My nails dug into her skin in an effort to hold on. She scrabbled, kicking against the door and the stone; her voice wheezed with her panting breath as she struggled. She was gaining on me. My reach through the door was past my elbow. My fingers cramped. The sweat breaking out on her skin made her slippery.
“Just say something, please,” I begged, my voice squeaking into a higher pitch, tightened by desperation. I just wanted one word.
She won the tug-of-war, her sweat-dampened skin sliding out of my grasp. I shouted a growl, a jagged noise containing all my frustration over the last however many hours. Or days. I kept my hand through the slot in the door, waving, grappling, my fingers hooked like claws. I must have looked like a wild animal.
I expected her to run in a panic, but I heard no footsteps. Her breath came in pants. She was still here, out of reach, watching me. I took a deeper breath and settled, stilling my voice, my body. But I kept my arm outstretched, reaching toward the outside with some kind of hope.
We might have stayed like that for long minutes. I didn’t dare pull my arm back in, no matter that she could have stabbed it or cut it off or anything while I held it out to her. This was the farthest I’d gotten in trying to get out of this hole they’d trapped me in. As soon as I pulled my arm back, she’d close the panel over the opening, and I’d be stuck again. I just wanted to hear a word, a single word, a shout or a curse, anything. I didn’t want to be the inhuman thing in a cage, not even worth a shred of sunlight. If she would just talk to me …
Something touched my fingers. I lay as close to the floor as I could, pressing up to the opening trying to see out of it and into the darkness. I couldn’t see her, only her arm, edging into my vision as she nudged an object into my hand. Instinctively, I clutched at it. Plastic crinkled. A cellophane wrapper. At least it wasn’t a grenade. I’d kind of wondered. I took a deep breath, trying to smell it—food, it smelled like food. All this struggle over feeding time. Could this get any more ridiculous?
She ducked away, out of my line of sight, and waited. The impasse was well and truly complete—I didn’t want to pull my hand in, because she would close the panel. But I wanted to see what she’d given me. She clearly wasn’t going to say anything. Since she didn’t so much as swear at me when I was clawing at her arm, she wasn’t going to speak now. Even with the panel open, I couldn’t escape. She could walk away, and I’d still be here, sprawled out on the floor, choking on dusty air, sweaty, chilled, exhausted.
I didn’tZora had opened a door tc want to give up. Pulling my hand inside felt like giving up. So did continuing to lie here, exposed and helpless.
“Why won’t you people just talk to me?” I didn’t like the way my voice came out rough, like a growl.
Nothing. Something—fear, power, purpose, whatever—was driving her patience. Me, I wanted to pace, faster and faster, until I could wear a hole in the stone and maybe escape that way. Wasn’t going to happen, but that didn’t stop the restless burning in my muscles. If I couldn’t pace, I wanted to punch something. If I couldn’t punch something, I wanted to scream. I wanted to do them all at once. Any of that would show them I was weak, so I didn’t. Instead, I gave up. Just this battle.
I pulled my hand back inside.
The plastic-wrapped object she’d given me was a sandwich. The prewrapped deli kind from the supermarket. It even had a label that I couldn’t quite make out in the dark. Shit, these people probably shopped at Safeway. Pulling back the packaging, I got a better smell of it—turkey and swiss on whole wheat. All that for a cheap fucking deli sandwich.
A thump and a click, and my “visitor” closed and latched the panel back in place. I was shut in, again. As bids for freedom went, this one had been awfully lame.
I rubbed a hand over my face as tears fell. Just a few, burning on my cheeks. My next breath shuddered. Then I was calm again. I held it together, somehow.
Bringing my hand to my face, I smelled her feline scent. Sensing deeper than that, I tried to find the person underneath. Female, with the ripe undertone of someon
Chapter 7
I DISCOVERED, GRATEFULLY, that my little pocket cave sloped slightly downward, away from the door. When I finally gave in and had to relieve myself, I went to the farthest end to do it. The urine pooled there and didn’t trickle back to where I was spending my time. Small favors. My jeans around my knees, I’d contorted myself into a crouch, thinking how much simpler this would be as Wolf. If I could just Change, squat to piss, howl at a moon I couldn’t see …
After pulling my jeans and panties back up, feeling gross and wishing for home, I curled up on the ground, back toward the door, and tried to think. If she wouldn’t make a sound while I was digging nails into her arm, how could I get her to talk to me?
Just to be doing something, I started pounding on the door again. “Somebody better come let me out or talk to me or I’m gonna start singing show tunes!” I didn’t really know many show tunes, it was just the worst thing I could think of right at the moment. A sad state of affairs.
That only lasted a couple of minutes. My voice was still hoarse from the last round of shouting. Nothing had changed.
