He couldn’t be dead.
He couldn’t.
Boots invaded my vision. Shiny brown boots. I swiped a hand across my eyes and forced my head up. Past the boots and the medical uniform, until Blake’s blunt features swam into view. His silver eyes glinted with pleasure and his expression was victorious.
“I will kill you, Blake.” Though the words were shouted inside my head, they came out as little more than a croak. “And if I don’t, the Directorate will.”
“Oh, the Directorate can only legally kill me if I kill you. And I don’t actually intend to kill you. That would be too easy. The person I intend to kill will be someone else entirely.”
Which made absolutely no sense. I licked my lips. The sick fear churning my gut seemed to be sweeping through the rest of me, sapping my energy. My arms and legs were quivering with the effort of holding me upright, and it was all I could do to not collapse.
“Don’t you dare go near Rhoan,” I spat, “or I’ll fucking erase you and every one of your goddamn sons from this earth.”
“Oh, I have no intention of killing him. Him being unable to find or save his sister will be punishment enough.”
He gave me another sharklike smile. “And you, my dear wolf, won’t even remember who you care for, let alone who I am. Hell, you’re not even going to remember who you are. I bid you farewell, Riley Jenson. I hope you enjoy the week you have remaining—but I very much doubt you will.”
And with that, my world went black.
Chapter 7
Waking was an abrupt and ugly process. Sensations flooded my mind, overwhelming and confusing and, most of all, painful.
My body burned, my skin burned, my head burned. Everything hurt. My back, my legs, my arms, my face. Even my goddamn brain.
It felt like someone had strung me up and used me as a punching bag. A bag that now lay abandoned and forgotten.
I lay on my back, and the surface beneath me was sandy and hot. It stuck to my skin, grinding like sandpaper, itching and hurting all at the same time.
The air was also heated, and ripe with flavors that were strange and oddly exciting. There was a vastness to the air, an emptiness, as if I were lying somewhere that held nothing and nobody except me and the burning earth.
I tried to open my eyes and discovered I couldn’t. I frowned and lifted a hand. My arm felt heavy, tired. My fingertips, when I brushed my face, felt nothing, although the lack of sensation did not apply to the hand as a whole. Frown deepening, I switched hands. Felt the dry stickiness caking my eyes.
Blood.
There was blood on my face.
Why was there blood on my face?
I didn’t know, and that scared me far more than the burning in my body and brain.
I rubbed the blood away and forced my eyelids open. The sky above me was blue. A deep rich blue from which the sun burned brightly.
That’s why my skin burned. I was getting burned.
I twisted my head, looking for cover. The land stretched out before me, filled with sandy red hills and scrubbylooking plants. It seemed totally empty of any other sort of life.
How the hell did I get here?
I didn’t know. I really didn’t know.
Fear swirled, briefly catching in my throat and making it hard to breathe. I forced it away. I could worry about the hows and whys later. Right now, I needed to find myself some shade or I wasn’t going to survive much longer.
And I didn’t want to die. I’d followed that path once before, and though it had been tempting, in the end it had not been for me.
I frowned at the thought, not really understanding it and too damn worried about the here and now to chase it.
I forced myself upright. If I thought my body had been aching before, then that one action proved just how wrong I’d been. God, it hurt. Fiercely. Brutally. Tears stung my eyes and fell down my cheeks, mingling with a warmer liquid that seemed to be running down the side of my face.
More blood.
And not just on my face.
My torso was a mass of bruises and cuts. There was an ugly, half-healed wound on my shoulder, abrasions scattered across my skin, a massive yellowing bruise stretching from under my breast down to my hip, and my knees were cut and scabby.
Had someone used me as a punching bag? Right now, it sure as hell felt like it. But if they had, how had I ended up here, in the middle of goddamn nowhere?
I didn’t know. Not anything. The ache in my brain seemed to be all-consuming, and nothing was getting past it. Nothing except pain and the need to find shelter before the sun burned me to a crisp.
I lightly hugged my knees with my arms and stared at the landscape around me. Hill after red hill. Few trees, no houses, no cars, and certainly no people.
There weren’t even footprints in the earth. How I’d gotten here was anyone’s guess. Hell, I might have been dropped from the sky for all I knew. But sitting here wondering how I’d gotten into this situation rather than doing something about it wasn’t going to stop my skin from getting redder.
I braced my hands against the warm, sandy soil and pushed upright. Every part of me protested the movement, and I ached with a ferocity I wouldn’t have thought possible. Sweat broke out anew across my forehead, and my breath hissed past gritted teeth. But I forced my sore knees to lock and made it upright.
Just.
I stood there, wavering, for several seconds. Or maybe it was the landscape around me that was wavering. I couldn’t have said for certain.
Taking another swipe at the sweat and blood dribbling down the side of my face, I resolutely focused my gaze on a lone gum tree and headed toward it.
Luckily for me, the soles of my feet were fairly tough—in fact, I think they were the only bits of me that weren’t aching—and the heated earth, sharp stones, and barbed scrubby bushes didn’t do much to hinder my progress.
It took about an hour to finally reach the shade. The sun seemed to be hotter even though it was clearly late afternoon, but the minute the dappled light of the tree caressed my skin, the relief from the burning was almost instantaneous. I sighed and, for a moment, closed my eyes, fighting the urge to sit down, to rest.
If I sat, I might not get up. It would be easy to die in a place like this.
I don’t intend to kill you, whispered a voice through the fog and the pain clouding my brain. That would be too easy.
I knew that voice, but I couldn’t name it. Couldn’t bring to mind an image of the man who spoke the words. Didn’t know why he would want to put me in such a place, in such danger.
Why would someone want to dump me in the middle of nowhere? I was just …
What was I? Who the hell was I?
I didn’t know. Reach as I might, no information was getting through the fog.
Anger rose, and I swore softly, frustrated by the lack of memories and understanding.
Someone had put me here, that much was obvious. I couldn’t have gotten here any other way, unless I could fly.
The thought made me pause.
Could I fly?
I frowned, uncertain. It seemed right, and yet wrong. Like it was something I could do even if it wasn’t something I was born to, wasn’t something that was a part of my soul.
But what was my soul?
Hunter, hunter, sleek red hunter. The chant ran gently through my subconscious and memories surfaced—me, being chased by a boy with wild red hair and bright gray eyes. A boy who sang the child’s chant moments before he slipped from human to wolf form and pounced.
Wolf.
I was a werewolf.
The relief I felt at that realization was incredible. It flowed through me sweetly, giving me an odd sort of strength. If I could remember that, then I would remember everything else with time.