Rite of Submission - Rite 1

27: At Death's Door

                We didn't return to the garage or even the main house when we got back out of the woods. He raced around, and between buildings, sometimes on sidewalks until we got to what looked like a small hospital. Nathan was standing at the entrance waiting for us. "Take her back to the house," he ordered, handing him the keys and pushing inside.

Nathan took a step towards me, "No," I moved to follow after Dmitri, "I'm coming with you." If something had happened to Sophie, hell would have to freeze over before I just went back to sit in a room to wait.

"Alexan..." Nathan tried to keep me from going inside but I cut him off.

"Luna," I corrected, pushing past him, "and I said I'm going with him." When Dmitri didn't stop to enforce the order, Nathan just stepped away with an annoyed look, letting me plow into the building to follow him.

I almost had to jog to keep up as he raced through the different wings and down a dark staircase to what must have been a basement level. I stopped short when we got to the bottom, there was a hallway lined with what looked like glass cells. Only a few of the window/walls had a light on behind them, but the occupants looked more like prisoners than patients.

"Alpha," Dr Martinez sounded relieved to see him, and shocked when she looked over his shoulder to see me, "...and Luna?" he spun around as she addressed me. It took everything in me not to cringe from the look he shot me.

"What happened?" I did my best to sound as confident as Sophia had when slipping into her role as Luna. I stepped in, beside Dmitri and stood up straight. He watched me in much the same way he had after I'd bit him.

"It's Trevor," the Doctor started to explain glancing nervously between the two of us, "I'm sure it's wolfsbane but we can't seem to force him to shift. The medication is barely holding him stable at the moment."

"Which room?" he ground out through clenched teeth, finally turning his attention to her, but barely waiting for her answer before walking off and yelling behind, "You stay put this time!" he broke into a sprint and was gone.

Dr Martinez tried to smile at me, "This way dear," she gestured down another hall, "it'll be safer for us on this side of the glass, hmm." We passed several dark windows before she got to the cell she wanted. Inside, there was a teenage boy, he was built like he was on the football team for a high school and had to be about my age. His skin was pale white, and covered with beads of sweat, his sandy brown hair disheveled and matted against his forehead. But it was the ashy grey color of his lips that made me gasp. If it wasn't for the monitor on the wall showing the little blips and beeping along with his heartbeat, I'd have sworn the poor kid was dead.

Dmitri barreled through the metal door on the back wall into the room like a tornado. He leaned in close to the boy, whispering something into his ear, but there was barely a twitch of his hands in response. I could feel more than hear it as Dmitri growled. Even the air out in this hall thickened as tried to use his sway on the boy.

Dr Martinez watched the different monitors, scribbling in the file she held in her hands as she checked different readings. Things happened so fast I could barely understand what was happening. Taking his shirt off and tossing it aside, Dmitri's body started to shift and contort, until something out of a horror movie stood in his place. Half man half wolf, he growled at the lifeless body on the bed. The air became thicker still.

I could only watch in horror as the boy started to convulse violently, eventually flipping off the bed on to the floor. The sounds of flesh tearing and bones breaking were gut wrenching and made me nauseous as I watched. Were all shifts this violent? It was no wonder that female shifters couldn't have kids.

I could hear Dmitri's beast growling at the poor tangled mass of a body on the floor, and Dr Martinez was franticly pulling up and examining the different readings on the monitors. It was the scream of sheer agony that finally tore something loose in me. I placed a hand on the glass and tried to will the poor kid to finish the transformation.

"Derivare et sana..." I breathed, not understanding the words or knowing where they came from. Everything went quiet around me like the world stood still. A strange pressure built up in my chest in that moment frozen in time. It built up until I didn't feel like I could contain it anymore, bursting out of me like the pulse of an EMP. The world resumed moving. Quiet and almost as smoothing as Dmitri had, the mangled boy shifted into a wolf.

Even the Doctor jumped back as the wolf lunged towards the glass as if to attack us. He whimpered a moment then stood there, his heckles raised, growling at the two of us. I pressed my palm flat on the glass before him, kneeling down to be eye level with him. He moved forward cautiously and touched his forehead to the glass on the other side of my palm, like a puppy seeking affection.

Feeling Dmitri's glare as he watched the interaction between the two of us, I pulled my hand back hastily. The sandy brown wolf whimpered; laying down on the floor in front of me and curled up as if to sleep. Dmitri's body shrank as he shifted back. He slumped against the far wall for support, staring at me warily as the wolf between us slept.

"Fascinating," Dr Martinez mused, scribbling away in the file and checking the monitors again. I had turned to her when she spoke, but when I looked back into the cell, there was just the wolf, curled up against the glass. She regained my attention, pointing to a screen with two heart beats paused on it. "It looks like both of their pulses slowed the moment you touched the glass," she murmured more to herself than me. "And here," she looked at another reading, turning it back to the same time stamp, "both of their temperatures spiked at the same time..." she trailed off making more notes.

"Send me a full report immediately," Dmitri ordered, making me jump as he seemed to appear out of nowhere, pulling his shirt back on over his head. "Let's go." He grabbed my arm and pulled me back down the hallway and into a tunnel system. Confused and shocked, I just let him drag me along with him as he stormed ahead.

The tunnel opened up into the more familiar medical suite in the pack house. He pulled me along through the stark white halls and back into the house proper. He didn't say a word until he'd taken us back into the room where we'd had our negotiations a few days back.

Slamming the door, he finally released my arm. I stood in the middle of the room as he started circling me, much like he had the first night in his office. There was no audience this time, and the amused, playful smirk had been replaced by a predatory glare. "What did you do to us?" his voice was a low gravely growl.

Circling again, and staying out of reach, he scrutinized me from all sides. I didn't have an answer for him; all I could do was stand there and stare at the floor. He paced around the room, half mumbling, half growling, but I couldn't make sense of what he was trying to say, or if he was saying anything.

"What exactly are you?" He got really quiet and I could feel him staring at me from behind. It felt like someone had my heart in a vice, crushing it. Tears filled my eyes, but I refused to let them roll down my checks as we stood there in that strained awkward silence.

It was when a thick manila envelope was tossed at my feet and I heard him leave the room that I finally let the tears fall. I stood there and sobbed until my eyes ran dry, not understanding why I was crying. I couldn't make sense of any of it no matter how many times I replayed it in my head.

Grabbing the envelope off the ground I curled into the chair he'd sat in the last time we were in here. I couldn't bring myself to open it, so I just hugged it to my chest and stared at the tapestries hanging on either side of the closed door. They looked different as I sat there, my sight still blurred from the tears. I let my eyes rest on the goddess. It looked as if she was looking back at me, her face sad now. She didn't have the same scornful anger she seemed to have had that first time I was in this room. Part of me wished she could step off the fabric and give me the answers I needed.

"What" not who, was what he'd asked, and I wished I knew.