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Creepy screams in rage and I do too. I lunge toward our Hyde, the shift rushing through me.
But another dart hits us, sending a second flood of tranquilizer into our veins. The effect is too strong and the darkness is too fast, and before Creepy or I make it another step, the combination sends us tumbling into oblivion.
Chapter 14
Zeb
The world returns in fits and starts, flashing scenes that make Ghastly want to rip our enemies apart, except we can’t escape the darkness in order to find them. People surround us only to vanish again. A rumbling sound fills our ears and a metal wall is in our face, and then both are gone. Bright lights flash. Glaring lights. Lights that make me want to recoil because they stab like needles in my eyes. My thoughts blur with Ghastly’s, and half the time, I can’t tell who is in control of our body.
And then I wake up.
Screeching sounds fill the air, erratic and interrupted by short bursts of a bug-zapper type of buzzing. Something clammy presses against my cheek, and it isn’t until my eyes focus that I see I’m lying on a rubbery floor with metal bars ahead. My entire body aches, from my scalp to my toes to my teeth, but I’m the one in control for the moment. Ghastly is still groggy inside my mind.
And then memory starts to return.
Mabel.
A flood of adrenaline and rage roars through my veins, propelling me to my feet.
I only make it halfway before my legs give out.
Crashing to my knees, I catch myself with an arm that’s stained green and purple like the hue of Ghastly’s tentacles. I ignore it, though. My eyes dart around the room, my vision blending with Ghastly’s to make the scene warp in a dizzying way.
But she’s not here.
And the rest is hell.
I’m inside a cage. Beastly lies in another one across the room, motionless, and I’m frozen for the moment it takes me to spot how—thank the gods—his chest is still rising and falling. He’s my family, and Huck and Puck are too, every bit as much as my parents and siblings and hopefully Mabel someday. If whoever grabbed us had killed him…
I shudder, pushing that nightmare aside. We’re in some kind of loading dock, complete with large rolling doors to my left and markings on the floor to caution workers not to get too close. There’s a pair of double doors to my right that look industrial too, but more like they lead into a building, while blindingly bright lights glare down from overhead, offering nowhere to hide.
Several yards to the right of Beastly’s cage, Puck is locked up as well, and he’s obviously the source of the screeching I heard when I woke up. Like a deranged hornet in a box, he’s ricocheting madly off metal bars that jolt him with electricity every time he hits them. Scrapes mar the concrete floor where his efforts have made the cage shift across the ground. Bloodstained bandages are taped haphazardly to the majority of his bullet wounds, though a few gauzy scraps lie scattered on the ground like he ripped them off in his rage. Trails of dried blood crisscross his deathly pale skin, but the wounds themselves have long since closed, joining the pockmarks of old burns and jagged scars from his past. He and Huck can take a hell of a beating before they go down—a fact the sick bastard who kept him like a toy used to his advantage countless times.
But right now, the new cage and the fact Mabel is gone have obviously driven Puck past the limit of whatever rationality he still possessed. And considering who I suspect our captors might be, what they’ll do to him if he doesn’t calm down makes panic begin pounding like a drum in the back of my mind.
“Puck.” I start to grab the bars and then retreat at the buzz of electricity there. “Puck!”
The Hyde can’t hear me. He’s too far gone.
Ghastly rises up, reacting to my fear and Puck’s alike, and it’s all I can do to wrestle him back down. Yes, this is bad. It’s so fucking bad that, if we make it out of here, I’m definitely going to have nightmares. But we have to be smart. Make a plan. Keep our heads so that we do get out, and so that we can fucking butcher the bastards who thought they could take Mabel from us.
Ghastly recedes. Not much, but enough that I can think beyond keeping him contained.
There’s no doubt in my mind traders are behind this. The fact they’ve got us here, in a motherfucking loading dock, only reinforces that suspicion. But I won’t let myself believe they’ve taken Mabel away already. No, she’ll be here, maybe in a different room, but here.
Which means we’ll find her. Gut anyone who touched her. And make sure we never let anyone near her again.
Puck flings himself full-body at the bars, screaming as they burn him.
But first things first. “Puck!”
Still nothing. But in his cage, Beastly stirs, pushing up from the ground and growling like the monster he is.
Puck scrambles up to fling himself at the bars again.
“Dammit, Puck!” I shout. “Stop!”
He’s not listening.
