“Hurry up,” the trapper said, jerking a chain attached to his belt and pulling a collection of keys from his pocket.
He unlocked the dead man’s cell, remaining aware of what Raoul was doing.
Raoul finished lowering the tarp curtain and moved on to the task of hauling the corpse from the building.
Tir smiled slightly. Hyde didn’t trust the boy. He never left Raoul unsupervised in the building for more than a few minutes. Perhaps with good cause.
There was just enough of a similarity in the eyes to make Tir think Raoul might be his captor’s son, gotten on some other woman. The toddler’s mother was too close in age to Raoul’s, though given what Tir had seen of humans, she could just as easily be a half sister.
Tir’s attention flicked to the wereman trapped between shapes. He wondered if Raoul saw the same fate waiting for him when his usefulness was extinguished.
The woman tentatively approached, beckoning the toddler to her arms. Her voice was little more than a whisper when she said, “I’ll take Eston to the house.”
“No. The two of you stay with me.”
Hyde selected a key from the cluster in his hand and Tir tensed. Rage built when his captor opened a locked cabinet and lifted a taser gun from the shelf.
Despite his will to show no reaction, Tir’s fingers tightened on the bars of his cell. No matter what his tormentors did to him, he didn’t remain dead. The damage done would heal and his organs re-form. He was physically stronger than any human, but he wasn’t immune to pain or the effects of their weapons.
Hyde turned. He met Tir’s eyes and sneered. “Looks like I’ve already got a buyer for you.”
He walked toward the cell. “Get in the chair.”
Tir fought to keep his lips from curling back in a savage snarl. He refused to grant his captor a victory, already knowing the trapper enjoyed inflicting pain in any form.
With a casualness he didn’t feel, Tir moved to a chair stained with a hundred years’ worth of his blood. He sat, centuries of existence allowing him to win the struggle and keep his face expressionless. But hate slid through him like a cold glacier. There would be retribution, revenge for all he’d suffered.
The trapper unlocked the cage door. “Put Eston down and get in there,” he ordered his wife.
“Please, Hyde, don’t make—”
Fist and taser connected to the woman’s cheek in a casual blow. “I’m not going to tell you again. Get him tethered to the chair. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
The woman trembled as she set her son down and entered the cage. The stink of her fear swamped Tir. And if he hadn’t long ago erected a barrier against human emotions, he would have felt it as well.
She scurried to the chair and hastily secured his already shackled wrists and ankles to it before darting out. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, escaping the horror of his situation by letting his awareness drift through the open door to blend with the sound of birds and the rustle of leaves, the smell of the forest and wildflowers beyond the trapper’s compound.
Freedom. Despite the immobility imposed on him by the chair, Tir felt closer to it than he had ever felt.
He’d changed hands many times in the last century. And each time, more of his history was lost to the humans.
Hundreds of years had passed since the last acolyte meticulously restored the tattoos covering Tir’s arms—trying as he worked to get Tir to translate the unfamiliar images and symbols into sounds and words he could understand so they could be added to the parchment scrolls holding their meaning in long-dead languages.
Tir wouldn’t have done it, couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to. If he had once known their meaning—which perhaps he had, given those years when his tongue was removed and, later, his lips sewn shut—he no longer did. But he was sure of one thing: the tattoos held the key to opening the sigil-inscribed collar around his neck and breaking the spell keeping him locked in human form, his memories and his power denied him.
Fear—the only emotion he was capable of feeling—rose up and threatened to engulf him. Even if he gained his physical freedom, the possibility of enslavement would exist as long as he wore the collar.
It had been decades since he’d seen the rolled parchment pages containing the history of the translations that used to accompany him each time he changed hands. Given the nature of mankind, he didn’t doubt the information had been stolen and copied into occult texts, but with the destruction and the devastation wrought by what the humans called The Last War, the knowledge enabling him to recover the meanings to the tattoos might well have been lost.
Tir blocked the fear as he had learned to block the pain and constant assault of human emotion. Outside, the rumbling of a heavy truck grew near, its brakes squealing as it stopped at the gateway to the trapper’s compound.
Without opening his eyes, Tir followed Hyde’s footsteps. He heard the gate open and men alight from the truck.
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing—”
“I’m here as a favor to an important man,” a smooth voice interrupted the trapper. “He wants my opinion before he pays your asking price. Shall we go inside?”
“Only the three of you. The rest stay here.”
The trapper sounded belligerent, though Tir could hear traces of suspicion and uneasiness.
“Unless we decide on the lion,” the smooth voice said. “I’m sure you’d prefer we transport him and save you the trouble.”
“Maybe.”
The compound gate closed. Its lock clicked into place.
Tir’s captor retraced his steps, his guests behind him. Before they came into view, the smooth voice murmured, “Is he blindfolded?”
“What for? He’s in chains and shackled to a chair.”
“Blindfold him. Or put a hood over his head.” There was power in the voice now, a hint that the man it belonged to was used to being obeyed without question.
The trapper stomped into the building and found a burlap sack. This time he didn’t bother to order his wife into the cell. He strode in, anger hiding his increasing nervousness, taking it out on Tir by roughly pulling the sack down over Tir’s face.
“He’s covered,” Hyde said.
Tir heard the soft slide of the knife from the sheath strapped to the trapper’s thigh and braced himself. He knew only too well the feel of that particular blade.
The wereman went silent as the strangers entered the building, his fear scent growing more pungent as Tir sensed him moving to the back of his cage and cowering there.
The lion and hyenas grew agitated. A voice Tir recognized from days past said, “The lion is almost as large as Zenzo. He’ll make a nice addition to the collection, don’t you think, Papa?”
“Only if the price is right, Tomás,” the third stranger said, and then to Hyde: “How did he come into your possession?”
“Trapped him up north.”
“And the prisoner?”
“Stumbled across him in a settlement while I was hunting in the Sierras. He was locked in a cell in the basement of a church. As far as I could tell, he was the only survivor. Everyone else was massacred. Werewolves maybe, or something else. There wasn’t enough left of anyone to tell what got to them first.”
“And you didn’t think to turn him over to the Church or the authorities?” the stranger whose smooth, powerful voice had insisted on Tir’s not seeing them asked.
“I’ve got expenses, and a man’s entitled to profit from his labors. Either can have him if they’ll meet my price.”
“I’ve yet to see a demonstration that his blood is truly capable of doing what Tomás believes he witnessed when he was here last.”
“I need to cut one of you. Which one will it be?” There was relish in the trapper’s voice, not only at the possibility of inflicting pain but at the prospect of making money.
“I’ll do it,” Tomás volunteered.
“No,” the smooth-voiced one said. “I don’t recognize any of the tattoos on his arms as those of a lawbreaker, which leads me to believe they might well be marks to hold a demon here. I’ll need to study them further before there can be any contemplation of presenting him to your great-grandfather. Until we know what we’re dealing with here, it would be unwise for you to mingle his blood with yours. Our host can provide a demonstration to satisfy us or we can turn our attention to the lion and start our trip back to Oakland. I want to be home before the sun sets.”