“You’re no good to us in this condition,” Phillips insisted, as he took hold of my leg again and yanked it from side to side.

“Well it won’t bloody get better if you keep prodding and licking it every five minutes!” I snapped.

“Just as feisty as ever,” Sparky grinned. “Lame or not, she still has that fighting spirit!”

Phillips grunted thoughtfully again and eyed me carefully as his wings flapped behind him. Then, without warning, he let go of my leg and slammed it into the floor. I shrieked in pain and fought the urge to puke as Sparky yelped in excitement.

“We’ll come back in a day or so and I’ll make my decision then,” Phillips said. Turning away, he headed back towards the door. Sparky grinned at me again then went after Phillips.

“What do you want from me?” I cried out in frustration and anger.

At the door, they both turned to face me.

“You’ll find out all in good time,” Phillips grunted as his turned-up snout twitched. “Just pray that leg of yours starts to get better.”

Sparky looked at my leg then back at me and said, “You’re useless to us with an infection and the only way of killing the infection will be by killing you.” He then licked his lips slowly and purposefully.

Slamming the cell door closed behind them, they left me alone again in my cell. I guessed that Sparky had once more changed back into a wolf as I sat and listened to the sound of his howling echoing off the stone walls outside. Throwing my hands over my ears, I fought back the tears that burned in the corners of my eyes.

Chapter Eight

I sat like a statue until the day grew dark outside. My leg still hurt and I continued to wonder where I was and what the Vampyrus and Lycanthrope had planned for me. What would be the point in killing me? Didn’t they need me? Wasn’t the whole point of this to extract my DNA somehow – for them to find a way of breeding more like me – more like Kayla and Isidor?

And then as if a bright light had been switched on inside my brain, I could see the girl in the room at the monastery – the one who looked like Kayla – the one Isidor had killed. But there had been something wrong with her. The girl in the room hadn’t bred properly – there was something missing. Perhaps my DNA was the missing key? But they had me now – they could extract as much as they wanted. In my mind’s eye, I could see the unfinished email that I’d read on the computer at the monastery. It had said something about me being delivered dead or alive. But delivered to who, and where?

To think of those things made me think of my friends - Luke and Potter. Where was Luke now? Was he still alive? And why hadn’t Potter come for me? Was he dead too?

The only way to know for sure would be to get out of the cell and find out for myself.

But how?

I looked around my cell in the gloom of the dying light which spilt in through the square hole above me. Somewhere inside me, I knew that I used to be good at seeing things - like really seeing things, so I should be able to see a way out of my cell. Sitting back against the wall and taking a deep breath, I saw there were only three exits available to me.

Firstly, there was the most obvious – the cell door, but that was always locked. Secondly, there was the hatch that my food and water was pushed through – but the big white paw lived on the other side of it. And finally there was the square hole in the ceiling, but that was covered with wire mesh and well out of reach.

I sat and looked up at it and tried to work out if it were big enough for me to fit through. It was hard to tell from where I was sitting on the floor. It seemed so far away. But even if I could fit through it, there was all that wire mesh that would need to be removed, and I had no cutting tools, nor could I reach it. Even if I could, what would I find on the other side?

My mind see-sawed with a million questions and doubts. The whole escape idea seemed impossible – but what other options did I have? Phillips and Sparky would be back in a few days and I feared that if my leg were not healed, I was going to be in serious trouble. But then again – even if my leg did heal, what was it they had planned for me?

However impossible my escape seemed – I had to try something – I had to get out of my cell.

But if I left my cell – escaped from wherever it was they kept me, what would I do about the…the blood? How would I get more? To think of it again made me want it. So picking up the bowl, I closed my eyes, and put some of the flesh inside my mouth.

It was dark when the cell door creaked open and Nik came trotting in. He stood in the wedge of moonlight that illuminated the middle of the cell, and looked at me.

“I’ve brought you something,” he purred and then quickly turned away and disappeared back into the shadows by the door.

I could hear a scraping sound as he dragged something into my cell. Nik came walking slowly backwards towards me, pulling a chair between his wide jaws. He stepped into the pool of moonlight and let go. The chair tipped over onto its side and the sound of it hitting the stone floor echoed off the walls like cannon fire.

“I thought you might like to sit on this, instead of being on the floor all of the time.”

I was momentarily touched by his kindness but then wondered if it was not some sort of a trick.

“Why?” I asked.

“It will be more comfortable,” he simply added.

Sensing my unease, Nik backed away from the chair.

I got up slowly and hobbled over to the middle of the room. I righted the chair and sat down on it. The chair wasn’t particularly comfortable with four straight aluminium legs, a green plastic seat and cushioned back – but Nik was right, it beat sitting on that hard stone floor.

I looked at him, as he waited on the outskirts of the moonlight.

“Thank you,” I said.

There was an uneasy silence between us, as I sat on the cheap plastic chair and he stared at me. I eventually broke the silence.

“You‘re Lycanthrope, right? A werewolf?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding a little confused.

“So why did you struggle in here with that chair between your jaws when you could’ve simply done it in the form of a man?”

“I’ve been captured,” he said.

“So you’re a prisoner like me?” I asked him, shocked at the thought that perhaps there were Lycanthrope imprisoned here.

“Not that kind of captured,” he started to explain. “I’ve been captured in the form of a wolf, like frozen – stuck like this.”

“How come?” I asked, confused. “If I remember rightly – and to be honest I could be wrong, my memory seems a little fried at the moment - you can change form at will.”

“Not me,” Nik said, dropping to the floor by my feet and resting his giant head on his paws. “My father is punishing me and until I make amends – I’m stuck as the big-bad-wolf.”

“What did you do that was so bad?” I asked him.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he barked, his tail snaking back and forth across the ground. He licked one of his massive paws and then rubbed it softly over his face. Knowing that he didn’t want to talk about what it was he had done to be so cruelly punished, I changed the subject asking, “How did I come to be in this cell?”

“You were brought here with the others,” Nik replied, as he licked his paw again and started to wash his huge ears.

“Others?”

“A boy and a girl,” Nik said, looking at me from the floor.

“Isidor and Kayla!” I breathed, my heart starting to thump with excitement in my chest. “They’re here, you said?”

“Yes,” Nik woofed.

“You’ve got to let me see them!” I told him, getting up from my chair.

“Impossible,” Nik said and licked his long black snout.

“Why?” I pushed. “You have to let me see them.”

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“Why not?”

“If I were caught in here with you, I’d be…well, I’ve been punished enough don’t you think?” he said, flicking his tail from side to side.

“Are they okay?” I asked him, lowering myself carefully back onto my chair.

“They’re very much like you,” he said, looking at me with his yellow eyes that glinted in the shaft of moonlight.

“What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“They’ve been operated on.”

“Operated on!” I spat, getting up from my seat again and wincing at the pain in my leg and back.

“They’ve been tested...perhaps operated was the wrong word,” Nik said.

“But I’ve seen them in my dreams…nightmares,” I told him. “I saw Isidor and Kayla and they were in pain. They were screaming.”

“Are you sure they were nightmares?” Nik asked fixing me with his brilliant stare.

“Of course they were nightmares! I was in them. I was locked in a room that was similar to a hospital and I was wearing a hospital…” Then looking down at myself, I whispered, “…gown.”

Nik just looked at me, his tail swishing back and forth across the stone floor of my cell.

“Oh, my God!” I breathed deeply. “They’re not dreams or nightmares – they’re memories! All that stuff has really happened!” Then twisting around on the chair, I reached over my shoulder and touched the space between my shoulder blades. At once, pain exploded across my back and I snapped forward. I waited for the pain to ease but it never truly faded, so I touched my back again. With the tips of my grubby fingers, I could feel those little black bones sticking from my back as they twitched and wriggled like fingers.

Snatching my hand away, I yanked the hospital gown from over my head. Folding my arms over my breasts, I showed my back to the wolf and said, “What have they done to me?”

Nudging the metal bowl across the floor towards me with his snout, Nik said, “See for yourself.”

I crouched down, and picked up the bowl with my trembling fingers. Holding it in the air and slightly behind my left shoulder, I turned my head and peered at the reflection of my back in the shiny surface of the bowl. At once I dropped it, and it clattered to the floor, spilling what was left of the meat.