The Alpha's Oracle (SAMPLE, IronMoon #1)

Flint's Song

"The basement" was not the basement that I had seen. That was the "cellar" in the house vernacular. The "basement" was accessible by a door off the little used mudroom.

After the wolves had been chained and left to die, and I had sobbed my futile tears in my scrying room (not that I even really knew what I was crying about), I asked Marcy about the "basement".

"You don't really want to go down there, do you?" she asked.

I almost asked her if she had gotten that cheesy line from a bad horror movie, but I stopped, because this was IronMoon, and sometimes it was like a bad horror movie. "Yes. I do."

She took me down the cold concrete steps.

The basement was a huge, smooth, grey concrete box. No, it was a sarcophagus. Blank floor, walls, even the ceiling was concrete. Air flowed through several circular fans set into the ceiling and walls. The floor angled downwards to a line of circulate drain gates. This was reasonable construction for a basement.

The cages along the walls were not.

Along the right wall were six small cages. The bars were iron rebar driven into raised slabs of cement and pushed into the ceiling, with more rebar in a grid across the top. Rebar wouldn't normally stop a determined war-form werewolf, except this rebar had thin, flat stripes of silver wound between the rebar threads.

Any wolf that tried to fight their way through the rebar lattice would be so sickened and burned they wouldn't get far, if they even succeeded at all.

On the left wall were two sets of three chains: one chain led to a collar, the remaining two to shackles.

Two of the rebar cages had occupants.

The place smelled slightly of subterranean musk and dampness, but also of strong soap and bleach. It was terrifyingly clean. It would have been the envy of any hospital operating room.

The wolves cowered in wolf-form at the back of their cages. They looked up at me with pleading eyes. I ignored them. There had been six wolves in the original group: two were now caged, two were chained. Two were missing. Perhaps the others were dead.

There were was no evidence the basement was a place of torture. Just a prison. Along the wall behind me were freestanding cabinets. Cleaning supplies, perhaps. I didn't look. I didn't really want to see if it was also an assortment of torture devices.

Something about this room made me shudder. It was empty. It was a void. Some well-lit abyss where the Moon's eye could not or would not see.

When a wolf was banished to eternal punishment, the Hounds came to take their soul to a place where the Moon's light did not reach. Not because it could not reach, but because She chose not to look upon them. She sent them to a place beyond Her concern.

Marcy remained at the foot of the stairs. This was place was not evil, nor especially dangerous, but I didn't want to stick around either.

I forced myself to stand in the center of the room for a few minutes and take it all in. Feel the emptiness, the sterility, the way time didn't pass and air only moved because of mechanical fans. I didn't hear anything moving in the drains, not even the faint sigh or whistle of air.

The emptiness gnawed on my brain.

I shuddered all over. Nobody needed sophisticated implements of torment when they had this cement box buried beneath the ground.

All the rumors about Gabel had told of his cruelty and brutality. I shuddered all over again. Gabel didn't break bodies. Oh, if only he broke bodies! I laughed at anyone who thought that Gabel dealt in pulling off fingernails or pouring silver over the skin. If only Gabel stopped at the flesh.