Page 117 of Bought for Blood

Sixth door. Seventh.

The pull drags hard left, and there is a door with fresh cuts in the frame, runes going all the way round, pale wood where somebody has carved it recently.

I wore runes for a year. The ones on my cuffs burned whenever the wolf lifted, and I know what they feel like when they’re cut for what you are. These don’t do anything to me at all.

They weren’t carved for a wolf.

There’s a steel bolt across the outside. I can’t work a bolt with paws.

I shift.

It comes fast. The shift doesn’t hurt. My ribs moving while it happens does. There’s a hole through me that whistles when I breathe. That hurts too; more than anything I’ve ever felt before. And I can’t think about any of it now. I get both hands on the bolt from my knees. My whole front is red, and almost none of it is mine.

I drag it back and put my shoulder into the door. The pain is blinding. And I still can’t think about it.

The door swings open. The room beyond is bare. Concrete floor, bare walls. One wide window on the east side with the boards gone and the glass filthy.

The light is already inside it.

It lies across the floor in a wide gray band with a hard edge. The edge is moving.

He’s in the far corner with his back against the wall. The light hasn’t reached him yet. There’s smoke in the air anyway.

His left arm sits against his ribs at an angle it shouldn’t. There’s iron burn around both wrists. He has no shirt on, and every rib is showing. His eyes are open and on me. He doesn’t move at all.

God, what did they do to you?

The edge of the light is eight inches from his foot.

“Bastien.”

His mouth moves. No sound comes out.

I get across the floor on my hands and knees. My ribs go through me at every step. I get between him and the window and put my back to it. There’s no way I can move him by myself.

“Bastien… Up…you have to get up.”

The light comes over the edge and onto his foot.

His leg goes rigid. A sound comes out of him that I have never heard anything make, and he bites it off. The skin across the top of his foot lifts. It blackens from the middle out, and it opens, and it keeps opening. The smoke off it is thick and white, and it catches in the back of my throat and won’t clear.

He’s shaking. All of him.

So am I.

I cover his foot with my hand, and the light comes through my fingers onto it.

No.

NO—

Do something!

And then the magic opens in me.

It comes from underneath the wolf, from somewhere I have never been. It goes up my spine and out along both arms, and itis enormous. I have no idea what to do with it. So I do the only thing my grandmother ever taught me.

Don’t be seen.