Quake

TUCKER ALONE

Renani heaves Tucker over her shoulder and carries him into the stone mansion, through the back door. She takes the route through the old servant’s quarters. Every packmate she passes barks questions at her in Fenraal, and she snarls back at them. No one is pleased with the naked stray over her shoulder, it seems. Renani herself is less than thrilled with her task, but her loyalty to her Alpha outweighs her pride. Tucker almost feels guilty for the inconvenience. Almost.

The servant’s quarters are cozy and clean, everything is either stone or wood paneled. Renani carries him past may open and closed doors, from which the smells of soap, sleep and s*x waft. When they finally emerge into the main hallways, the difference in décor is considerable. Tucker almost forgets his situation entirely, gaping at his ornate surroundings. The building inside is as austere and immaculate as the exterior. The ceilings are high, elaborate brass chandeliers dangle from central beams on thick chains, every doorway steeply arched, with intricately carved frames and keystones. Sweeping stairways lead up to pillared hallways, lit by tall lead glass windows, looking out over the calm grey ocean. Bright Persian carpets lie down every corridor, the stone walls adorned with colossal gilt framed portraits of Quake Alphas of old, mounted heads of wild game, historical weapons and armor, and many banners bearing what Tucker surmises to be the Quake coat of arms. The fabric is midnight blue, depicting a black wolf with its front right paw resting on a human skull. In its jaws it crushes a thrashing snake, and above its head a sickle moon rises. Tucker feels as though he has been transported back in time hundreds of years to some medieval lord’s castle.

Renani comes to a halt on the third floor before a set of heavy, wooden double doors. She kicks them open and throws Tucker into the room. His head cracks on the flagstones and the room spins for a while, his ears ringing. Renani crouches over him and cuts his ankles and wrists free with red polished claws.

“The bathroom is that way,” she gestures in a direction Tucker is too dazed to follow, “Clean yourself up. If you try to flee the room, I’ll snap your spine in half. Understood?”

Tucker’s tongue is thick in his mouth. He sits up slowly, painfully.

“Yes, Renani,” he slurs.

“Don’t address me by my name,” she snaps.

“Yes, R– Ah… Sorry. I won’t”

She stands to her full height, glaring down her nose at him.

“You better prove useful,” she snarls.

“I’ll try.”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry.”

She heaves a sigh, then leaves the room, slamming the doors behind her. Tucker hears the latch clack as she locks the doors. The thought of escape has not so much as crossed his mind. He is not sure that he can stand, let alone run. And why would he want to? It isn’t as though he has anywhere left to go.

From his seat in the middle of the floor, he gawks at the room he has been left in. He was expecting to be chained up in a basement somewhere. Instead, he has an expansive four-posted bed, a colossal oil painting depicting a black wolf and a lion fighting, a massive fireplace, a ceiling high bookshelf and a window overlooking the ocean.

Tucker crawls over to the bed on all fours, then uses one of the posts to pull himself upright. He sits heavily on the foot of the bed, exhausted by his efforts. He flops back, lying flat, and finds the ceiling is painted with clouds and birds. This is unreal. He suspects that he is actually bleeding out in the parking lot behind the pub and that this is all an elaborate dying hallucination.

He smells his own rank body odor and sits up. There is a doorway on the opposite side of the room, assumedly the bathroom Renani referenced. Tucker creaks to his feet and hobbles across the room. The bathroom houses a clawfoot bathtub, a gleaming ivory toilet and matching basin and an ovular free-standing mirror with brass feet and frame. Tucker heads for the tub, opening the hot tap all the way. The mirror calls his gaze to it. He stares at his naked self, stuck together with masking tape. His ribs are protruding, his cheeks are hollow, his eyes sunken. He has not had a steady food source in twelve months, and it shows. Though he is also looking more muscled than he realised. Mountain life was physically taxing, climbing, running, fighting. Despite the malnourishment, he is fitter than he has ever been. His genitals are also near fully healed now, by the looks of things. He slowly prizes the long vertical strip of tape off of his belly, hissing in pain as he goes. A thick twisted scar now runs the length of his torso, where Sadie and Vaskar ate their fill. Another scar, much older, and faded nearly beyond visibility, intersects with the vertical cut. This old scar is the one kindness Yvonne ever did her younger sibling. At sixteen, Tucker asked Yvonne to remove his uterus and ovaries from his body. Yvonne cut him open without hesitation.

Tucker turns away from his reflection, the mirror beginning to mist up, and finds the bath near full. He closes the taps and slides into the boiling water. He melts. The few times he washed in the last twelve months was in icy cold streams and ponds, on high alert for predators. He lets his eyes fall shut. This is a moment he could die in for sure. He lies in the hot water for a long while, almost falling sleep, only snapping awake when his head nods forward violently. He splashes his face, then gets to work with the slow, painful process of peeling the tape from his fresh scars. He is shocked by his own healing capabilities. He has always bounced back from beatings fairly quickly, but he simply accredited that to a high pain tolerance. But what he survived this time was no simple beating, they mauled him, intent on murder. He had no idea what to make of his rapid recovery. He thinks about Damascus’s words, his blatant surprise upon hearing of Tucker’s DIY operation. He picks up on a whiff of the man’s scent again. It exists everywhere here. And then something else that hasn’t happened in a year occurs: Tucker gets hot. He is more surprised than anything else. Images of the Alpha jostle into his head. He thinks about the fabric of Damascus’s shirt, straining to fit across his wide, wide shoulders. Tucker reaches exploratively down between his own legs and finds himself intact. A prudish voice in the back of his head tells him that now is not the time, he has too much to worry about. Tucker choses to ignore it. He almost died today, he may very well still die soon. If there were ever an appropriate time to touch himself, it is right now. He wonders who Damascus f****d just over twelve hours ago. He imagines Damascus walking into the steamy bathroom; his tall, wide frame filling the narrow doorway. Would Damascus f**k him on the floor, or over the edge of the bath? He imagines every possibility.

Images of Klaus try to elbow into his head, but he pushes them away. He has grieved enough, he will grieve some more, five minutes thinking of someone else are no crime against his dead lover, surely? He stays in the bath until the water goes cold and his fingertips are wrinkled like raisins. He climbs out on shaky legs, steadier than they were before his soak. He gently dries himself off, then heads back into the bedroom.

Someone came in and out while he bathed. A fresh set of clothes is folded neatly on the bed, a pair of brown leather dress shoes at the foot. He inspects the clothing before putting it on; a button up hemp shirt, charcoal suit trousers, black socks and underwear. All clearly made from good quality materials by highly capable hands. It all fits snugly, but comfortably. Once dressed, he limps over to the bookshelf. He pauses as he passes the window and stops a while to admire the view. Moonlight paint the scene in silver. Manicured green lawn runs all the way up to the sandy shore. The endless black ocean laps lazily at the beach. He could watch its hypnotic back and forth for hours, but his legs whimper in protest of standing, so he continues his hobble over to the shelf. He finds everything on it is written in Fenraal, but he takes down a large red leather-bound volume anyway, and finds it has illustrations. He sits on the bed, paging through it. He takes this to be some kind of history book, detailing the spread of wolfkind from the north across the globe, judging by the drawings.

After some time, he hears keys scraping in the lock, smells the bitter scent of Renani in the hallway beyond. She throws the doors open and scowls across the room at Tucker. She wears a red silk dress, the same shade of red as her nails and large gold hoop earrings.

Tucker is genuinely surprised by the outfit change.

“Nice dress,” he says, genuinely meaning it.

Renani scowls.

“It’s eleven forty-five,” she says, “Hurry up. If you’re late for dinner Damascus will skin you alive.”