Connected: Chapter 8 (Patreon)

Chapter 8

Abby

Kyla was doubled over, on her knees on the floor of her bedroom and clutching at her head. Fifteen seconds ago she’d stopped looking over my shoulder at the desk to mumble ‘what the hell?’ because she felt something. Someone. An unfamiliar someone that she’d never met had forced themselves into her connection with Camille. Then she’d screamed with the first twinge of pain, and now her teeth were clenched, holding back further cries of agony and muffling them to weak whines. It didn’t look like the same forced Change that Luna had gone through, and Kyla’s thoughts were nothing similar, but I still hesitated. I stood a few feet away, debating whether it was safe to try and help her or if I should go and get someone else.

In the end, my extreme concern won out, and I rushed to her side. “Kyla?” I was a telepath, not an empath, but sometimes emotions and feelings had such sway over the mind that I couldn’t ignore them. Her agony was so bad that I was cringing as I set my hand on her back. It was something about her connection with Camille, that was the only thing resembling a thought I could read. It was the only thought she could even think over the exploding pain in her head. I’d never seen anything like this, and with the experiments happening on Camille, and Kyla’s inability to think anything coherent, my fear was real. What was happening to cause such pain in the connection? What if this was what happened when the connection was severed? What if that meant the worst? “I don’t know what to do,” I whimpered, and I didn’t expect Kyla to be able to answer, but I felt lost and helpless.

But just as tears sprang to my eyes, it faded. The stabbing pain stopped and she stopped mewling. She stayed there panting as she recovered, and I did my best to let her process her thoughts without bombarding her with panicked questions. Camille was alive. That thought was the first, and it sent relief flooding through me. She was alive, and though Kyla couldn’t feel much beyond that, their connection was intact. Despite not knowing what had caused the pain, that made Kyla feel better, and she straightened up onto her knees to sit back on her feet.

“I’m alright,” she breathed, but she was still recovering. Her head still ached and she was still breathing heavily.

I scooted around to the front of her, my eyebrows furrowing with worry. “Your nose is bleeding.” I wrapped my arm around her waist and guided one of hers around my shoulders, and then helped her to her feet and to the dresser. She leaned back against it while I let her go to grab a tissue from the box on a nightstand. “Here,” I said, handing it to her.

She took it and held it beneath her nose while her green eyes met mine. She was thinking the same things I was – she was confused and relieved and worried all at the same time. Neither of us knew what to say about what just happened, so I wrapped my arms around her neck and pulled her into me, and her head fell weakly against my shoulder.

“We have to stop this,” she murmured. “Whatever they’re doing in that lab, we have to stop it before they kill her.”

“She’s okay, right?” I asked.

Kyla lifted her head off my shoulder, and I let her go and leaned away to look at her. Her eyes were gleaming with tears. “I don’t know,” she said. She wiped away the last of the blood from her nose and lowered her hand. “She’s alive, but I can’t feel her like normal and I don’t know.” Her bottom lip quivered, but she held back a cry even though a tear ran down her cheek. “I hate this.”

“It’s okay,” I said soothingly, pulling her into another hug. “She’ll be okay. She’s the toughest marshmallow I’ve ever met.”

Kyla let out a teary laugh as she squeezed me around the middle. “What kind of marshmallow is tough?”

“The complicated and angsty kind,” I teased. “The Camille kind. You know she’ll survive in there just to see the looks on their faces when we show up to bust her out.”

She gave another soft laugh, sniffling as she set her forehead against mine. "Thank you for staying. Without Camille, and with Luna messed up… I couldn’t do this alone.”

“You could,” I told her, reaching up with both hands to cup her face and thumb away the tears. “But you don’t have to.”

She smiled gratefully as her eyes met mine, and my heart skipped because she was close. Close enough to kiss, and the idea flashed through her mind at the same time it did mine. Without another thought, I dropped my hands and took a step back, because we were edging on too intimate, and those were lines we wouldn’t cross. And that was all it took. The end of touch and the increase of space, and neither of us needed to say anything else about it. Neither of us wanted to say out loud that sometimes restraint was painful. Neither of us wanted to hurt Camille when she was already comfortable with us doing so much. As much as restraint hurt, it would’ve hurt worse not to be around at all.

The chiming from her laptop on the desk was a welcome distraction. I wandered over to look at it, telling her, “Archives found a match on Butcher.”

Kyla strode over to resume standing beside me. “Who is he?”

I dropped down into the chair, scrolling through the digital file while reading. “Real name Arthur Errol. PhD in bioengineering, suffered a partial spinal fracture from a werecat attack.”

“Where’d he get the name Butcher?” Kyla asked.

I skimmed further, quirking an interested eyebrow. “Apparently in his search for a cure for his injury, he found ways to harvest the abilities of supernaturals without turning. Council got wind of him after reported supernatural kidnappings, and found the dissected bodies of different species in his basement.”

Kyla shuddered. “They never caught him?”

“Not according to my records,” I answered.

“Well now he’s got Camille,” she said. “We ain’t letting him get away this time.”

There was another chime from a background process on the laptop. “Things might be looking up,” I said. “We got a hit on Silmond’s cell phone.” Brian Silmond. The Council employee that she'd recognized. “Looks like he’s at Secret Seagull.”

“What’s that?”

“Some seedy dive bar across town,” I answered.

Kyla cocked her head, listening through the walls for the sound of Luna’s snarls. I hadn’t been able to hear the noise since we’d entered her room, but she had. “I think it’s over,” she said, grabbing the medical kit off the bed. “We’ll make sure Luna’s fine, and then we’ll go after Silmond.”

I nodded, following her out into the hall and a couple of doors down to Luna’s room. She went in just long enough to gather some fresh clothing, and then headed down the stairs to the first floor, and then down into the basement. Luna was human again, naked and passed out on the floor amongst the debris of plastic and fluff from the cell’s bed. Her shoulders were so raw from the silver in the bars that they were bleeding, and parts of her arms were irritated too. She’d also cut a spot on the back of her ribs on a broken piece of metal from the bed, but luckily it wasn’t too deep.

Kyla set the clothes and med kit on the table and grabbed the key to the cell. After opening it, she squatted down at Luna’s side. “Luna?” she murmured, but Luna was so deep in sleep that it didn’t wake her. “Luna,” she said, louder, “wake up.”

Luna stirred and her eyes fluttered open, but no sooner had she regained consciousness than her torso heaved with a gag. She threw herself up and vaulted out of the cell to the only trash can in the basement, reaching it just in time not to vomit on the floor. She’d thrown up after the first time too, but this time was worse because of the silver, and she stayed slung over the bin, hurling, while Kyla and I waited.

“Screw everyone,” she panted when she was done, falling onto her back on the floor, “that had anything to do with this serum. I hope they all choke on a dick.”

“You’re definitely you again,” I mused. She grunted an acknowledgment and flipped me the finger. “…but grumpier.” She groaned and rolled over onto her stomach, and I refrained from teasing her anymore because she was miserable.

Kyla offered a hand to help her up, and the moment Luna was on her feet, Kyla started pressing into the back of her shoulder. “What are you doing?” Luna asked, taking the jeans I handed her.

“Checking for a dosage microcapsule,” Kyla said, stopping just long enough for Luna to pull the pants on. “We think the dart put it in you.” She thought she felt something, and gestured for me to check too.

I pushed my fingers into the skin below Luna’s shoulder, where Kyla had been searching, and moved them around. “Yeah,” I said, finding the pebble-hard lump. “It’s there.”

“What?” Luna reached back to feel for herself. There was bite of fear and a mental whimper in her head, but she did an outstanding job of keeping it off her face. For being so different from Camille, sometimes their similarities still surprised me – Camille wouldn’t have wanted to show the fear either, they just dealt with it differently. “Yep, screw all of them. I’m going to put a boot up every one of their asses. What do we do?”

Kyla winced, telling her reluctantly, “I think we have to cut it out…”

“Oh, come on,” Luna whined.

“You’ll get another dose if we don’t,” Kyla explained, “and Camille said it’s permanent after three.”

Luna’s face paled. “Like hell I’m going through that for the rest of my life.” She turned toward the table and grabbed the nearest book, sticking the spine edge into her mouth to bite down on it and bracing herself to let us know she was ready.

Kyla reached across the table, grabbing the pocket knife Wes had let us borrow earlier. She was dreading having to do this, but someone had to, so she took a deep breath to steel herself for the task. “Ready?” she asked. Luna nodded, her fists clenched in anticipation.

Kyla dug the sharp point of the blade into Luna’s shoulder, slicing a deep opening. Luna growled around the book between her teeth, but her thoughts were screaming with pain, and the first sight of blood was too much for me. I couldn’t listen to her tortured thoughts and watch it at the same time. I turned away from it so I wouldn’t have to see. And god, I wished I could tune out their thoughts, because I still caught a graphic visual of every step. Kyla sticking her index finger and thumb into the wound she’d carved, digging around to look for the capsule and then pulling it out.

When it was over, Kyla dropped the capsule onto the table, pressing a towel to the cut when Luna collapsed onto the surface. I refused to look at the bloody capsule or towel or knife while Luna struggled to get over the pain, and tried to focus instead on the debris in the cell.

“You okay, Abs?” Kyla asked, pulling items out of the med kit with her free hand.

"You've been cut worse than this,” Luna pointed out.

I glanced down at the rune scar on the inside of my right arm, a symbol that had been cut with a knife much bigger than the one Kyla just used. Maybe that was why I couldn’t watch. Why it almost made me sick. Because I knew exactly what Luna felt. “I’m fine.”

Kyla’s eyes scanned my face, making sure my words were true before she resumed patching Luna up. She sealed the wound with a butterfly bandage and then covered it with gauze and tape. “We found another lead,” she told Luna. “A Council employee who was there when Camille got taken. You should be safe around us now if you want to come.”

“Damn right I do,” Luna agreed.

Kyla pulled a large alcohol pad from the kit. “This is gonna hurt.” When Luna nodded, she wiped the pad over both her shoulders, cleaning all the dried blood from the silver burns.

Luna growled some more through the pain, grunting and murmuring, “I hate you so much right now.”

Kyla smiled and said, “Consider this payback for earlier.”

That got Luna to straighten up a bit, and she glanced toward Kyla’s back with a flood of guilt. “How bad was it?”

“Some stitches.”

“Shit, Kyla,” Luna sighed, “I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t your fault,” she said, and placed two large bandages over the worst spots on Luna’s shoulders. “And I would’ve pinned you if I wasn’t so worried about hurting you.”

Kyla’s teasing eased some of Luna’s remorse, and she laughed, “You keep telling yourself that.” She let Kyla bandage the cut on her side too, and then pulled on the bra and t-shirt that were on the table. “When are we leaving?”

“Soon as you’re ready,” Kyla said.

“I’m ready.”

“Are you sure?” I asked her. “We have GPS on his cellphone if you need to rest or eat.”

She was exhausted and not at full strength, griping mentally with every movement that ached her sore body. Knowing I was reading her, she smirked and teased, “Don’t start worrying about me, wolf lover, or I’ll think you have a crush on me too.”

“You’re lucky you’re recovering,” I quipped, “or I’d kick your ass.”

“Your loss,” she shrugged, starting for the stairs, “we all know I’m the better-looking twin. Just don’t get any ideas about foursomes.”

“Shut up,” I hissed, casting a wary glance over my shoulder at Kyla as I followed Luna out of the basement. Kyla was laughing at the exchange, but fortunately for me, she wasn’t taking Luna’s words seriously. So maybe Luna had heard things… but I was seriously going to kick her ass if she brought it up again.

Luna was still laughing to herself, but as we headed out the front door, she asked, “What’s the plan?”

I looked at Kyla for instruction, but she gestured at me and said, “You’re the one who knows tactical stuff.”

I climbed into the driver’s seat of the Pack truck while Kyla got in on the passenger side and Luna slid into the back. The sun was already going down as we pulled away from the Pack house, and it’d be dark by the time we reached the Secret Seagull. “We’ll go in,” I said, “find him, and try to talk to him. If he doesn’t want to talk, we’ll leave and follow him somewhere that we can grab him.”

“What if he recognizes us and bolts?” Luna asked.

“Then we chase him,” I said.

“…And what if we grab him and he doesn’t want to talk?” she asked a bit more hesitantly. “Or if he’s really good at not thinking about it so you can’t read him?” There was a lengthy pause, awkward enough to give away what she was asking even if I couldn’t hear her thoughts.

“We’re not torturing him!” I exclaimed, disgusted with the very idea of it. But in the next few seconds of silence, Kyla thought that, if all else failed, she might have to. “You’re not torturing him!”

“I didn’t say I would,” she said.

“You thought it,” I protested.

“I considered it,” she argued. “That don’t mean I actually could.”

Silence fell as we all realized that we didn’t know what we’d do if Silmond didn’t want to talk. None of us were capable of forcing information out of him. Kyla and Luna had never killed or hurt anyone when it wasn’t self-defense, and they didn’t want to. They’d never been aggressors, and even though I did have blood on my hands, I could barely stand the sight of it being drawn. I wouldn’t be able to hurt someone either.

“Camille would do it,” Luna said, so quiet it was almost a whisper. “If one of us was missing… she’d do it…”

She wasn’t volunteering, but she was right. Camille would do it. She’d do whatever she needed in order to make sure we were safe. She’d do it even if it’d be another crushing weight on her shoulders. Even if she’d hate herself for it afterward. But none of us could even seriously think about doing it, and that kind of felt like we were failing her.

“Camille ain’t here,” Kyla murmured.

None of us said anything else for the rest of the drive. Twenty minutes later, we were parking in the dingy, pothole-ridden lot at the side of a bar that looked as equally run-down. It was on the outskirts a block over from a shopping strip in town, close enough for there to be people walking the street, but far enough that we could kidnap Silmond without causing a stir if we needed to.

The bar itself was paneled with wood that all the paint had peeled off of, revealing splinters underneath that looked old and gray in the few hanging lights that dotted the exterior. It was dark out now, but the windows of the building were blacked out so that the only reason we could tell it was even open was the neon sign hanging in one of them, and the dim light filtering from the tilted screen door at the entrance. At least it was the kind of place it didn’t seem we’d get carded the moment we walked in.

We got out of the truck and wandered into the bar, sitting down at the closest table to the entrance so we could scout it out. A few of the patrons looked at us when we walked in – a couple throwing darts on the far side, a woman facing the door at the opposite end of the counter, and one guy sitting at the counter near to us, who tapped his buddy on the shoulder so he turned around too. Both of them were too old to be giving second glances to girls our age, and they thought things I immediately tried to tune out. Things that made me hate being a telepath and caused me to track every one of their movements. The rest of the patrons weren’t interested, including a guy sitting on the other end of the bar at a booth, facing away from us to watch a hockey game on a TV mounted in the corner.

“Is that him?” Kyla asked, taking the seat at the round table beside mine.

“I think so,” I answered.

“So we go over there and sit down with him?” Luna asked, dropping down across from us.

I nodded. “You slide in next to him to keep him there, Kyla and I will sit across from him.”

“Can I play bad cop?”

Kyla laughed, “You always want to play bad cop.”

“Because I’m good at it,” Luna grinned.

“Try not to intimidate him yet,” I said. “Let’s see if he’ll talk first.”

Luna shrugged her consent, and I was about to lead the way in standing and heading over when those two guys I’d been tracking left their seats. They were too close for us to be up and gone by the time they reached us. The one who’d first seen us when we walked in squatted down on the opposite side of Kyla as me, and his friend stood across the table next to Luna.

“Ladies,” the first one said, setting his arm over the back of Kyla’s chair.

"No," I said preemptively.

He just laughed and asked anyway, “Can we get you anything?”

He slid his hand onto Kyla’s shoulder, and the unwelcome touch shot a wave of fear and disgust straight through her. A shudder of tension went up her spine, carrying with it the rippling itch of a defensive Change. She shouldn’t have to put up with it in the first place, but the last thing we needed right now was her panicking enough to Phase. Not to mention the thoughts fluttering through his head made me seethe.

I snatched his hand off her shoulder, twisting it backward so it pulled his joints the wrong direction. “Touch her again and I’ll break your nose.”

If he touches me again, he loses the hand.

“Breathe,” I whispered, barely moving my lips and only loud enough for Kyla and Luna to hear. Luna was tense in her seat, ready to react if she had to.

“Come on,” the guy said with a grimace, shaking out his arm when I let him go, “don’t be a bitch.” And I knew what was coming. I was five foot three and unassuming, he didn’t take my threat seriously and he definitely didn’t think I’d be able to hurt him. He started raising his arm to return it to Kyla’s seatback as he said, “We just want to buy-”

I shot out of my chair before he could finish or put his hand on Kyla again. I leaned over Kyla to grab the back of his head, pulling him forward and smashing his face down on the surface of the table. At the same time, Luna twisted in her seat, kicking the back of his friend’s legs while she pushed on his chest, laying him out on his back before he could retaliate.

Blood dripped onto the table as the man I’d hit staggered backward, clutching his face. “You broke my fucking nose!”

“Trust me,” I spat, “that was for your own good.” The woman playing at darts across the bar snorted with laughter and clapped. The bartender didn’t look amused… but at least that was mission accomplished. Creep number one was in too much shock to be thinking about getting back at me for it.

“Guys,” Luna said with urgency, “he’s making a break for it!”

I glanced back just in time to see Silmond disappear out the door at the opposite end of the bar. Guess he didn't want to talk. All three of us took off running, leaving the two creeps behind. We bolted through the door to the outside, stopping to look up and down the alley, but he'd already gone around a corner.

"Which way?" I asked.

Both of them inhaled a breath through their noses, saying at the same time, "This way," and taking off to the right.

I followed behind them as we navigated the dark alleys back out onto the street, catching sight of him sprinting up an empty sidewalk.

"Can I play bad cop now?" Luna asked, not losing pace as we chased after him. I breathed an affirmative, and she didn't waste a second to call after him, "We just want to talk to you!" He glanced back in panic. It caused him to stumble, letting us gain a good ten yards on the thirty we were behind, but he kept going. "If you stop now, I'll let you keep most your teeth!"

"Like that'll work," I huffed.

"I said most of them," Luna protested.

"Luna," Kyla said, "go left to cut him off, we'll try to herd him toward you."

Luna veered down another alley while Kyla and I continued after him, and times like this made me grateful for the cardio I did semi-regularly, because I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with them without it. I was already panting, but I followed her to the right, where we ran in the street in a good position to cut him off if he tried to cross. He glanced back as he reached a corner, and he must not have noticed Luna was missing, because he dashed left around it.

When Kyla and I rounded that same corner seconds later, he was nowhere in sight. That didn't slow us down. We dashed up the street, Kyla keeping her eyes and ears alert for any sign of change or some signal from Luna. It was so quiet on the dark road that the echoing thuds of our footsteps and my heavy breathing were the only sounds, and that was probably why I noticed we were no longer following Silmond's trail at the same time as Kyla did.

Just as we were passing an alley, I caught a faint voice urging us to keep going, keep going, and the moment I processed that voice as Silmond's thoughts and slowed down, Kyla noticed that his scent had stopped. She skidded to a halt, grabbing me by the wrist to help me turn mid-momentum as she immediately picked up speed again. We flew into the alley, and Silmond darted out of his hiding spot behind a dumpster when he heard us coming. We already had too much speed for him to outrun us this time. He still tried, but the moment it was clear that we were going to catch him, he stopped.

He turned, pulling his hand out of his coat pocket, and we were going too fast to stop right away. It wasn't a gun or a weapon, but all I could hear from his frantic thoughts was that he wanted to scare us and get us off his tail. As we stumbled to a stop, he raised his hand with the glass vial in his grip and then brought it crashing down. The glass shattered on the cement before our feet, releasing a cloud of black dust that seemed to thicken in the air. We reeled backward as he turned to keep running, but Kyla was determined to follow no matter what.

"Luna!" she hollered to give away our location, throwing herself forward through the slowly dissipating cloud.

I rushed after her, but we hardly got five feet before Kyla glanced back to make sure I was with her. Only, what she saw when she looked back was such a shock that she gasped, tripped over her own feet, and went rolling across the cement from the momentum.

"Kyla?" I sprinted to her side, more worried about her than I was about Silmond. We'd find him again if she was hurt, and from the burst of pain, it seemed like one of her stitches tore. I knelt and reached out, but the moment I touched her, she snarled and scrambled back.

And I realized then what Silmond was thinking when he wanted to scare us away. Kyla wasn't seeing me. She was seeing Jonathan, the werewolf who'd kidnapped her, hurt her, and almost killed her. The werewolf responsible for her being turned. Whatever Silmond had released in that cloud was making her hallucinate and see me as something she feared. Something she hated. And after she'd pulled herself out of my arm's reach, she darted to her feet, snarling again and with every intention of fighting back.

"Kyla, it's me!" I blurted, my heart leaping to my throat. She was too afraid and confused to try making any sense of what was happening, and she was burning with Change, on the verge of Phasing to defend herself. "It's Abby!"

She froze, but though her body had ceased any movement but the rise and fall of her panicked breathing, her mind was going a mile a minute. Jonathan was dead, and she didn't know how she was seeing him if that was true, but she was seeing him. And Silmond was getting away. Her chance at maybe finding Camille was getting away with him, but she didn't want to turn her back on me if I really was Jonathan, and she didn't know what to do.

I don't know how I wasn't seeing something similar, or something that would make me panic like she was. But there were lots of mind-altering things my mother had told me telepaths were immune to, and whatever this was, it had to be one of them. 

"Kyla," I whispered, holding my hands out and taking a step forward, trying to comfort her.

"Don't touch me!" she barked.

"Okay." I threw my hands up and took two steps backward. "I know what you're seeing," I said soothingly, "but it's me. It's Abby. Whatever Silmond threw, it's making you hallucinate."

The fact that I'd obeyed her command not to touch her seemed to help a little. At least enough that her immediate urge to shift lessened, and she wasn't as keen on getting at my throat.

But then Luna came around the corner dragging a nearly unconscious Silmond by the coat collar. "Look who I found," she said cheerfully.

Both her and Silmond looked like Jonathan too, and Kyla backed all the way into the wall behind her, taking in a deep breath and fighting down the renewed urge to Phase.

"Abby?" she asked shakily.

"It's Luna," I told her. "It's okay."

"What's up?" Luna asked in confusion, tossing Silmond into a corner created by a dumpster and the wall.

"He poisoned her," I muttered.

Kyla still had her back to the wall, eyes darting from each of us to her feet. She believed me, but her senses were telling her something different, and even though she desperately wanted to look anywhere but at us, she didn't feel safe enough to look away.

I stomped over to Silmond, squatted down in front of him, and grabbed the collar of his jacket in both fists. "How long till it wears off?" I demanded.

He didn't say anything, but his mind calculated a few minutes because of Kyla's werewolf metabolism. That was something of a relief. "Just a few minutes," I told Kyla, and threw a pointed look at Silmond, "we'll wait."

I tried to pick his thoughts for any useful information while we waited, but right after I’d got my answer about the poison, he immediately and very deliberately started mumbling to the tune of Carly Rae Jepson’s Call Me Maybe out loud. Even worse, he was belting the lyrics in his head to keep me from hearing anything else, but all he knew was the chorus and his voice was god awful. I could only stand it for a little over a minute before it was like nails on a chalkboard.

“Oh my god,” I pleaded, “shut up!”

He laughed, annoyingly amused with himself. “If you’re in my head, it’s only fair I get under your skin.”

At a resumed humming and off-key singing from my right, I glared at Luna. “Can you not?”

“Sorry,” she said, “it’s stuck in my head now.”

Silmond laughed some more, but he refrained from singing again and asked, “What are you even doing here? Does your dad know you’re out running around with the Pack?”

Mention of my father nagged at the already prickling annoyance in my chest. “I’m working a case,” I said. “A case you’re on the wrong end of.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And his mind was startlingly blank.

“Then why’d you run?”

“You just broke some guy’s nose for touching your pet werewolf,” he said, nodding toward Kyla. “Didn’t want to get caught up in whatever bad day you’re having.”

“We’re not her pets,” Luna spat.

“Yeah?” he asked. “Tell that to half the people I work with.” Luna’s upper lip curled with a growl. “But maybe you’re right,” Silmond said, directing his sneer toward me, “none of us are really sure if it’s you or the Pack that holds the whip.”

Luna stomped forward. "How about I whip that smug look right off your face?”

Silmond didn’t take his eyes off me. “You’ll want to keep your pet from doing anything rash.”

“How about I do it myself?” I threatened.

“So violent. What stand-up Council representation.” Silmond slow-clapped. “Your dad would be proud.”

“That’s enough!” Kyla snapped. The poison’s effect had faded, but she was furious about the memories Silmond had made her relive, and listening to our bickering had worn at her already strained patience. She stormed over, and Silmond finally flinched when she grabbed his coat and hauled him off the ground, slamming him back into the wall. “Where’s Camille?”

Silmond cast an almost pleading look at me. “You’re going to let this happen?”

“Answer her question,” I told him. “You kidnapped her mate and I can’t save you.”

Kyla growled and pulled him away from the wall, preparing to throw him back against it another time. “I don’t know!” he blurted, wincing when she slammed him again anyway. “I don’t know.”

"What do you mean you don't know?" she demanded. "Where'd you take her?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “I forgot.”

Kyla yanked him a good two feet from the wall, and he cringed and braced himself for the hit. “Wait!” I said. Kyla froze, and my brow furrowed with concentration as I delved as deeply as I could into Silmond’s thoughts. He really didn’t know. “Who else was with you that night?” Nothing. “Were they Council employees?” He couldn’t even picture their faces. “Who hired you? Was it End Mountain? Where’s the lab?” He didn’t know. “Why’d you do it?” That got an answer, but it was even more frustrating than the emptiness. He got paid. That was it, that was all it took to get him to kidnap Camille, and however many others, and hand them over for experimenting.

“He really doesn’t know,” I murmured. He recognized Camille, he knew he was there the night that they took her, he could picture the black van, but he didn’t know who he was with. He didn’t know where they’d taken her, or who’d hired him.

“How does he not know?” Kyla asked, an aggravated rumble in her voice.

"He's been wiped," I said. "Any memories of important information are gone or blocked or something. He doesn’t know and I can’t read them.”

“How does that happen?” Luna asked.

“Magic,” I answered.

Silmond wanted to smirk, but he was too afraid of Kyla to act smug.

“Magic,” Kyla mused, “like the kind End Mountain can do?” I gave a half-nod, and Kyla shoved Silmond back against the wall and let him go. “If they wiped him, then they knew you’d come after them.”

“You heard him,” I said, motioning to Silmond, “everyone knows I work with you.”

Silmond sidestepped toward the exit of the alley, murmuring, “I’m just going to-”

“Sit down!” Kyla and I shouted at the same time. He dropped into the corner of the dumpster and wall.

“He’s a dead end,” Kyla said, glaring at him. “I want the source.”

“You can’t go after End Mountain,” I protested. She held back a verbal expression of her irritation, but that didn’t keep me from hearing it. “Kyla, we don’t know that they’re behind this. A lot of people do magic that aren’t associated with End Mountain. And you can’t go barging into a coven – one that hates werewolves, by the way – and accuse them of taking your girlfriend.”

"I have to do something!"

“We will,” I told her, “but give me a chance to figure out what before you go and get yourself killed.”

Silmond muttered, “Just put a muzzle on her.”

Luna snarled, “I will tear you in half, asshole.”

“Do you even have teeth?” he asked.

“Say one more word and find out,” she threatened.

Kyla snapped, “I don’t want to hear one more word out of anyone without a solution!”

“I have a solution,” Silmond said.

But all he wanted to suggest was that we let him go, so I glared at him and said, “If you finish that sentence, I’ll let them rip you a new one.”

“Let him finish it,” Luna challenged.

Kyla growled low in her throat, on the verge of losing what shred of patience she had left. “Luna, watch him,” I said, and I grabbed Kyla’s hand to lead her out of hearing distance.

She sighed heavily and leaned against a building, dropping her head back to the wall and letting out another frustrated growl toward the sky. “Forget what I said about the torture. He’s gonna make it easy for me.” She was joking. Mostly…

“That won’t get us anywhere,” I said. “He won’t tell us what he can’t remember.”

“What else can we do?”

“Try to make him remember,” I suggested. She picked up her head to look at me with interest. “We’ll take him to the Council’s holding cells tonight, and tomorrow I’ll try and get my dad to restore his memories.”

"Will that work?”

“It’s worth a shot,” I said. After that headache she had earlier, however, the idea of waiting till tomorrow to do anything else was stressful. “I know it’s hard, but End Mountain can be dangerous, and I can’t let anything happen to you. Camille would kill me.”

“Not really,” Kyla said with a half-smile, “she said I’m supposed to be protecting you.”

“That’s just because Silmond’s kind of right,” I admitted teasingly, “I’m whipped as hell, and Camille knows it. She doesn’t have to tell me to look out for you.”

She gave a soft laugh and returned to resting her head against the wall. She considered my idea for almost a minute, weighing the practicality of it over her restlessness, and eventually sighed. “Alright,” she said, “we’ll try tomorrow.” She took in one more deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips, trying to ease all the tension the night had built in her. “I need to run.”

I nodded. “We’ll take Silmond to holding, and then you and Luna can drop me off at home.”

We did just that, and I was determined to make a cup of tea and do research when I got back to my own apartment. I’d start with a phone call to a police source to see if End Mountain had been moving more funds than usual lately.