His head was pounding and every part of his body ached. Conciousness slowly returned to him. But it wasn't desired. He felt the need to make a sound, and moaned in pain.
Thomas slowly raised his aching head and opened his eyes. He saw where he was- in the same dismal location, and sighed, lowering his head again.
He shut his eyes once more and let himself drift off into dreamland. But he didn't get very far in it. The door to the cage squeaked open once more.
"You want food, boy?" the woman's voice asked. It was high pitched, and the sound assaulted his ears. "Come with me."
Thomas was too tired and in too much pain to care about food, and didn't move.
"Come on boy, if you want food, you gotta come," she coaxed sweetly. Thomas didn't move. "Okay, then, we'll do this the hard way. " She left the room for a moment. Thomas vaguely realized that she'd left the cage door open, but this time he didn't care and just laid there in pain, waiting for her return.
In a while he heard her return, her tall heels clicking against the wood floor of the kitchen, making him wince. She entered the carpeted living room, which quieted her footsteps.
Thomas felt her hands around his head, lifting his head up. He felt something cold and hard on the bare skin of his neck, and then he heard a clinking sound. He was too exhausted to care what it was.
The woman stepped back from the cage and Thomas felt a sharp yank on his neck, almost cutting off his breathing. He opened his eyes quickly, hands going to his neck. He gasped in surprise.
"Thought that would wake you up, brat. Now come on. You're going to eat whether you like it or not," the woman said, in answer to Thomas' confused looks. She yanked again on the rope attached to the choker, dragging the boy out of the cage and to his feet.
"Where's Davy?" Mike wondered.
Nicole was resting, her head in Peter's arms, on the window seat. Micky was lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling. And Mike was sitting on the bandstand, fiddling around with some odd notes to a song he couldn't get quite right. But Davy was nowhere around.
"I think he said he was going upstairs," Micky replied without taking his eyes off the ceiling. If one looked hard enough at the cracks in the old worn out paint, they could see almost any face they wanted to. Micky was seeing Thomas' face.
Mike went upstairs, wondering why Davy was there. When Peter had moved out, he and Micky had continued to sleep upstairs, leaving Davy alone downstairs. The reason for that was that he didn't want to move, and moving Micky's things would be to much of a hassle, so they hadn't bothered.
When Micky had moved out for almost a year, he and Davy had considered moving altogether, getting their own apartments and leaving the house behind since it was too big for the two of them. But neither of them really wanted to, since there were so many memories. Eventually, Micky had moved back, so it was lucky they hadn't.
But now, Davy's bedroom was downstairs. What would he be doing upstairs? Mike pondered this question as he ascended the spiral staircase and headed toward the bedroom.
"Davy?" he asked.
"Down 'ere, Mike," the Englishman's voice replied, and Mike followed the sound. It wasn't from the bedroom, it wasn't from the bathroom, where was it from?
There was only one other possibility. The spare room.
It wasn't really a spare room, since there wasn't any furniture in it. It was just a room that they used to hold any extra junk that they had no place for. But why would Davy be in there? Mike was about to find out.
He entered the room to find Davy sitting on a chair in the middle of a bunch of boxes. The chair was an old, broken one that no one had used for years. The boxes were of old baby clothes.
Since Nicole and Peter only had one son, there was no need to keep the baby boy clothes. But they didn't want to throw them away since they were still good. So they were being stored up in the spare room.
"Davy?" Mike asked. Davy looked up. "What are you doing?"
Davy was silent a long moment before he answered. "Just thinking, " he replied.
"About Thomas?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Why in here?"
Davy shrugged. "I don't know, actually. It just seemed to be the right place to go. That and I was trying to find him."
Mike nodded in understanding. "Any luck?" he asked.
"Some. But not enough to be useful," he confessed.
"Don't worry. Everythin's gonna be fine, Dave," Mike replied. "But you're gonna worry anyway. That's okay. So do I." He turned and walked out of the room.
Davy turned and looked at Mike as he left. After the door shut, he sighed, shaking his head.
"I didn't understand that, Mike, but I think it was a clue," he thought aloud. Then he went back to trying to search for his missing nephew.
Davy shifted through the things in the box in front of him, in hopes of finding something that could help him. Mostly there were just clothes. Little, tiny baby shirts and pants and bibs and bonnets. As he looked at them, Davy could almost see Thomas, young and smiling up at him. Innocent. Never knowing what would happen. Never knowing the dreaded secret that his uncles hid from him.
Though they'd never told Thomas straight out about how Peter and Mike were still were-animals, they always suspected he knew. Thomas was always smart enough to find things like that out, and hiding things from him was pointless.
Davy shut his eyes and an image formed in his mind. An image of Thomas the first time he'd seen him. A tiny baby with a squished up pink face wrapped in blankets and sleeping in his mother's arms. Davy had looked at the little boy and he'd known immediately that he was important. He just hadn't realized how important.
'Important?' a voice asked him in the back of his head. Davy looked up and around the room. Had Mike returned?
Fear rushed down his spine, and he stood up, surveying the empty room. "Who's there?" he asked aloud.
No one answered.
'Very important. But not as important as you,' the voice replied.
"Who's there? Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you want?"
'Not here,' the voice replied. 'In you.' Davy then realized that it wasn't a voice, but a thought in his head. Some sort of communication. But it wasn't Thomas.
'You need to try harder,' the voice said. 'Focus your energy not on your worries but on the task at hand. He's counting on you. '
'Who are you?' Davy thought, wondering if the voice would respond to his question if he thought it instead of spoke it.
'Not important,' the thought replied. 'He's counting on you.'
'Who? Thomas? Do you know where he is?'
'Not for me to know. You must find him. He's counting on you.'
'Why? Why is he counting on me?'
'You're the only one who can save him. He's counting on you,' the voice replied. 'Focus on the task at hand.'
'I'm trying to,' Davy replied.
'Try harder,' the voice replied. 'He's counting on you,' it repeated once more. And then it was gone.
"Focus, huh?" Davy thought. He sat down on the seat again and thought of the last time he'd seen Thomas. They'd been in the courtroom, and Thomas, silently observing, had been sitting next to him. He hadn't looked scared or worried, but merely observing. Davy tried to get that image in his head, and once it was there, he focused on it as hard as he could.
Trying as hard as he could to put any feelings of worry he had for the boy to the back of his mind, Davy focused on Thomas and tried to figure out where he was at that point.
Finally, his mind delivered. He was in a small room, and looking through Thomas' eyes, hearing what he heard, knowing what he knew.
There was a woman. A beautiful woman, though Davy tried not to think about that. She was holding a rope. No, it wasn't a rope, it was colored. And it wasn't round, but flat. What was it?
Davy, in Thomas' mind, felt something around his neck. Not painful, but uncomfortable. Something cold and smooth. Thomas opened his mouth and food entered. It tasted horrible. it was only a sandwich, but the cheese on it was nearly sour, and the meat looked...well, not good. But Thomas ate it. Davy suspected it was because he was hungry enough to eat almost anything at that point.
Well, Thomas was alive, he thought to himself, but the important thing was to discover where he was...
