Red Moon Rising

43. dark

Chapter Song: Bringin' Home the Rain - The Builders and The Butchers

XX

There is no light when I open my eyes. Maybe it's night or I am in a dark room. Maybe he buried me alive. Maybe I'm dead. No, not dead. There is a faint, fuzzy glow of moonlight filtering through a high window to illuminate the ground at my feet. At first, the shadows twist as if they are closing in on me, but it is only the strange sensation of walls. Not walls, but fencing. And not moonlight, but bright mounted lights seeping in from outside.

I groan as a flash of pain stabs through the back of my skull, but the noise is met by silence.

"Hello?"

The sudden, unbidden image of Sam's still-staring eyes lights bright and jarring in my brain, and I lean forward against my knees as my stomach twists sick and painful. Sam is dead.

And Isaac killed him.

I don't know what to do with the rage that threatens to rip my chest open. There is only an empty room, a cage, to absorb the cry that breaks from my throat. I'll kill him. I'll make him pay for what he did to Sam. I wish I could summon more conviction for that thought, but it's likely that I'll be killed or sold before I'll ever be able to exact some kind of vengeance. And even if I got the chance, what then? I don't want to kill anyone else; I don't want to be like Isaac and take my rage out on someone else's life. You couldn't do it even if you wanted to.

My mind and my body grow more disconnected, and each is weaker than it once was. Who the hell am I anymore? I used to be a Rust Cove wolf, a runner. I used to be Cam's girl, a sister, and a daughter. I used to plant and grow the food that fed our pack. And now I'm just surviving, if that is really what this is. And Sam is dead.

My fingers are numb and fumble like foreign objects when I pull my jacket tighter around my body. Through the dark of the room, I catch the shimmer of fencing continuing down a stretch of hall, maybe twenty separate cages in total. The floor is cold even through my boots, sloping gently down to a drain in the center of the room. The building I'd seen in the woods couldn't have been any bigger than what I see here. Which means I'm alone, and there is no one here to ensure I don't freeze to death or die of thirst. It's dark, which means it's already been more than 24 hours since I've had a drop of water. Already, the strange ache at the back of my stomach seems to creep up and burn my throat. Maybe I'm supposed to die here, and Isaac just didn't want to do it himself.

I can walk ten steps in my little cage, which is home to only a bare cot, a bucket, and a roll of toilet paper. Rattling the fencing, I feel along the corners and against the floor, but the wire is formed into the concrete and bolted to the ceiling. It doesn't stop me from climbing up the sides and trying to wrench the wiring away, but my strength gives out before the fence does.

"Isaac?" My heart beats in the silence of the room as I await a response, but nothing comes. "Isaac!" Why should I even call to him? I loathe him even more for being my only lifeline now. I have to rely on my friend's killer, on the man who seems determined to take away what little I have left.

Sometimes, the pain around my body subsides to the strangest numbness, a feeling like being pulled gently apart into a cloud. And then the feeling comes crashing back, ricocheting against my skull and seizing dark and painful around my heart. I don't think we're built to say goodbye to each other. Somewhere in our DNA, we have been hardwired to cling to those we hold dearest, and it breaks apart the core of who we are when those very people are torn away. We become a little less of ourselves. How strange to think I will never have to experience this again.

Because I have no one left to lose. I have only myself, and when I finally disappear that will be the end. There's comfort in that thought. I never used to believe in an afterlife; it made sense that that death was a quiet thing, a final transition back into a melting pot of matter from which we came. But now...now I like to think about it, and maybe I've come to believe it. As more and more loved ones die, it offers something to look forward to on the other side, a second homecoming. I think my mom and Sam would be friends in the afterlife; maybe they've already met by now.