Ice -- Wolv book II

19 - The Cure

I stared at the man in horrified awe.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting here for so long. It's so difficult to get good refrigeration out here! All my old samples had long gone bad, so I had to run out and get more."

I shook my head, his words sailing clear over me. I'd seen him die! Mingan had basically torn his throat out. He certainly has the scars to prove that, doesn't he!

I'd seen him go limp. He'd fallen still--he had been killed!

I'd watched him being dragged out of the den in which he was killed. He'd been left in the forest alongside his fallen comrades.

"You're dead,"  I said again firmly.

Abrams chuckled. "Again, Humfrey, I assure you, I am very much alive." He ran his finger over the hole in his throat, smiling dryly. "Well...as alive as I can be, given the circumstances."

I felt sick to the stomach--and not because of my shift. This man was responsible for so much death; he'd killed many of my packmates, along with the first friend I'd ever had as a wolv--Spike. He'd torched the woods we were in, and Spike ended up burning to death beneath a fallen tree.

"You...but...but I saw you die!"

"No, you didn't! Get over yourself!" he snapped. "I'm lucky I woke up when I did. I would've bled out in another hour. You...your kind left me to die! You dragged me away and tossed me aside!"

I jarred against my restraints, flashing him my teeth. "You slaughtered 'my kind!'  What did you expect, for us to give you a funeral? Nobody mourned you! You killed people!"

"I didn't kill anyone, least of all people. As far as anyone is concerned, only animals died out there."

"Along with your friends." I growled at him. "Too bad we missed one of 'em."

"I only ever tried to help you!"

"You are the only one who sees it that way! An' how was killing us off helping us?!?"

He waved his hand at me, dismissing my words. "I don't have to explain myself to you, Humfrey."

"Is this about your daughter?" He stiffened. "She's dead. Has been for years!"

He scowled at me, his disfigured features making him look like a corpse. "You and I both know that's not true. Those are just the desperate words of a desperate man."

I looked at him with disgust. "You're calling me desperate?" Are you kidding me?!? "What do you want with me anyways?"

"Ha!" He coughed hoarsely, clutching his throat in the process. "Well--ack!--that is the question of the day now, isn't it." He returned to swirling the dark green liquid in the beaker. "I'm going to cure you of this...sickness."

I felt myself going pale once more. "What." That wasn't even possible! Besides, I didn't want to be cured.

Not that he would care.

"This isn't a sickness."

"Oh, but it is!" He turned and pointed at my hands. "There is nothing natural about what's happening to you right now, as we speak. It's not right."

"A lot of things are not right!"

"Exactly. Things like you shouldn't exist. You don't have any place here."

"That's not for you to decide!" I shouted back at him.

"Yes it is! The moment you took my daughter from me, it became mine to decide! And I will get her back, and if I end up killing all of you in the process, than so be it."