Sherrilyn Kenyon - Dead After Dark

Fury scoffed. "Lived my whole life without any sense. Why should I start having some now?"

As he reached his bike, a strange fissure of power went down his spine.

He turned in expectation of a fight, but before he could even move, he was hit with a fierce shock. Cursing, he hit the ground hard. Pain exploded through him as he changed into his wolf form, then human, then wolf again. He was completely immobilized as his body struggled to hold onto one form and was incapable of it.

Dare walked up to him slowly, then kicked him hard in the ribs. "You should have died. Fury. Now you're going to wish you had."

Fury lunged at him, but his muscles wouldn't cooperate. If he could lay hand or paw on the bastard, he'd rip his throat out.

He looked up at Angelia to see sympathy on her face an instant before Dare shot him again. Unbelievable pain ripped through him as he struggled to stay conscious.

It was a losing battle. In one heartbeat, everything went black.

"What are you doing?" Angelia asked Dare.

"We need to know what he knows about our experiment. More to the point, we need to know who he's been talking to. We can't afford for our secret to get out."

She cringed as she watched Fury's body continue to shift from human to white wolf and back again. At least until Dare wrapped the collar around his throat that kept him as human. Since Fury's natural form was a wolf, keep­ing him as a human, especially in daylight, would weaken him.

And it would hurt.

She shook her head at his actions. "You know he's not going to tell us anything." "I wouldn't be so sure."

The Fury she remembered would never tell secrets. He'd die before he did, and he could take a lot of pain. Even as a child, he'd been stronger than any other. "How can you be so certain?"

"Because I'm going to turn him over to our Jackal."

Angelia sucked her breath in sharply at the threat. Oscar was a jackal whose heart was so black, he was more animal than man. "He's your brother, Dare."

"I have no brother. You know what the Katagaria did to my family. To our patria."

It was true. She'd been there the night Dare's Katagari father had led the attack on their Arcadian camp. Just a child, she'd been hidden as the attacks began. Her mother had smeared her with earth to mask her scent before she'd placed her in the cellar.

Even now, she could see the wolves as they attacked her mother and killed her while she'd watched in horror through the slats in the floor.

Dare was right. They had to protect their people. The animals needed to be stripped of their powers and put down like the rabid creatures they were. Even Fury.

"Are you with me?" he asked.

She nodded. "I won't see another child suffer my fate. We have to protect ourselves. Whatever it takes."

Angelia paced the small camp they'd made as she lis­tened to Fury insulting Oscar while he and Dare tor­tured Fury for information. Honestly, she didn't have the stomach for it. She never had.

Maybe Dare was right. Maybe she shouldn't be on a tes­sera after all.

Then again, she was a warrior of unparalleled skill. In battle, she didn't hesitate to kill or to wound. It was just the idea of beating someone who couldn't fight back that sick­ened her.

He's an animal.

No doubt he'd kill her in a heartbeat. She knew that with every part of herself and yet. . .

She cringed as Fury howled in pain.

An instant later, Oscar came outside toward her and the fire they'd made. Without a word, he walked past her and manifested an iron pole.

Frowning, she watched as he placed it in the fire. "What are you doing?"

"I thought a little branding might loosen his tongue."

A wave of nausea went through her.

Dare came outside the tent with the same look of disgust on his face. "I say you should ram it up his ass until he talks."

Oscar laughed.

Horrified, she didn't move until they started back with the poker in hand. "No!" she said sternly.

Oscar angled it at her. "Get out of the way."

"No," she repeated. "This is wrong. You're acting like one of them."

Dare's expression was stern and cruel. "We're protecting our people."

But this wasn't protection. This was all-out cruelty. Un­able to bear it, she tried another tactic. "Let me question him."

Dare frowned. "Why? Like you said, he won't say any­thing."

She gestured toward the tent as she tried to keep her an­ger under control. "You've been beating on him for hours, and it's gotten us nowhere. Let me try another approach. What will it hurt?"

Oscar put the poker back into the fire. "I need to eat any­way. You have until I finish, and then I'm going to try my way again."

Repulsed by them both, Angelia turned around and headed into the tent. The sight of Fury on the floor stopped her dead in her tracks. Still in human form, he was naked with his hands tied at an awkward angle behind his back. Another rope held his legs tied together. He was covered with bruises and cuts to the point that she could barely recognize him.

The fact that he was this wounded and in human form had to be excruciating for him. Anytime they were wounded, they reverted to their natural form. For her it was human. For Fury . . .

He was a wolf.

Trying to keep that in mind, she knelt by his side.

He growled threateningly until he looked up and met her gaze. The pain and torment in those dark turquoise eyes made her wince. And as she dropped her gaze, she saw the scar on his chest. The wound where she'd stabbed him.

Guilt tore through her over what she should never have done.

"Why don't you just finish the job," he said, his tone hos­tile and deadly.

"We don't want to hurt you."

He laughed bitterly. "My wounds and the glee they had in their eyes when they gave them to me tells me a different story."

She brushed the hair back from his forehead to see a vi­cious cut that ran along his brow. Blood poured from his nose and lips. "I'm sorry."

"We're all sorry for something. Why don't you be an ani­mal for once and just kill me?" He glared at her. "You might as well. I'm not going to tell you shit."

"We need to know what happened to the lion."

"Go to hell."

"Fury—"

"Don't you fucking dare use my name. I'm nothing but an animal to all of you. Believe me, all of you made it more than clear to me four hundred years ago when you beat me close to death and then dumped me out to die."

"Fury—"

He barked at her like a wolf. "Would you stop?" He continued making wolf noises. Sighing, Angelia shook her head. "No wonder they beat you."

Baring his teeth in true canine fashion, he growled, then woofed. There was nothing human in the sound or his de­meanor.

Angelia stepped back.

The moment she was away from him. Fury slumped on the ground and stopped making any sounds at all. He lay completely still.

Was he dead?

No, his chest was still moving. She could also hear his faint breathing. As she watched him, her thoughts turned to the past. To the young man she'd once been friends with. Even though he was younger than her by four years, there had been something about him that had touched her.

Where Dare had always been arrogant and bossy, Fury had held a vulnerability that had made her protective of him. More than that, he'd never treated her as inferior. He'd seen her as a partner and confidant.

"I'll be your family, Lia." Those words haunted her. It had been Fury's vow to her once he'd learned that her family had been killed by the Katagaria—by his own father's pack. "I won't ever let the wolves hurt you. I swear it."

Yet she'd stood by this morning while they'd tortured him relentlessly.

It's nothing compared to what you did the last time you saw him.