2 Pushing Luck Read Online Free PDF

closing the door behind us when something sharp bit into my back. My whole body turned into a big seized muscle full of light.
    *  *  *
    Water to my face woke me up. My head was lying sideways on concrete with poached eggs where my eyes used to be, but I kept them closed. My throat was sore and sticky from swallowing blood, hopefully mine, and my mouth tasted like burnt copper. I could feel every one of my teeth individually. My body was a cramp surrounded by burning skin. I had been electrocuted. It’s possible to amp up a Taser high enough to mess with a werewolf’s brain functions although this is highly illegal. That kind of voltage will kill a human being.
    I smelled blood and salt and urine and gun oil and tamarind and sweat and Jamie Belmont’s perfume and rakshasa stink. There were six, no, seven other people in the room.
    The urine was mine. As secondary sensations—or at least an awareness of them—gradually returned, I realized that I’d wet myself. Perhaps that’s why they hadn’t stripped me entirely though I could feel cool air on my feet, and I wasn’t wearing a shirt. There was something hard pinching my wrists and ankles, and my arms were pulled tightly behind my back. Cuffs or manacles, then, and heavy ones by the feel of them.
    The last thing I remembered was Jamie saying she was sorry.
    “Wakey, wakey, no more fakey.” The singsong voice was halfway between a purr and the sound of a chainsaw starting.
    I groaned and opened my eyes. The lights were on, which was unfortunate. From where my head was propped on wet concrete I could see the rakshasa holding a black leather briefcase in one hand and a small pail in the other. Jamie Belmont was standing as far behind it as she could.
    A man holding something that looked like a shark stick with a cattle prod duct-taped to it was standing in front of the rakshasa, and two men with sawed-off shotguns were standing on either side of me. The idiots were standing in a crossfire. Two more men were behind me. Pardon me if I don’t describe any of the flunkies. They weren’t human beings to me. They were obstacles. Targets. Bowling pins. Red security shirts. I didn’t personalize them then, and I’m not going to do so now. It’s easier that way.
    Groaning, I pulled myself up to my butt. It wasn’t easy with my hands chained behind my back. Just to help a little, I pulled my hindquarters through my arms so that my wrists were behind my knees. It was a lot harder than it should have been.
    “You weren’t lying about the drains,” I rasped. There was one right next to me, as a matter of fact. The basement was a vast expanse of concrete that went on for hundreds of feet in every direction, though we were relatively close to the stairs. I had scouted the place right after I’d taken out the mansion’s cameras. To my right, a small doorway led to a labyrinth of small claustrophobic rooms with wooden shelves and rusty tools and glass jars. To my left, an access door led to the mansion’s nightmare of a heating and plumbing system, a mismatch of modern additions and redundant boilers, water tanks, furnaces and copper piping. There were washing machines and a series of large concrete sinks lining the west wall, while shower heads with no curtains or cubicles lined the east. Either the latter weren’t used for washing bodies, or they were originally made for migrant workers with no rights to privacy.
    The rakshasa made that satisfied grinding rumble again. “I wasn’t lying about the room being soundproof either. You can scream all you want.”
    I looked around while I hunched and pulled my knees up to my chin and brought my feet up over the chain so that I could pull my arms in front of me. It hurt. I was in the middle of a pentagram of unbroken salt lines. The rakshasa and its guards were standing in a larger secondary circle, also drawn in salt.
    Apparently, the rakshasa hadn’t entirely given up on the idea of me being a