"I don't know." This time Daggit's voice quavered with fear.
"After we break your fingers, we'll cut them off. And we'll keep cutting till we hack off your dick." Shaw snapped the next finger.
"Okay! Okay, okay! They've got this island. They were talking about it last time I saw them. They've been digging in. They wanted claymores and napalm. They were getting ready for a fucking war."
"Not good enough." Shaw growled, drawing a bowie knife.
"I really don't know!" Daggit shouted. "It's out of Salem, like out by South Goosberry, or Bakers Island, but farther out! I think it's like three or four miles from shore! A little shit of an island. There's just one fucking house on it!"
Shaw ignored him, putting the blade up against the base of the broken pinkie.
"Wait." Atticus caught Shaw's arm. "Parity kept a boat on the Charles River. Ice took it out this morning. That's what I was doing in Cambridge. And Ascii was taking Ukiah to Salem, before I got him out of the trunk."
Shaw grunted and released Daggit. The big man cradled his broken hand, glaring at the Pack. "If you're lying to us, Daggit, we will hunt you down and cut out your liver and feed it to you."
As Stein dragged Daggit away, Atticus's mind was filled with images of the Pack waging war with the cult, leaving a trail of stolen boats and dead humans floating in their wake. "I'll set up a raid with Zheng. We'll get Ukiah back. Just give me twelve hours."
"No," Shaw growled.
"What about the Ontongard? Why do you think they were in Cambridge? They were down at the marina. They're hunting the cult. If you go after the cult, you'll be caught between them."
"All the more reason for us to go, not you and Zheng."
"You can keep the Ontongard busy. That's what you were made for, right? To fight the Ontongard."
Shaw snarled as an answer.
"There's the problem of finding Hex's Gets," Grant said. "We know where the cult is."
"If the cult really have been killing and burning these Gets," Atticus said, "then a profile of the victims from the cult's burn sites probably will give last known addresses and such. All you have to do is get close, right? Then you can feel them? My team's already working on the information."
Consensus moved through the Pack, with hard knots of resistance coming from the Dog Warriors, who knew Ukiah best.
"Fine, twelve hours," Shaw said. "Make it noon tomorrow."
***
"Well?" Ru greeted him when he pulled the Jaguar in beside the Explorer.
Atticus could feel the Pack following behind him, waiting for the information he'd promised. What the hell was he thinking? "We have to pull rabbits out of our ass to save my brother." He explained the situation as quickly as he could. "They think Ukiah is too moral to cooperate with the cult."
"Possibly. He's actually quite sweet."
Atticus frowned at Ru. "Based on what? We barely got to talk to him."
"I ran into him this morning. Things got so crazy, I forgot to mention it." Ru hesitated, looking troubled. "But there's something wrong with him."
"Which is he? Sweet or screwed in the head?"
"I gave him a street test. He failed so bad."
"Street test" was what Ru called his method of seeing how street-smart a kid was. A lot of kids who crossed their paths were already hardened criminals. Others, though, were good kids about to be swallowed down; those were the ones they tried to steer toward havens, getting them off the street before they could be eaten.
"So he's naive," Atticus grumbled.
"I've never seen a kid over the age of ten let me go this far. He's a complete babe in the woods. He let me do the fucking penlight in the eyes, Atty."
Atticus found himself thinking of the sturdy naked toddler he'd protected in the forest as a wolf. He tried to ignore it. Ukiah probably only looked younger because of the odd way they aged. "If he's like me, then he's perfect. He could be just pretending to get on your good side."
"Are you sure? Think about when he first woke up in the bathroom. That wasn't an act. It was like he's feral."
Yes, that was true. Even the Pack with their wolf taint didn't seem half as wild.
I left him in the woods— how long did it take for someone to find him?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Temple of New Reason Commune
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Ukiah woke with something warm and furry gently touching his cheek. He opened his eyes to find a yellow tabby kitten sitting beside him, patting at his face. Its eyes seemed oversize for its large head, and all its fur was puffed out in a wild, disorganized manner. It was a tiny scarecrow version of a cat.
"You're a lot nicer than what I'd expected to wake up to." Ukiah heaved himself up to a sitting position, which made the room spin.
Said room was ten foot square and made of cinder-block walls, a steel door, and no windows. Except for the bare foam pad he sat on, a plastic twin food-and-water dish for the kitten, and a yet unused litter box, the room was empty. Light came from single bare bulb. The air was stale, as if circulation was limited. "Yeah, this is more what I expected."
The kitten clambered over his bare knees, needle-sharp claws coming out sporadically as it needed more traction. Ukiah petted it absently, generating a steady rough-engine purr, as he searched for Pack presence.
" Rennie? Bear? Hellena?" he silently called, and then, truly desperate, " Atticus?"
But there was no one there to reach. He was utterly alone in this desolate corner of the world.
Things could be worse, he reminded himself. He was at least alive and not a prisoner of the Ontongard—only a cult of homicidal lunatics.
"In circumstances like this," he told the kitten, "you have to keep things in perspective."
The cult had stripped him out of his soaked clothes and dressed him only in a pair of dark flannel boxers. If his situation weren't so dire, he'd mourn the loss of his black tracking shirt and favorite blue jeans. Maybe the cultists were just washing his clothes. His body reported massive bruising and demanded food. Closing his eyes and shutting out the kitten's furry warmth, he could sense the pounding of the surf in ceaseless rhythm and the heaviness of air that he'd come to associate with Massachusetts. How far from the coast did you have to get to escape those effects?
The kitten, which had been licking his thumb, decided to chew on it instead with tiny sharp teeth.
"Ow, ow, ow, stop that!" Ukiah jerked back his hand and checked to see if he was bleeding. Even a small amount of his blood could transform the kitten to a hybrid of himself. "And we don't need that on top of everything, now, do we?"
Outside, footsteps came quietly up to the door. The walker was wearing something soft-soled, like tennis shoes. Ukiah breathed deep, expecting to catch the person's scent, but the stale air reminded him that the room was close to airtight; there wouldn't be advance warning by that means.
Thus he was mildly off balance when a slot at eye level on the door slid open, revealing Ice's steady gaze.
Did Ice know that Ukiah had been fighting with Core when he'd been killed? Did he blame Ukiah for his lover's death? Did he hate Ukiah?
"They say eyes are the windows of the soul," Ice whispered after several minutes of silent study, echoing Ru's comment. Knowingly? Unknowingly? Ice's eyes were the color of the winter sky, a blue paled nearly to white. If Ukiah was seeing Ice's soul, it was a cold and emotionless thing. "I'd been so busy looking at the lost fount, the spoiled plans, the fleeing time, and Core's desire that I missed you completely. If I had just looked,I'd have seen that you were not human, and avoided all this."