Jaylin was wasted, burned of all his energy. The small portions of meats that Gunner brought him weren’t enough. He was hungry in a way that felt like so much more than hunger—like something worse than death. An unstoppable gnawing that curled his insides, wasted away his resources.
He couldn’t give up now, though. He was almost there. He could see some kind of light in an intersecting path just ahead. Take a right. All he had to do was take a right. Then it was straight up to freedom.
He had to lay on his side and inch through the ninety-degree bend, and the longer Jaylin was trapped in these vents, the more he felt the sweat saturating his clothes, slicking his palms, and the hungrier he became, the most he pined for the taste of air. Fresh air. Real air.
Standing up once he’d reached the vertical vent was the hardest part. He had no footing—his feet, up to the ankle felt so raw, phantom—like they weren’t really there at all. Maybe they were numb from the struggle or maybe it was the curse growing, killing off his nerves.
Surprisingly though, it was easy to climb the tiny space once he’d started—only a matter of foot position and leg strength. Even if he couldn’t feel a damn thing, his arms still worked and his claws were sufficient grappling hooks. He held the walls with his sweaty palms, claws punching into the metal, feet pushing, back sliding inches up the ducts. Still, heat itched at his back, sweat tickled his temples. His hunger panged.
Reaching the arc of the vent’s exit, he could catch the nearly-full moon grazing along the treetops. He’d never seen a moon so red and menacing. A breeze licked his face and suddenly Jaylin remembered what he wanted so badly. Fresh air.
He rammed against the metal with his shoulder, again and again, and the grates gave out with a bang. They toppled over and rattled the rooftop, shrill like thunder. Too loud. Jaylin cringed and kept to the cover of the vent. But as he listened for a reaction, all he could hear was the rumble of engines—the trembling gate as it rolled open and the warble of wind in his ear. No one heard him, they couldn’t have under all the raucous. He pulled himself through the exit, inched along the flat rooftop, hidden behind the ledge raising.
The cold air blessed his skin, the taste of mist on his tongue. He looked to the moon and he laughed, laughed in liberation. He’d done it. Holy shit, he’d done it. He was almost there. He was almost home.
Jaylin looked across the courtyard, to the building west of him. This was the way to freedom. But his peripherals caught a turbulence in the people down below. Men were joining into vehicles, white-coats clustered at the gate, the squalor of combative walkie-talkies ricocheted from each corner of the grounds. The voices echoed from so many places at once, it was driving him mad.
He let himself rest there, flat on his back while he watched the stars whorl above. Once the air cycled through him, once the poison of that place was gone, he’d have the energy to keep going. He just needed to rest for a moment. Just a moment.
The stars were so open—so deep and dense and expansive. Wherever he was, it had to be a good distance from the city. They were the first welcoming thing he’d seen in days.
God. How his life had changed since the night in the cemetery. Tyler was the bane of him before.
He raised his arm, his claws long, ghastly and sharp as they cut black and wicked through the moonlight.
This was his bane now. The pain, the overpowering. The fear of what it was to do to him. Tyler seemed so small beneath it all, never so much as a passing thought. Four years a haunting, finally vanquished. Even if he were to die here, on this rooftop, Jaylin would go in peace knowing that.
But death was still a world away. He felt more alive than ever. And he had plans.
He arched up, reached into the waist of his shorts for the envelope and held it above him, thumbing flat the crumpled corners.
“I know you’re here,” he said to the stars. “And I know this is what you wanted me to tell him. That he wasn’t responsible for your death. Or for Nadaline.” A breeze chilled every sweaty inch of him and Jaylin shuddered. “I know you’re here, so help me. Help me get out and I promise I’ll tell him everything.”
He laid for a long moment, listening to the wind, watching the leering moon. His heart chanted in his chest with an eager resurrection, and he felt the energy build in him again.
He slung himself over the edge of the roof, hung by his hands until he found footing on a windowsill barely wide enough to stand. He lowered himself, slipped down to the next and then to the window below. And it was then that Jaylin realized his shoulder had stopped hurting. Maybe it had set itself back into place. Or maybe it was the curse in him, fixing his wounds at super-human speeds, like Quentin’s magic clay.
One last drop to the cement and it was like Jaylin had breached land for the first time, overwhelmed to feel the sturdy earth beneath his sea legs.
He stuck to the walls and crept, fearing the light too much to leave the shadows. Just around the corner of the building, men in white and men in black gathered into cars and trucks and SUVs. They were sent off by the guards who patrolled the gates, but the commotion of their departure was cover enough. Jaylin sprinted across the courtyard, swathed in the shadows and the all-deafening hum of the gargantuan trucks that rolled through. He reached the West building and threw himself behind the wall, his entire body in tremors, burning bright with adrenaline.
They’re on the second floor, just like you were, Gunner had told him. Look for the Biopsy lab. They’ll be right next door.
He would be brain dead to use the front entrance, that much Jaylin knew. There was no way that every single white-coat had taken off for the front gates when that alarm sounded. There had to be some safeguarding the insides.
He paced at the back of the building, where the second-floor office lights leaked into the darkness of night. He’d gotten down that way. Who’s to say he couldn’t get up?
On a whim, Jaylin reached for the bricks. His fingers dug into the gaps of the mortar and he was awed by how they clung to such a tiny space by the cuspate of his claws. He’d never been all that strong, but he propelled up the bricks, one arm’s reach at a time. A mountain climber with no rope.
Hauling himself onto the window sill, Jaylin peered through the glass. Just as expected, the room was empty. He saw no medical beds. But instead dozens and dozens of computer screens, forming a single wide wall of assorted images. Microscopes coated the counter, one after another—just beside hooks that dangled white lab coats and personal Jackets. The rest of the room was cluttered with equipment that Jaylin couldn’t comprehend the meaning behind—giant, monstrous machinery with the logo of the golden sun.
From outside the glass, he could still hear the sirens wailing, all three buildings harmonizing in the sound. He pushed to slide the pane up, pulled to see it if might open from the inside, but the window didn’t budge. He wasn’t sure it was even capable of opening. So Jaylin curled his heinous fingers into an even more heinous fist.
He hadn’t thrown a punch since the night he woke to Quentin, and even then, that was accidental. He hadn’t thrown a real punch in years, but Jaylin’s fist met the glass with so much force, it shattered in a single hit. If by chance the glass cut his flesh, he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel the pain of impact. He couldn’t feel anything and for once he loved it—he loved feeling invincible.
He pushed the glass in until he could fit through the hole he’d made. His gown snagged, ripping up the side. It didn’t matter. Once he was out of here, this thing was going up in flames.
And the cameras—the ones watching his every move—they didn’t matter either. Because as soon as he found them. As soon as he had the wolves and Olivia, he was gone. He didn’t care what became of Ziya or the people in this place. He just wanted to go home.
He swiped a lab coat from the wall and slung it on, just in case. No pants or shoes, but at least from behind, no one would be any the wiser. Then Jaylin checked his pockets, heart thrumming in his throat as he returned with a pass card. One issued to a Dr. Robert Good.
I’ll snag a card for you, Gunner had told him. It won’t be mine, but I’ll get you one. Check the coat rack by the door.
He wished he could return the favor. He wished he could get Gunner out of this mess. Maybe one day he’d come back for him.
Jaylin left the room, swung a sharp right and tugged the collar of his coat up to hide his face best he could. The door was just ahead of him. But it was different from the one he’d been detained to in the other building. It had no label, no number, no glass. It was made of metal, with a push-to-open bar, like the ones in his high school cafeteria. He swiped his pass card and shoved his way through, and then Jalin was standing in the corridor of a prison. At least, that was what it felt like.
Metal rods barred the entire length of the hallway in front of him, long, thick cylindrical metal from floor to ceiling. It was nothing like the place they’d kept him, and he wondered why. He saw how terrifying Olivia was. The sheer strength of her—how she rivaled a typical werewolf. How could glass possibly be stronger than metal?
He walked toe to heel along the cold cement, passing the wasted faces of hungry strangers, curled in the corner of their cells. There was only one that hung by the metal bars, and as Jaylin approached, the man perked.
“Christ,” he said, clutching the bars in two meaty fists. He looked older—maybe thirty, brawny and big with thick facial hair from the top of his lip to the apple of his throat. “You’re one of ’em. I smell it.”
One by one, the others rose; six of them in all. They waded to the metal like hungry fish to glass, watching him through the gaps in the bars.
“Who are you?” one asked, young and doe-eyed.
“A friend.” Jaylin swallowed. Hard. “I’m a friend.”
“Your hand,” another woman awed—blonde hair sheening in the lambency of the hanging lights. “Wow, look at his hands. It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? The bad moon?”
“Well shit,” another said, and Jaylin spun to look at him. This one was tall, with dark skin and a strikingly handsome face. When he grinned, Jaylin almost felt like smiling too. “Hurry up and let us out.”
Jaylin tapped his card to the reader of his cell, but it blinked red with a sound he’d he hadn’t been expecting. The kind of ugly, awful beep that said no, absolutely not.
Confused, Jaylin tapped it again. Still, it rejected with that angry sound.
“Some of them aren’t allowed to open our cells,” the younger girl said. “They have to have a special card.”
“Special clearance,” the bearded man grumbled and sunk down onto the edge of his cot.
“No.” Jaylin shook his head. “This isn’t happening.”
He tapped the card again, swiped it through the slot on the reader. Beep. Beep. No access.
“No, no, no.” He grabbed at his hair, ashy with dust from his crawl through the vents. “Goddammit, no! This wasn’t supposed to happen, Gunner didn’t say anything about clearance.”
Jaylin shoved the card in his pocket and took the bars in his hands, gave them a hard jerk. But the cell doors didn’t budge—they just rattled in protest and the sound was much too loud, so Jaylin gave up, dropped his heavy hands to his side. Then, for some strange reason, something told him to reach for them again. Jaylin wrapped his fingers around the cold metal and he pulled. Pulled with all his strength to bend apart the bars.
“Woah, man. Calm down,” the man’s handsome smile was gone now, replaced by something fretful. He reached through the bars to place a hand on Jaylin’s shoulder. “Unless you’re some kinda superman, it’s not happening.”
But Jaylin wouldn’t listen. He pulled until he felt his skull pulse. Pulled until he shook and sweat and his gargantuan arms trembled from the cruelty. And when that didn’t work, he tried again—harder. He pulled harder and harder, and then a growl—raw and savage, bellowed from somewhere deep inside of him. Slowly the metal started to bow. Both pieces bending away from another—one inches, two inches and then three inches until his hands gave out and Jaylin staggered back, dizzy and astonished at what he’d done.
The six others gaped at the sight—even the man in the cell, looking at the bars like the football-sized gap in them wasn’t real. He squeezed himself through the divide Jaylin had made, head straight, bars pressing crudely to either side of his temple, he popped his face through first and then rotated his slender body to follow; stomach sucked in as he slipped through gracefully slow, like a cat wedging free from a cage.
Once he stepped foot outside, he looked around the room to the others in wonderment. They all shared that face—like none of them expected this. None of them thought they’d ever be free of this place.
“They are strong,” the youngest of the women pressed to the bars of her cage, plump little lips agape. “Just like the legends.”
The bearded man released a breath. “Not that strong. Not strong enough to bend bars like these.”
“But he did,” she gazed in awe. “He did bend them.”
Jaylin went to her cell next. She was small—tiny enough that the bars hardly had to give by more than an inch before she was through. But by then, he felt so tired he couldn’t think, and his skull drubbed, indignant in his head.
He moved to the next despite himself, but he didn’t expect the others to join in at his sides. They locked onto the bars and pulled, and with their help, it was somehow so much easier. They freed the bearded man first—they needed the muscle. And with the three of them combined, the others were liberated from their cells in minutes.
And by the time the last bars were arched, Jaylin was on the ground. The world spun around him, and he stayed in place, his muscles twinging and his heart a turbulent storm in his ears, dappling his eyes in starry dark splotches. The others were crouched around him like he was some strange anomaly they’d never have the chance to see again. The youngest of the girls was studying his scaly arm, feeling the rough texture with her fingers. The others were baffled by the black that infested his neck and jaw. How it bled on like a living thing before their very eyes.
“Olly, help him up,” the bearded man said—at least he thought it was the bearded man. It was hard to see faces beyond the flashes in his eyes.
Olly must have been the boy with the handsome smile because he threw Jaylin’s arm around his neck and heaved him up to his feet.
“The rest of you, the moon is full enough that our best chance would be in form.”
“I don’t think I can turn,” the youngest said. “I’m too hungry.”
“You have to try. The sooner we’re out of here, the sooner we can eat.”
That was the last thing Jaylin heard. The lastthing he could think about before the world finally spun away from him.
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