Hannah Pole - Song Of The Wolf

Alison kicked and elbowed. She bit down on the hand at her mouth and twisted her head wildly in an attempt to get loose but all she succeeded in doing was making that knife sink further into her skin .

The second tuhrned bent down, wrapping silver wire around her kicking ankles, making her whimper in sheer pain as the metal seared her skin. She cursed her race’s aversion to the metal. It was the one thing wolves were powerless against, and goddamn, it really hurt! Burning through flesh like a hot knife through butter, scalding her skin until pain became all she could feel, and the scent of it hung in her nose making her gag .

Still she fought, thrashing against them until blood loss made her woozy. The two half-dead men didn’t seem fazed. Didn’t care .

As she became too weak to put up any more of a fight, they dragged her backwards, her arms and ankles screaming in protest as the wire sank deeper still .

The man holding her by the throat leaned down, his mouth so close to her face that his breath washed across her nose, making her gag .

“We’ve got your soul, little wolf. And the new High Lord wants to meet you,” he hissed .

Alison screamed with everything she had but none of it made so much of a dent in the night’s silence. The heavy hand over her mouth muffled any noise she managed to rip loose and when she tried to draw air into her lungs, those heavy hands stuffed a vile-tasting rag into her mouth, forcing her to choke and bite down on it as they roughly stuck tape across her lips .

The tuhrned shoved a bag over her head. It was damp and smelled of death and blood. She screamed as much as she could, but was only too aware of how little sound was coming out. With that, the bastard wrapped silver wire around her already broken and bleeding throat, keeping the bag in place as she was dragged off of her home land and away to Maker only knew where .

All she could think was that her entire pack, every single member of her family, was out roaming the woods. SOMEONE was close, someone was within metres of them but no one was coming to help. She kicked and thrashed her feet on the ground trying to make as much noise as she could but no one came. No one heard her .

Alison was stuffed into the back of a vehicle and as the engine roared to life she wept. She had been taken from her own home. These bastards had taken her from her family AGAIN .

And no one knew she was gone .

Three weeks. It had been THREE damn weeks since Alison had been taken. Dax was all but going mad. He couldn’t stand how long it had been. They should have found her by now.

To keep himself sane, he had literally spent every second he could out looking for her and tonight, he’d hit the jackpot – one of the Circle’s underground bases.

“Dax, you IDIOT. You could have been killed. We’re five minutes away. Why the hell couldn’t you have waited for us?” Leyth’s gruff voice barked through the mini-coms. The minuscule speaker pinned into his ear meant he could hear everything Leyth and the rest of the team said, and the miniature microphone clipped into his mouth meant they could hear everything he said.

So he kept his mouth shut.

Scanning the room, he couldn’t help the vicious smile that curled his mouth. These bastards hadn’t known what had hit them when he’d forced his way in. All around him were the scattered bodies of the tuhrned. Those traitors weren’t dead yet though. They were more zombie than person. The only way to kill them was to cut the head off. But Dax hadn’t wanted to kill them. He’d wanted to question them.

Alison’s kidnapping had left him more than a little empty; his very soul ached at the loss of her. Perhaps that loss had made him somewhat brutal in his fighting style and frankly they deserved everything they got. He just wanted to question these bastards and get his female back. The female. A member of his pack. That was all there was to it.

“You,” he barked at the tomb closest to him. Leyth had always called the ‘tuhrned’ tombs because they were essentially dead men walking. They should be in a tomb, not ‘alive’ and fighting the High Lord’s war. And this one was no exception to that. His rotting grey skin looked bloated, swollen, only exaggerating his pale thinning hair and his dark-rimmed, sunken eyes. Oh Maker, the smell? Rotten.

“Look at me,” Dax barked at the tomb.

“What do you want?” the zombiefied man spat, wincing in pain as his jaw moved.

“What, no Magi to help you with the pain? To possess your body so you can be free of your putrid flesh?” Dax snorted. “You don’t deserve to be free of pain. You soulless traitor .” OK, so perhaps breaking every bone in the tomb’s body was a little harsh but these ‘men’, if you could call them that, had played one helluva part in Alison’s kidnapping. They killed and kidnapped, raped and pillaged at every turn and what’s more they had literally sold their souls to the devil.

“WHERE IS SHE?” Dax roared, leaning in so he was face-to-face with the tuhrned.

“W-ho…?” he groaned.

“WHERE is the female wolf YOUR High Lord took three weeks ago?” Dax hissed.

“I don’t know,” the tomb whispered.

“WHERE?” Dax positioned himself so that he was pressing his weight on the tomb’s broken body.

“I don’t know!” The tomb squealed, tears dampening his cheeks. Dax took his weight from the zombie’s body. Frankly he was surprised the High Lord hadn’t taken the tomb over by now. He did after all have the power to possess his minions at any point, it was the reason he bound their souls. Apparently it made it easier to use them as vessels to do his bidding.

“But I know he liked the feel of her.” The tuhrned’s cruel laughter filled the silence. Anger swept through Dax, the sheer force of it almost knocking him off his feet.

“WHAT did you say?” he thundered.

“I SAID, he likes the feel of your female’s body, wolf,” the tomb spat, laughing and spluttering.

Dax didn’t give him time to catch his breath, just picked the tomb’s broken body from the ground and slammed it into the closest wall. He could barely see past the anger tainting his vision with red, fury rushing through his veins.

“YOU,” he spat, slamming the bastard’s body back into the ground, “do NOT –” he picked him up by his hair and held him by the throat against his chest “– EVER get to speak about her like that ,” Dax roared, tightening his grip on the tomb.

“She is worth more than you could ever dream, traitor.” He growled the words at the zombie, choking him with everything he had. His fingers pressed into the tuhrned’s throat, sinking into his flesh with ease. The putrid fluid causing its skin to bloat parted beneath his nails as he sliced the skin open, vile fluid and blood trickling across his fingertips…

“DAX. Hell no!” Leyth shouted, storming in and ripping the tomb free from Dax’s grip. The male’s night-dark hair and powerful body dominated the small, dingy basement. “Get him home.”

“NO!” Dax protested. “He might know something. I’m damn well questioning him.” He tried to force his voice to sound level, but hatred for that tomb boiled his blood, making his words come out short and vicious.

“HOME,” Leyth barked, pointing towards the door. “Raught. Take him. I’ll deal with this.”

Raught stalked forward, putting himself between the two of them.

“Come on, my friend. Food will do you some good and then you can get back into the field,” he reasoned, but Dax ignored him. Instead he took a slow deliberate step towards the tomb.