Page 104 of Roguefinder

Ahead of us, a door swung open, and Carlo stepped out. His doll’s eyes moved over the three of us, flat and unblinking, and went hard.

“What are you doing, Alonzo?”

The bodybuilder’s fingers flexed on my arm. “Nothing, signore.”

Carlo stared at him. Alonzo’s heartbeat picked up beside me—a quick, stumbling thud I could hear even through the cotton in my head.

Then Carlo pulled the door wider. “Bring him.”

The pets dragged me through the doorway, and I recovered enough to look around as we entered an operating room.

A real one, like something out of a hospital drama. A surgical table stood in the center under a dead exam light. Stainless steel counters crowded with darkened computer monitors lined the walls. Tables held racks of blood retrieval tubes and trays of instruments wrapped in plastic. A couple of IV poles loomed in the corner. Rolling carts were stacked with gauze and coils of clear tubing.

Candlelight flickered over all of it. A few battery-powered lamps sat between the same kind of ornate candelabras I’d seen in Carlo’s office. The scent of wax mingled with the astringent bite of antiseptic, the mishmash of old and new making my head spin harder.

Then the pets dragged me deeper into the room, and my head stopped spinning.

Because Jesse was manacled to the far wall. They’d stripped him naked and bolted him spread-eagled to the stone. Thick bands of silver gleamed at his wrists and ankles. Dried blood stained his neck and shoulder.

His blazing gold eyes fixed on me.

He opened his mouth and roared.

Chapter

Twenty-One

JESSE

My rage could have powered all of Rome.

My wolf shoved at my bones as the pets forced Caleb onto the operating table. I yanked at my restraints hard enough to make the anchors groan. The silver held. Smoke wafted from my wrists, and blood ran down my forearms in warm ribbons.

Terror wrapped around my throat and squeezed.

Carlo had been torturing werewolves. The proof had been lying in a cell when the pets dragged me past: a blinded man curled on stone with silver where his eyes should have been, his beard torn out in patches, old burns layered over new.

Carlo had built silver into his dungeon walls and worked his prisoners over with more of it, which explained everything I’d failed to sense. No wolf scents in the opera house. No wolves anywhere in Italy. The silver smothered their signatures, and the layers of stone underground swallowed whatever leaked through.

I’d walked Caleb into a slaughterhouse.

He fought on the table, trying to throw punches, but he was weak, and the pets subdued him easily. He was young, his wolf untested. If Carlo hit him with more silver, he’d probably lose consciousness.

And I couldn’t reach him. Couldn’t shield him. The only weapon I had left was my voice, so I forced my beast down far enough to use it.

“Don’t fight, baby,” I called, my wolf rumbling under the words.

The pets cinched the straps over his chest and thighs. The pet Carlo had called Alonzo smiled as he winched them tighter. Caleb cried out, and the last of the color bled from his skin. More silver in the restraints.

My wolf howled in my head. It gnawed at my bones, desperate to claw free.

I looked at Carlo. “What do you want?”

A stupid question. He wanted our blood. He’d obviously taken Ulfrik’s. And he’d already fed from me once. The first time I’d surfaced from unconsciousness, I’d been covered in silver chains, the links pinning my naked body to the floor of my cell.

“Just a taste,” Carlo had said, smiling as he settled on top of me. “Anger makes the blood spicy. Did you know?”

I was going to enjoy ripping his head from his shoulders.