The Rise-Book II

Chapter 55: Sleep

It was like I was in the ocean. I felt weightless yet heavy all in the same time.

Floating.

I felt like I was floating but going nowhere. My limbs were like noodles and my brain felt like a slow-moving molasses.

"Charlotte!"

I stirred but every bone in my body hurt and my veins stung–burned me. My wolf was whimpering, she felt so weak–so tired.

"Charlotte!" it called out again, shaking me like large angry waves shake a tiny boat in the middle of a storm.

I groaned as I tried to move. Everything hurt and I was so tired, at the moment sleep was feeling pretty delicious.

"Charlotte," Barret'ts voice boomed out as he shook me awake.

My eyes blinked open as Barrett's face through a cell looked at me, wide eyes that looked hollow in skin that looked so pale it was almost sickly. He pulled his hand back then rubbed it, looking up and down at me like a worried mother.

It was then that it hit me. What had happened.

"Oh my God," I breathed out. "Oh my God, Amber!"

"Here!" she croaked out, clutching her neck as she sat up.

"Ethan," I muttered to myself. "The house and Nessa–"

"You were kidnapped," a deep voice said from next to me. I looked over to see a man with bright icy blue eyes, tired and weak, with curly brown hair that fell to his shoulders look over at me.

"What? Where are we?"

He eyed me while Amber sat up, holding her head with a grimace. I blinked hard and tried to keep my eyes open, but my brain felt like it was going to throb right out of my skull. "They call it 'The Bloodbank', now sleep," he calmly said, his eyes dilating as he looked at me.

With that, I fell back asleep almost instantly.

I woke up again and I was in a different cell. A cell with Amber and some other wolves while Barrett sat with us. He had Amber's sleeping head in his lap and a protective arm around my shoulder while the man I had seen before sat closer to the front of the cell.

I looked around to see a few other cells in the room, but they were all empty in this grungy concrete dim lit dungeon. I could hear water dropping from somewhere and the scatter of tiny feet across the floor–rats.

My wolf groaned out and reached for Ethan, but we couldn't grab the link. We could feel the bond, it was there but the link was like it was non-existent.

Silver.

They had to have silvered or wolfsbaned us. My limbs throbbed so more while I stretched up. Barrett looked down at Amber who was starting to slowly wake up before he looked to me. "How do you feel?"

"Like hell, how did I get here?"

"Witches most likely," Barrett said, his voice almost raw and scratchy like a bad record.

"They were there–"

"With Nessa," Amber croaked. "She helped."

It all clicked. I tried to growl but there was a sharp pain in my chest. "How's your neck?" I asked as I looked at the nasty bite mark that was starting to fester in the crook of her neck.

"I've had worse," she replied with a brave smile.

Wincing a little while some off pain zinged through me Barrett looked at me then sighed. "It's the wolfsbane, they gave you another dose before they moved you."