by Peter Hartz
Michelle watched in amazement as Max stood on his hind legs, then waved his paw at Allison. “When did you teach him that one?”
“He kinda started doing that on his own. I just marked it with a word, and added a hand signal. He is easy to train, when he isn’t flying around the room barking his silly head off,” Allison said as she petted Max’s head and back.
When they were ready, Dave and Giltreas said their goodbyes to the Queen, Michelle, and Allison. Dave’s goodbye with Allison was a private moment involving a long hug, and a whispered conversation as the others looked away and talked quietly to give them their space.
At the last moment, Dave asked Allison what she wanted done with her pistol, still with the guards outside the throne room.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know if I will need it here or not, but it is comforting to know that it is nearby. I would like to have it close in case it is needed. I would also like to keep in practice once a week. Delara, is it a problem if I keep my weapon nearby? And fire it once in a while to keep my skills up?” Allison turned to the queen, who nodded.
“You may keep your weapons with you in your quarters, on your person, or whatever you chose. What manner of weapon is a pistol?” Her interest was more than just a passing thought.
Dave smiled to himself as Allison tried to think about how to answer the question.
“The closest I can think of is a crossbow? Do you have those here?” she asked.
“Yes, we have crossbows. They are heavy, slow to fire, hard to reload, and generally not used much because of those reasons, excepting for guard duty where they can be loaded and set aside for need. Eventually, they need to be restrung, though, and that is challenging as well.”
“Well, think of it as a very small crossbow that can fire as quickly as you can pull the trigger. It fires a very small bullet the size of the end of your finger. I can show you, if you like.” Allison responded.
“I would be interested in seeing you fire it. It might be fun to see what I can do, if it is alright with you.” Delara said, and glanced at Giltreas as he smiled. “What, my son, do you forget my own training before I ascended the throne?”
“Not at all, Mother. I remember fondly you teaching me to use bow and staff. It was a long time before I could equal your skill. I seem to remember your challenges with sword, however,” and she laughed.
“Yes, sword was something I could never get the handle of. Unlike yourself.” He simply bowed in response.
Allison turned to Dave and said, “Can you bring me a few boxes of ammunition for my Glock and my cleaning kit, and maybe a few spare sets of ear and eye protection? I want to stay in form, after all.”
“All right. Anything else?”
“I’m certain there will be more as we think of it, but for now.. Thanks, sweetie!” She smiled brightly at him.
Dave and Giltreas walked down to the stables again, this time to leave the elvish city for Michelle’s cottage in the woods. The walk was in silence, but Giltreas could tell that Dave was unhappy, possibly about leaving his life-mate behind. He reached out and patted Dave on the shoulder, causing Dave to look over and produce a wan smile.
“I know they will be safe, but I will miss them,” he said quietly as their footsteps sounded in the stone and wood hallway.
“I will bring us back here many times that you might not miss them much.”
“I appreciate it a lot. And I appreciate everything else you have done. Michelle is just as important to me as Allison.”
Giltreas nodded, and turned the conversation to the matter at hand.
“Where will you begin your search for the man who set those brigands on your family?”
“The only place they could have learned about that cottage is at the company. That is the only place that connects Michelle to it. Someone we hired said something, or knows something. The problem is, everyone we hired has been carefully screened. We have strict rules that can’t be avoided, since we have some significant government contracts. Everyone has been investigated by the FBI, a branch of the Federal government. That is the only way we qualify to work for the government in data services.”
Giltreas turned that thought over in his mind, working through the strange words and their different meanings, until he was pretty sure he understood what had been said. Then he spoke up.
“Mayhap not your government did this? You did say that the black horseless carriage was connected somehow to them.”
“Yes, I did. And it certainly looks that way. The government knows everything, or can figure out what they don’t know pretty easily. But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would someone in the government want Michelle dead? What is the point? None of this adds up.” He paused, thinking about it, then continued. “Of course, there are enough assholes and sleaze-balls in the government that it makes the most sense to look there. The real question is why. And that is something we may never know.”
“We will find the answers together, Good David. And we will punish the guilty. If you are unable to do so because of your laws, I shall step into the gap and do what needs to be done. The wrong has been undone, but it must also be righted.” The resolute sound of Giltreas’ words penetrated to the very depths of his heart, and he put his hand on Giltreas shoulder in silent thanks.
◆◆◆
He had always maintained his innocence to the other inmates, much to their amusement. Three years into a life sentence for child molestation and murder, his story had never changed. It didn’t seem to matter to the inmates, the guards, or even his lawyer; all of them seemed to think he was guilty. Since well before the conviction, they had given him the impression that they were just going through the motions. But his mother had always stood by him, and his sisters. His father had abandoned him “to your fate, and may you rot in hell, you little bastard.” The words had hurt, as had the betrayal that his father showed. His mother divorced his father shortly after he said that to her youngest child, also feeling the betrayal and sense of abandonment that her son so obviously felt.
Ironically, the parents of the child he was supposed to have molested and killed had never believed that it was him. The father had written him a letter telling him that they were still looking for the real killer, but no one believed them either. The press didn’t want to talk to them, convinced that the prosecutor had gotten it right. The prosecutor believed that he couldn’t have made a mistake, and refused to talk to the parents of the little six year old boy after the trial.
During the trial, the state prosecutor had tried to convince the parents of the victim that he had the right man, but they never accepted it. They even tried to convince the prosecutor that this stranger, whom they and their precious little boy had never met, didn’t do it. But without any proof, just their feelings that he wasn’t the right man, their arguments fell on deaf ears, getting the response of “I told you not to talk to him. He is like all the others, just lying to save his skin, and only sorry he got caught.”
Now, he knew that his time on this earth was most likely over. He normally had been kept in the part of the prison reserved for sexual offenders, but a guard he had never met before who took him to the showers in a part of the prison he had never seen seemed to know what he was doing. And all of it spelled doom to one Craig Sanderson.
The three other men in the shower area all looked at him like he was the main course at a feast in their honor. He tried to ignore them while simultaneously keeping them all in sight, but Craig could feel the tension, the anticipation in their movements. This was not going to end well for someone.
He closed his eyes as the hot water flowed over him, and thought about surrendering to the inevitable. He was never getting out. His family would be better off without him. Maybe they could sue the prison system after his death, and get something back for all this nastiness he had been dropped into.
He still had no idea how or why the police had connected him to the crime. He was nowhere near where the child had been killed when it happ
ened. He KNEW he had nothing to do with it, as sure as he knew that the sun rose in the east. His lawyer called it all circumstantial evidence, nothing concrete in it, the jury should see right through it, etcetera. They made it sound like it was routine and that he would have him out of jail and acquitted in time for dinner.
Only it hadn’t happened that way. The prosecutor seemed to be able to anticipate every move the defense team made, and what he couldn’t get disallowed, he undermined. The state’s legal warrior was skilled and experienced, and it showed. Every trick in the book was pulled to make the case stick, to make the jury see him as the ultimate personification of evil. And after nearly two days of deliberation, it had worked.
The despair turned to anger now as he thought about everything that had been taken from him, and a low growl escaped through clenched teeth. He turned towards the wall, and the rage took him completely. A fist suddenly much more massive than he expected, covered in coarse, black hair, smashed into the wall in front of him.
“Holy shit! What the…” He turned at the sound, and growled at the three huge naked men he was trapped in the shower with. They looked at him with fear, not with the loathing they had first shown him. He took a step forward, and his gait felt strange. He looked down, and saw the form of a huge silverback gorilla where his normally lean frame should have been, and looked up again.
The three men had not seen the change, so they had no idea where their intended victim had gotten off to, nor how they suddenly came to be trapped in an enclosed, locked room with a massive, enraged primate that could easily tear them apart if they made any sudden moves.
The huge fangs it bared at them made one wet himself in fear. He knew that gorillas were many times stronger than men, and this was going to end badly if they made any threatening gestures towards it.
Then it roared at them, a sound so loud in the enclosed place that their ears nearly bled. Deafened, the one pulled at the other two as he sunk down into a posture of submission on his knees, covering his head with his arms. The other two did the same, praying suddenly to a God they hadn’t thought about since childhood.
The guard at the security station monitoring the cameras noticed that a different prisoner was in the general population shower, and wondered where he had come from. Then he stiffened in sudden realization as he recognized Craig Sanderson from the sequestered part of the prison. How the hell had he gotten into the general population area? Who had put him there? He did recognize the three inmates in the shower with him, however, and knew that something was going down. He reached over for the phone, and hit the emergency button. Whatever Sanderson did, it was not the role of the guards to have him mistreated like this.
The emergency signal went out to the ear piece of every radio-equipped guard, and to every speaker in the secured areas that prisoners didn’t have access to. The guard that had brought Sanderson to his little meeting with God stiffened suddenly, then cursed under his breath as he heard the alert tone. He had lost a child to a drunk driver that had never been caught, and felt that the parents of Sanderson’s victim deserved a little closure. He had no real knowledge of the case, but just wanted, in his own twisted sense of right and wrong, to get a little justice for the parents. So he had arranged a little church session for Sanderson, but now it seemed that the jig was up. He sighed, and then unlocked the door to the shower to retrieve the inmate before things got too far out of hand. He had the door partially opened when it was smashed open the rest of the way, and a massive form stalked out on its knuckles and roared at him.
He recognized the thing in front of him, and lost control of his bodily functions as he fell back against the wall opposite the door to the shower facility. He slid down to a sitting position, and then shied away in fear as the form came over and roared at him, making his ears ring. Then a massive hand reached out and effortlessly lifted the nearly two hundred pound guard off the floor by his uniform shirt, and threw him down the hallway, only to lope after him as he slid across the hard surface.
The guard at the monitor station looked back into the shower area, and saw only the three prisoners from general in the monitor. And they didn’t look too good. But where had Sanderson gone? He switched to the camera in the hallway outside the shower just in time to see a guard slide down the hallway on his back and crash head first into the solid steel door at the end. Then his breath froze in his throat as the massive form of an adult gorilla strode into view of the camera, obviously enraged. Where the actual EFF had that come from!?!
The phone up to his ear suddenly spoke to him, and he nearly dropped it in shock, unable to take his eyes off the screen.
“What is the emergency? Hello? Talk to me! What is going on?”
“Sir, are you near a monitor station?”
“Yes! What are you seeing?”
“Camera 309, sir. I…”
The voice on the other end paused, then… “Holy Mother of God! Where did that gorilla come from? What the hell is going on?!”
Craig Sanderson slowly pulled his rage back inside himself, and felt his form change back as he got it under control.
He looked down at the guard in front of him, and glared at him. He saw the frightened eyes looking up at him, and it only made him madder. He bent down closed, and through clenched teeth, said “What, the fact that I am locked up for life for something I didn’t do wasn’t enough for you, you had to go and sign me up for some extra-curricular activity with your three friends back there?”
He reached down and hauled the stunned, terrified guard back up to his feet and slammed him back against the wall behind him with both fists, bringing a hoarse gasp from the man.
“How many times do I have to tell the whole damned world that I DIDN’T DO IT?!” The last came out as a roar, and he changed into the gorilla form again in a flash.
The guard writhed in his grip, terrified almost beyond words, and tried to speak, but it only came out as a wheeze.
“Please, I have a wife and kids! I…”
The angry beast threw him down the hallway again, and he felt his form shift again as his mind focused on a different image this time.
The guard came to a rest on his seat, with his back against the wall, and friction prevented him from slamming into the doorway this time. So he was looking straight at the gorilla when it changed into a Siberian tiger, which locked eyes with him and slowly started pacing down the hallway towards him.
Every step was one closer to his death; he just knew that he was going to visit his dead child soon. At least the agony of his loss would end with his death, he was sure of. But it wasn’t enough to take him away from where he was now.
He turned away and curled into a ball as the fear consumed him at last making him a broken, sobbing wreck, screaming “I’m sorry!” at the top of his lungs over and over again.
The officers watching on the monitor were stunned and paralyzed at what they were seeing. It simply did not make any sense. How did a man change into a gorilla, then a tiger? How was this possible? Their minds responded in different ways, mostly along the lines of trying to deny what they had witnessed. The events they watched they were completely unable to process that they were so outside their world view and experience. They could be forgiven for that.
The tiger got close enough for the screaming guard to feel the hot breath on his cheek, when it suddenly turned away. This was not the person that had harmed him. He didn’t know how, but other than a bad decision on taking things into his own hand, the guard was basically a good person; one who had suffered a horrible loss of his own that had torn at his soul, Craig realized, as he changed back to human form.
Craig sat down against the wall, and waited to see what would happen next. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned to see one of the three men from the shower peeking around the open door.
Delmar had never been so terrified in his life as when he was confronted with the gorilla in the shower. It had left, and he had heard some words screamed in the hallway
, and saw the guard thrown past the door in his way down the hall, followed by a huge tiger walking by. Once the guard started screaming, he knew that something really bad was going to happen to the guard, but the screaming went on and on, and nothing happened. Getting his courage up, he tiptoed to the door, and peeked around.
He took in the guard curled up in a ball on the floor against the door, and the child killer (or, maybe he wasn’t, if he hadn’t killed the guard) squatting against the wall nearby. He looked up at Delmar, and smiled at him, making Delmar nearly piss himself again at the look in the other inmate’s eye.
Delmar knew that he was looking in the face of death if he made even one wrong move. He didn’t doubt for a moment that the other prisoner had changed into a gorilla, then a tiger, as terrifying and wrong as those thoughts were, and he wanted no part of any of that.
The doorway at the other end of the hall opened, and several guards in full riot gear made their way slowly into the hall. They took in the screaming guard, the naked inmate next to him down in a catcher’s stance leaning against the wall, and the open door to the shower. Then a face peeked around the open door, and the lead guard waved that prisoner back into the shower. The prisoner quickly complied, even pulling the door most of the way shut.
None of the guards entering the hallway had withessed what the guards monitoring the security cameras had seen, so they started down the hallway confidently; ready to pound the inmate into submission if necessary.
“Lay down on the floor and put your arms and legs out wide! Do it now! Do it…”
Craig decided at the shouts of the guard that he was done being cowed into submission. He stood. He smiled. He changed form again.
The guards stopped moving forward, and more than one of the four lost control of his bodily functions as the inmate in front of them stood, smiled, and in a flash turned into a massive brown bear. The bear looked down at them from where its head touched the nearly nine foot tall ceiling, and growled loudly at them. Then it dropped down to all fours, and shuffled forward.