Chapter 22: Thorne's interrogation
The back of the van was a dark, rattling purgatory.The silver net wasn’t just restraint; it was a systemic poison. Every filament seared a line of fire into Lyra’s hide, the pain a white-noise scream that drowned out the engine’s growl. She could feel her wolf-spirit, that core of furious energy, fraying at the edges, dampened by the metal’s hateful chill.
Next to her, Julian was a still, silent shape. But the bond—that inexplicable thread—hummed with a low, persistent pulse.Not health.A grim, determined wakefulness. The finger tracing on the floor had been a promise. He was in there, fighting the wolfsbane paralysis.
The van slowed, took a sharp turn downward, and the sound of the tires changed, echoing now off enclosed walls.They were going underground.
When the doors flew open, the light was a clinical, migraine-bright assault. Hands grabbed the net, and the fresh agony of movement made her vision swim. They hauled her out, the silver cutting new tracks through her fur, and dumped her onto a concrete floor so cold it stole her breath.
The room was a lab, but not like the one at the fen.This was older, more brutalist. Stainless steel tables bolted to the floor.Grooves for runoff. The smell was antiseptic overlaying something older, more organic—a butcher-shop scent she knew from her first hunts.Her wolf recoiled.
Julian was dragged out beside her.Two vampires hauled him upright. His head hung, his black hair matted with something dark—blood or chemical residue. He seemed boneless, but as they passed her, his silver eyes flicked open for a fractured second. The message was clear: Play your part.“Secure her to Table Four.The restraints. Not the net,” Thorne’s voice echoed, casual as a chef giving orders.The net was peeled away, every strand a fresh burn. Four vampires manhandled her onto a cold metal slab, flipping her onto her back. Heavy cuffs, lined with a dull grey alloy, clamped over her wrists and ankles. The moment they locked, a deeper, more invasive cold shot up her limbs.Silver, alloyed with something else. It didn’t just burn; it felt heavy, like it was pushing her consciousness down, compressing her wolf into a smaller and smaller cage inside her skull.
Thorne appeared in her line of sight, leaning over her.His gaunt face was a study in satisfaction.“Better. Now we can have a conversation without the... barking.”
Lyra bared her teeth, a low, continuous growl vibrating in her throat.It took everything she had.
“Where is the rest of your pack holed up?The eastern valley?The old quarry works?” His voice was pleasant, conversational.
She said nothing.Just the growl.“What is the nature of your connection to the traitor Ashford? A forced empath bond?A manipulation spell?” He leaned closer, his dried-blood eyes scanning her face. “It’s pathetic, really.A wolf, leashed by a vampire. My people have dissected more profound intersections of magic and biology. You’re a crude phenomenon.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Lyra snarled, the words mangled by her elongated jaw.
Thorne straightened up, unfazed.He turned to a rolling instrument table.The tools there weren’t medical. They were utilitarian, cruel.He picked up a scalpel. The blade wasn’t stainless steel; it had a faint, bluish sheen.
“Silver nitrate coating,” he said, holding it up to the light.“It doesn’t just cut. It cauterizes, it sears, and it leaves a traceable chemical signature that lingers in the tissue for months. Makes tracking a subject so much easier, if they manage to run.” He turned back to her. “Last chance.Pack strongholds.Alliance terms. The source of your bond.”
Her father’s face flashed in her mind.His voice.An Alpha holds the line, Lyra. Even when it burns.She locked her amber eyes on Thorne’s. “I drink your name from a puddle, cockroach.”
A flicker of annoyance, finally, crossed his composed face. It was a victory, small and bitter.
“Let’s see how long that wolf spirit lasts when we peel back the layers.”
He brought the scalpel down.
The first cut was a line of cold fire along her lower ribcage.It wasn’t deep—a superficial slice. But the silver nitrate ignited her nerve endings, a poison firework spreading under her skin. Her back arched against the restraints, a choked scream ripping itself from her throat. The smell of her own burning fur and skin filled her nostrils, acrid and sweet.Thorne watched, clinically.“Fascinating. The dermal tissue attempts to regenerate immediately, but the silver actively necrotizes the new cells. A war at the microscopic level.”
He made another parallel cut. Agony, bright and sharp, lanced through her.The growl was gone, replaced by ragged gasps.Her vision tunneled. The sterile lights blurred into a single white hell.
A commotion at the room’s entrance cut through the haze of her pain.A vampire guard spoke, voice tense. “Sir, the Conclave liaison is here. They’re demanding an immediate update and review of the prisoner logs.”
Thorne froze, the scalpel hovering above her skin.His expression tightened into a mask of cold fury. The Conclave—the vampire governing council. Julian’s last-ditch card, played from the floor of a van.“Delay them,” Thorne hissed.
“They are in the elevator, sir.Now.”
A long, silent beat stretched out. Thorne’s eyes went from Lyra’s bleeding side to the door. Letting the Conclave see her actively dissected would be a provocation even he might not be able to spin.They sanctioned capture. They did not sanction unsanctioned experimentation on an Alpha.
With a snarl of pure frustration, he threw the scalpel onto the instrument tray.It clattered, a sharp, ringing sound. “Clean her up.Dress the wounds.Standard containment cell. Now.”
He turned and strode toward the door, his coat flaring. “This isn’t over, mutt,” he spat over his shoulder, the casual cruelty returning to a seething rage. “It’s a postponement.”
As soon as the door hissed shut behind him, the atmosphere changed. The vampires left in the room moved with less precision, a hurried anxiety. They sprayed a cold, numbing foam over the cuts on her side—the relief was almost as shocking as the pain—and slapped thick bandages over them. The cuff on her right ankle released.
One of the vampires, a younger-looking one with nervous eyes, muttered, “Hurry up. Get her to Beta Cell.”
They uncuffed the rest, hauling her upright.Her legs were water, her side a throbbing monument to fire. She couldn’t stand. They dragged her, her paws scrabbling on the slick floor, out of the lab and into a grey, concrete corridor.
They passed a heavy door labeled CONTAINMENT – BETA.One of them punched a code.The door unsealed with a hydraulic sigh. They shoved her inside.She stumbled, falling onto the cold floor. The door slammed shut, plunging her into near darkness. The only light came from a faint, bioluminescent strip running around the base of the walls.A moment later, a vent high on the wall whispered open. A shape, limp and dark, was unceremoniously dumped from a chute. It landed with a soft thud beside her.Julian.
He lay still for a handful of heartbeats, then coughed, a wet, ragged sound.He rolled onto his side, facing her. In the dim glow, he looked like a corpse. Pale as marble, dark trails from his eyes like tears of blood.The wolfsbane was still in his system, a slow-acting poison.
But his eyes were open.They held hers.
“The bandages,” he whispered, his voice sandpaper over glass.“Tear them off.The silver… it’s a beacon. They’ll use it to track you.”
Lyra looked down at the crude dressing on her side. With a trembling, clumsy paw, she hooked a claw under the edge and ripped. The foam-peeled bandage came away, taking some fur with it. The cuts beneath gleamed, an angry, fluorescent blue-silver in the low light—the nitrate signature.
She dropped the contaminated fabric as if it were a live coal.Julian’s hand, shaking violently, reached out. His cold fingers brushed the fur near, but not touching, her wounded flank.“Good.” A exhausted sigh. “Now… we wait.The Conclave’s curiosity… is our only shield. For a few hours.”
“Your plan sucked,” Lyra managed to grate out, every word an effort.
A ghost of a smile touched his bloody lips. “It got us… into a slightly nicer cell.” He let his head fall back against the floor.“Rest, Lyra. The waiting is almost over.”
She didn’t understand. But the bond between them, strained and pained, hummed with a new, terrifying certainty.He wasn’t talking about rescue.He was talking about something else. An endgame, poised to begin.