificially flowing until the next full moon, and you will shift even if you are no longer alive. I wouldn’t make as much, but it would still very much be worth my time.”

There was no way to know whether or not this woman was lying, so I had to assume she wasn’t. If there were people out there running underground human zoos, then it really wasn’t that surprising that those people would also purchase the skin of a dead werewolf. I scowled and turned my head away from the gun, then, with great effort, I pulled my legs up into my chest and maneuvered my way out of the car.

The second my feet hit the pavement—I ran.

Three steps, four, five.

I only got maybe ten feet from the car when my knees gave out, and I fell hard on my side. I seethed, breathing through my clenched teeth like a cornered animal—which is exactly what I was. Missy sauntered up with a confident gait, and even though I wasn’t looking up at her, I was sure she was grinning.

“Nice try, but the drugs are still very much in your system, I’m afraid,” she said. “It’s going to be a long time before you’re able to walk on your own again, nonetheless run. So, no more escape attempts, okay? It’s only going to prolong the inevitable, and I really don’t have the energy to chase you around. Next time you try to take off, I’m just going to aim the gun at you, got it?”

She bent down beside me and hooked her hand underneath one of my arms. She hauled me to my feet. If I had been nothing but dead weight, she probably wouldn’t have been able to get me up, but I had fallen on a patch of gravel that was sharp, and it was digging into my already aching shoulder. Besides, I knew she wasn’t bluffing about pulling that trigger. If there was one thing I had learned from the few and far-between interactions I’d now had with this woman—it was that she was absolutely unhinged. There was no point in continuing with this power struggle. Missy tugged me toward what appeared to be an abandoned old schoolhouse. There was ivy crawling up the front of the building, and the front doors were hanging off their hinges. Surrounding the school was nothing but greenery. If it weren’t dawn, it would be pitch black because there weren’t even street lights on this road.

We were far enough from civilization that nobody would hear me scream.

“Come on,” she barked, trying to get me to move faster. “I don’t want anyone seeing us.”

“It’s like you said; the drugs are still in my system,” I reminded her as we stumbled along together. “Forgive me for not being very mobile.”

Inside the building, Missy brought me to a chair that had already been set up in the middle of what might have once been the great hall. There were ropes on the floor next to the chair legs, and on a table nearby, someone had laid out a series of instruments. I had no interest in finding out what they were used for.

Missy deposited me in the chair and immediately proceeded to tie me to it with the ropes. She was so quick with this work that I assumed it wasn’t her first rodeo. I tried to recall what she and that man had been talking about in the car—about what had been said regarding Missy’s previous ‘jobs.’

“How many innocent people have you brought here to be sold like fucking animals, huh? How many lives have you taken?”

“I resent the accusation,” Missy snipped. “I haven’t ever killed anyone.”

“That’s not what I meant. Sending someone to be in a fucking zoo is worse than killing them.”

“If you think you’re going to moralize your way out of this, you’re a lot stupider than I thought. It’s nothing personal. You’ve got something my buyer wants, and I need the money.”

“This is never going to work,” I said as she continued to tighten the knots. It was time to change tactics. “Someone is going to report me missing. They’ll launch an investigation. It’ll be a whole lot of attention. You fucked up when you tried to go to the next level, Missy. Your partner was right. You should’ve stayed in your lane.”

She pulled the ropes hard so that the cord dug into my skin. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’ll bet they’ve already got the police involved,” I added.

“Who? Who is going to report you missing?” she taunted. “Your family is hiding out overseas, you haven’t told anyone the truth about who you really are back in Solara Bay, and you’ve been so cold and secretive that there’s no reason for you to think the people of that town actually care about you.”

I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening. “How did you know about my parents?”

She laughed. “It’s my job to know everything about everyone, sweetheart. I knew who you were within twenty-four hours of meeting you. I learned all about your family, about the money troubles your parents found themselves in. It was honestly not that hard to figure out. You need to do an online cleanse if you’re going to keep trying to hide your identity. Although, I suppose it’s too late for that now.”

“Is that why you’re targeting me? Because of my family?”

“No, it’s the opposite, actually,” she mused. “When I found out who you were, that was my reason for initially taking you out of the running.”

“The running?”

“To be my mark,” she said. “I had a few different prospects when I first got to town. If you had just been another lost girl looking for a chosen family, I had an angle for that. I would’ve played up the maternal stuff and seen what there was to take from you once we built that trust. But then I met Al, and he told me about how he’s been saving money for such a long time… It just made a lot more sense to go after him.”

“You’re sick, do you know that?” I was so shocked by the casual tone she used to talk about such things. Some of the nausea I felt while driving reared its ugly head again. “Al is a good man. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“It’s not about who deserves what,” she corrected me. She stood up and inspected her handiwork, walking around the chair with a scrutinizing expression. She nodded, “That’ll do,” and went to go sit in the chair by the instrument table.

“Then what is it about? Why the fuck do you do this?”

She exhaled as if my questions were such a bother to her. “I could launch into some sad story about what I dealt with growing up, about all the things that happened to me that I didn’t deserve, but you don’t care. Frankly, I don’t even really care. I find the whole villain origin story is overdone. You’ve already made up your mind about me, and that’s that.”

“Damn right, I have!”

“Then what’s the point in beating a dead horse?” She was looking away from me now, absently playing around with a little metal knife on the table. I took her moment of distraction to try tugging at the ropes, binding my hands behind the chair. They were very secure.

“So what now?” I asked. “What are we doing here?”

“We’re waiting.”

“For what?”

“For my buyer to come pick you up,” she said. “He was kind enough to settle on a halfway point, and I’m expecting him in a couple of hours.”

“What are those for?” I motioned with my head to the table.

She smiled wickedly. “Oh, these? They belong to my buyer. It’s like my colleague said: these guys really like to have some proof before they hand over the money. They might not be able to get you to transform tonight, but there are other ways they can figure out you’re not human.”

“Are you saying they’re going to torture me? What is that going to prove?”

“I don’t recall using the word ‘torture.’”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Look,” she said. “It really won’t be so bad. They just have to be sure. You see, werewolves are rare, and there are only two ways a new one can be created. They are either born out of the union of two existing werewolves, or they are born out of a curse. If you're pure blood, they can check for that, and if you’ve got magic running through your veins, they’ll be able to see it using some of these tools.”

“And what if I’m neither?” I suggested. “What if your partner was right, and I’m not even a werewolf? Are you really willing to put your life on the line over something you overheard me say out of context?”

Missy gave me a look. “Don’t try to play that game with me, dear—I’m much better at it than you are.”

“I’m just saying, if you really did your research and you know so much about me, then you must’ve found out that I was a middle child. Not only that, but I was a middle child in a family that didn’t show much love or affection in the first place. Those types of people often grow up to be huge attention seekers. They’ll say anything—including making up elaborate stories—just to get someone to think they are interesting.”

She scoffed. “If only you had been playing the part of attention seeker in your daily life, then maybe I’d believe you. But you’re the definition of someone who wants to keep a low profile, all quiet and mysterious. And for someone hiding a secret like yours, I can’t blame you.” She picked up another tool and examined it in the sunlight that was streaming through the side window. It was finally morning. “If only you didn’t fuck it all up for a man.”

This comment sliced deeper than anything she’d said or done to me that entire night. I had nothing to say in response, which made the whole thing even worse.

“But you want to know the real reason I know you’re a werewolf?” she said, hesitating for effect.

I said nothing. I felt like she was laying a trap.

“It’s because I saw you,” she said with a smirk. “The night you shifted in town. I was smoking a cigarette behind the bar when all of a sudden, I heard this ear-shattering howl. A few seconds later, a furry creature the size of a fucking bear comes barreling around the corner and disappears into the dark. Now, naturally, this piqued my interest, but I wasn’t about to abandon my current plan until I knew for sure that I could get my hands on you.”

I bit the inside of my lip, feeling the blood rush to my face as a fiery combination of anger and fear fused inside of me.

“I had all but given up on finding out who the werewolf was,” she said. “Until I heard you talking to that townie. Not only did you come clean about what you were, but I learned that you were inexperienced and could only change on the full moon. That made capturing you a lot simpler, which is why I was able to jump into action right away.”

“If you saw me that night,” I said, looking down at my feet now because I couldn’t stand to meet her gaze. “Why did you let your partner think you had no other proof?”

“That was a little bit of improv on my part,” she said. “I could tell he was getting antsy and would bail if he thought things weren’t cut and dry. I needed his help getting you drugged and in the car, but after that, he was disposable. So I let him believe what he wanted to, let him walk away, and think he was doing what was best for himself. Now, this way, I don’t have to split the cash with anyone.”

As she talked, I once again tried to wiggle my fingers, hoping to loosen the ropes around my wrists. At first, nothing happened, but then I managed to get one of my fingers underneath a twist in the rope. I dug it in further and slowly started to undo one of the bigger knots. I couldn’t risk Missy noticing, however, so I had to keep her distracted.

“What about Al?”

“What about him?”

“Do you really not have any feelings for him at all? Was that also, how you say, a bit of improv?”

She cocked her head to the side and smiled. “I did like him. I admit that. Just because I was using him doesn’t mean I was immune to his charm and good looks. In another life, he’s the kind of man I would like to end up with. But he’s too innocent for me.”

“Obviously,” I grumbled.

“It’s a shame though,” she went on. “Because he did seem to really like me, and it’s been a long time since a decent man showed me much interest. As you can probably imagine, I don’t often run into sweet, sensitive guys in my line of work.”

I raised my eyebrows in response and continued to subtly work on the knot, which was now so loose I could almost pull my left hand free. “Is there really not even a single part of you that feels bad about using him?”

“I think I’m missing that part,” she said in all seriousness. “But don’t get me wrong. I’m not completely unfeeling. As I said, I liked Al. I still do.” She laughed cheerily. “Maybe, if I make enough money selling you, I can retire from this life and go settle down with him for real. He would never have to know.”

“You really think he won’t find out?”

“People don’t ask questions they don’t want to know the answers to.” She looked out the window thoughtfully. “So yes, I do think I could get away with it if I wanted to. But no. I’m not ready to give this up.”

With her looking the other way, I wrenched my arm upwards and pulled my hand out of the bind, only she caught the movement out of the corner of her eye.

“Oh no, you don’t.” She got up and ran to my side. I swiped my arm wildly, but she was in a much better position than me and easily dodged me. I only got one or two hits on her, and they weren’t nearly hard enough to slow her down. She reached into her boot and took out a little glass vial of clear liquid. “Looks like your body is fighting off the first dose faster than I thought it would. No problem. That’s why I always bring extra.” She waited until my arm was in the right position, then kneeled her knee onto my lap, pinning my forearm against my leg with so much force I feared she might break the bone.

“The less you struggle, the faster I’ll get off you.”

She grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head backward over the back of the chair. I refused to open my mouth at first, but she pinched my nose closed so that I didn’t have a choice. It was either that or suffocating. My mouth fell open almost against my will, and she brought the vial up to my lips. She was at the wrong angle for me to hit her, but I did whatever I could to knock the chair over. Missy was stronger than she looked, and soon, I had to face the music. She was going to drug me again, and the next time I woke up, I would probably be in some human cage.

This was it. This was the end of my life as I knew it.

I closed my eyes and succumbed, feeling the first drop of the liquid hit my tongue.

Then the doors to the abandoned school burst open, flying the rest of the way off their hinges, and a wolf the size of a small car came barreling into the room.