Page 103 of Roguefinder

“Fuck you,” I said, head swimming.

He laughed, and they dragged me through the door, letting my elbow smack the frame. Pain flared to my shoulder. Rage followed, hot and useless.

“You’re never getting out of here, either,” I told the bodybuilder. “You know that, right? The vampires only turn pretty people, and your head looks like a dick.”

He punched me in the kidney.

I doubled over, nausea sloshing through me in a greasy wave. My don’t puke mantra returned for a sequel.

The buzz cut pet snapped something sharp in Italian. The bodybuilder grunted, then clamped his hand under my arm.

“Walk, cunt.”

Okay, I understood that one.

They dragged me forward, and I staggered between them, bare feet scraping the cold ground. Torches flickered in brackets on the walls. Cell doors lined the stone on either side of the corridor. A small table held an oil lamp, its flame shuddering as we passed. The bulbs in the ceiling were dark. Hopefully, the power being knocked out worked in my favor.

But I doubted it.

A moan drifted from a cell on my right. The gaps in the bars showed a naked man lying on his side in the middle of the floor. Long, tangled hair obscured his face, and his beard grew in ragged patches as if someone had torn away chunks of it. A patchwork quilt of burns covered his body.

He lifted his head as we passed, and he turned his face toward me, tracking my progress. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and a growl rumbled out of his throat.

Too low to be human.

Deep in my mind, my beast stirred against the weight of the silver in my veins. Recognition flared, weak but present. I didn’t know the man, but I knew what he was.

Werewolf.

He thrust his nose higher, and the hair fell away from his face.

His eyes were missing. They’d been gouged out, the sockets filled with pools of hardened silver that reflected the dancing torchlight.

I forgot how to breathe.

Burns. Darkness. Skin covered in scabs. I’d been inside his head.

I’d been him. My mind raced, pieces slotting into place so quickly I couldn’t keep up.

The service door at the opera house. The mirror in the foyer. I’d never touched silver. Jesse and I hadn’t sensed silver in them because there wasn’t any. There never had been.

I’d touched this man’s pain, and my gift had dropped me into a body with silver fused into its skull. My visions had never been dark.

I’d been seeing through eyes that weren’t there.

I dry heaved, my whole body clenching around a stomach that had nothing to give.

The pets stopped, and the bodybuilder laughed. “A tough guy.”

“Go…fuck…yourself.” I swallowed hard against another surge of nausea.

They dragged me past the cell. The growl faded behind us, and I sucked in deep breaths, trying to get my legs under me. The bodybuilder tightened his grip on my arm until a nerve pinched.

“Quick question,” I panted. “How do you say follicularly challenged in Italian?”

He punched me in the side of the head.

Pain exploded behind my ear. The corridor smeared sideways. Something hot trickled down my neck.