Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(45)

A garden hose runs from the industrial sink into a coil on the floor. Later, he will use it to spray away the shit and piss and blood, the foaming tide of it swirling down the central floor drain.

Chase pauses before the cage and says, “I hate this,” and Augustus says, “I know,” and puts a hand on his shoulder to show his support and encourage him forward. “Take off your clothes,” Augustus says. “You don’t want to ruin them like the last time.”

It is not that he grows larger. It is that he soils himself in excitement, claws himself in agitation. Chase peels off his uniform and tosses it into a ball outside the cage. Thin scars crosshatch his shoulders and chest where the claw marks healed over. His left forearm is a lumpy mass of reddish scar tissue.

The door clicks shut and the padlock snaps into place and Augustus settles into the aluminum folding chair and adjusts his glasses and rests his hands on his knees like a theater patron who waits for the lights to dim, the curtains to part.

Every night, he transforms. Augustus demands it. To get it out of his system and exhaust his body. To normalize it, control it. Transformation does not come easily, he has told Augustus, every bone seeming to break, his skin crawling with angry wasps. He cries out and falls to the floor. His body contorts itself as if run through with electricity. From what Augustus has read, this will get easier over time, like a nerve deadened by repeated blows.

“This never would have happened,” Augustus says under his breath, “if you had just listened to me.”

As if in response, Chase hurls himself against the bars of the cage. He would have made a fine berserker, Augustus thinks, those Norse lycans who so long ago worked themselves into a frenzy, transforming before battle and fighting in a savage trance.

This would take time, months maybe, but Augustus, as a boy, owned several dogs, and with discipline and patience they all learned to fetch his slippers and shit outside. He has no doubt the same will be true of Chase. “Isn’t that right, old friend?”

Chase circles his enclosure. His arms lash at nothing but air. His teeth snap together as though chattering out some code. He presses his face, wild-eyed and misshapen and split by a fanged grin, against the cage.

There is a fridge in the corner, and Buffalo withdraws from it a package of raw hamburger. He tears off the plastic and crushes his fingers into the bloody mess. He molds tiny red balls and tosses them into the cage and, with a peculiar little smile, watches Chase devour them, one after another.





Chapter 16



A FROG LIES on a black dissection tray, the flaps of its belly pinned open to reveal guts like damp jewels. Patrick prods it with a scalpel and scissors and makes notes on his lab report. He breathes through his mouth and can vaguely taste the smell of formaldehyde. His right hand, gripping the scissors, still hurts. It has been a week since the full moon—since he saved the girl from the side of the road—and when he woke the next morning, he wasn’t sure if she was real or the shades of a dream that settled into the bruises ruining his knuckles.

Across the room, the teacher—Mr. Niday, a goateed man with sweat stains constantly darkening his armpits—comments on a three-legged frog, how common mutations are due to pesticides and parasites and how frog populations are declining precipitously and how something needs to be done and—

Patrick’s attention turns to his pocket as it buzzes twice. He checks to make sure Mr. Niday is still occupied with the three-legged frog and pulls out his handheld. A text from Malerie reads, “Skip lunch. Meet @ ur Jeep.”

He is so distracted that, when a few minutes later Mr. Niday appears behind him and asks how he is doing, Patrick says fine even as he slices through the heart he didn’t know was there.



He has been avoiding her. But now—God knows why; sometimes he can’t help himself—he is driving around Old Mountain with her. The day is bright and washed of its color. She has the radio up and the windows down. She sings the Stones around a lit cigarette—“Well, you’ve got your diamonds and you’ve got your pretty clothes”—the lyrics carried by clouds of smoke.

He turns off the radio and she keeps singing another moment without it. In the silence that settles between them, he licks his lips, not sure what to say. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“We skipped school and now we’re driving around.”

“You and Max. You’re together.”

The tip of her cigarette burns as bright as a cherry. “He’s all right.”

“If he finds out there’s something between us…”

“Scared?”

Something in the engine block whines. His odometer flips over to 145,000. “I don’t like trouble. I’ve had too much trouble.”

The road angles and the sun flashes through the window and settles on her hair to create a blazing red halo. “I’m hungry.” She snaps on the radio again and says over the music, “Where are you taking me?”

He shakes his head, not knowing whether to smile or kick her out the door. A few miles later, he pulls in to Hamburger Patties, where they order shakes and burgers, a basket of waffle fries, splats of mustard and ketchup in tiny paper cups.

“You believe in Max?” he says. “The Americans and all that?”

“And all that.” She shrugs and finishes off a bite of hamburger. “It’s something to do, people to be with.” She darts her tongue out and tastes her milk shake, her tongue lingering in it before curling upward, like a beckoning finger, back into her mouth.