“What is it?” she asked taking a sip of the red drink.
“Watermelon Sangria,” the goth pixie told her.
“I just used the last watermelon of the season to make it, and that shit is good, drink up,” Cord slid the glass closer to Sidney.
“So what do you guys think it was?” Sidney took a sip of the drink and winced.
“Fuck if I know, we’ve been here leafing through old ass dusty books trying to figure out what the hell happened at the lake.” Cord waved his hands at the stacks of yellowing books scattered around the table, “I ain’t got time for you to be throwing no new shit at me.”
The emo chick nodded. Demon wondered what had happened to Sids at the lake.
“Well can we wake up Bree and see what she thinks?”
“Bree is old as hell and you know she needs her beauty rest. Besides she gets angry when she’s woken up, and I don’t mess with an angry Bree tonight.”
“Bree? Angry?”
The girl nodded again, if Demon hadn’t already heard her speak, he’d wonder if she were mute.
“I just want to know what’s going on with me. I can’t handle any more trauma, surprises, or weird crap going on. I need a day to just relax and not think about anything.”
“So take one. Go to the spa, zone out at home in front of the TV, don’t answer your phone or reply to any emails. Just chill out.”
Demon had an idea. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and looked up the website for the veterinary clinic where she worked, he bet it had her cell number on there for emergencies. Sure enough, after a few taps on the screen, he found her number, tapping again to call it.
He watched Sidney slam her hands down on the table, say, “What now?” and go retrieve her purse from the other room.
“Hello?”
“Well hello,” Demon said.
She walked back into the kitchen and flopped back down, “What do you want Demon?”
“I just felt bad about how things ended tonight and thought maybe I could make it up to you,” he said.
He watched Cord start nodding his head vigorously and Fran mouthing the word ‘no’.
“How?”
“A picnic in the park tomorrow? I’ll bring the food,” he smirked, cute or not, the girl could burn water. “And we can try to figure out what happened tonight… Unless your witchy friends have already figured it out.”
She hesitated, that was a good sign. It meant she was thinking about it, “No, I’m just going to relax tomorrow.”
“Come on, a picnic is relaxing,” he cajoled.
“Not with you it isn’t.”
“I’ll be on my very best behavior, I promise.”
She hesitated again and he knew had her. “Ok, but if you start being a jackass I’m leaving.”
“Best behavior. Cross my heart and hope to die,” he crooned into the phone, “I’ll pick you up at one.”
“Fine,” she said and hung up the phone.
“It’s impossible for you not to be a jackass,” Veronica said from somewhere behind him.
He thought about it for a moment and nodded his head, “Yeah but she doesn’t know that.”
The feeling in his body began to come back before his vision did. He wished it hadn’t. He felt stretched and sore. Beside the pain he knew was caused from the beating he’d taken at the hands of the secret service dude, there was the pain in his wrists from being tied, in his arms from hanging from them, in his shoulders from being stretched at an odd angle and his neck from having been unconscious while his head hung forward. And his whole face was aflame, it felt like his sinuses were being ripped out, his nasal cavities were blocked and the back of his throat felt like it was full of cotton. Pretty good signs that he had a broken nose.
It would have been too much of a mercy for him to stay unconscious. He opened his eyes a slit, even that was painful, they must have worked on his face after he’d passed out. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten his ass handed to him, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but it was the first time he’d had a human do it and it was the second time he’d lost a fight and not healed from it. These guys must have supplied Big Dog with the herb that had kept him from healing after his fight with the Hellhounds. At least it felt like whatever they’d cracked in his chest had healed before they had a chance to give it to him.
He opened his eyes a little more, painfully blinking and letting his vision clear, expecting to see some kind of backwoods hellhole where he was hanging from a meat hook off the center beam of a barn.
His expectation was wrong. Hard florescent lights met his tender eyes, exposing the barren room as a sterile workspace, something he’d expect to see in a hospital. Not something used as a torture chamber slash dungeon.
The room had very little to look at, a stainless steel table, bare white concrete walls, a few outlets that almost blended in with the paint. He looked up to see what he was hanging from, the movement causing a cacophony of aches to flare in his body. It was some sort of machine on a long steel arm. A light like at the dentist’s maybe. He didn’t know, didn’t give a fuck, he just needed to get off of it and out of this little sterilized cell.
If he could. He looked down at his body, the bruises covering his battered torso. They’d left his jeans on so he couldn’t see his legs, but one seemed to be broken and dangling at a weird angle to the floor.
He tried to move it and the pain caused a white light to flare behind his eyes. It was definitely broken.
The door made a loud buzzing sound and a young man in his early twenties, if that, walked in wearing blue scrubs and a white lab coat and pushing a wheelchair. Following shortly behind was a suit.
This wasn’t one of the secret service suits, this one was obviously higher on the chain of command, his hair combed with neat precision, his suit clearly in a different class than they other guys, even the way he walked screamed, ‘I’m in charge here.’ Red hated him on site.
“So, Mr… Ryder,” the man sneered, “I hope you’ve been comfortable as our guest?”
Red didn’t comment. He knew that if he said the wrong thing it would go badly for him, and he wasn’t sure there was a right thing to say.
“Probably not, you look a little worse for the wear after your little skirmish with my security team. But I’m glad it happened, and you should be too. It gave you an opportunity to see what superior fighters we are. We’re faster, stronger, and if I dare say, smarter than shifters are even capable of being.”
The man seemed real pleased with his announcement. Red didn’t give two shits about what this man thought he was, all Red knew was that he was going to kill him.
“Ah, I’ve forgotten to introduce myself, I’m Frederick Hawthorn. I run this facility and several others across the nation for a group of, hm, interested investors. John, could you get Mr. Ryder down and into the wheelchair? He looks terribly uncomfortable hanging there, and I’m hoping to have a nice long conversation with him.”
The man walked up to him warily, he was probably a foot shorter and seventy five pounds lighter than Red, he was a tiny little guy. There was no way he’d be strong enough to get him down and into the wheelchair without them both falling and making every single bruised or broken thing on his body ache even worse. He closed his eyes and braced his one good leg against the floor with toes that barely reached, waiting for the pain to come when he and this little man collapsed.
He felt the man’s hands on him, wrecking havoc in their wake, but surprisingly the man held him steady as he untied the ropes that were holding him up and eased him down and into the wheelchair. Red opened his eyes again, surprised he wasn’t in a pile of agony on the floor. He had underestimated the little dude, he must be one of whatever these guys were. Humans on super steroids.
“Good, now that you’re more comfortable maybe we can speak more openly. See I’ve heard a lot of things about you and none of it was good. I’ve heard that you’re a trouble maker, that you don’t always follow directions
when you don’t like the directions that you’re given. I’ve heard that you are loyal to a fault and nothing will stand in the way of that.”
Frederick stood still as a statue while he talked, it was disconcerting, most people moved their hands or heads or made some type of gesture as they spoke. Not this guy. He just stood there, arms at his sides as if he were a robot. Red kept his head down, lifting it up to look at him was too painful, and watching him stand so still was creepy anyway.
“Now, I think those can be assets if you work for me. I need someone who thinks on his feet, who can take orders but change them to fit the circumstances if need be. Your friend, Big Dog, has been a huge disappointment to me, and I’m hoping that you will take his place.”
“Mister, I’ve got no beef with you. And I don’t want to work for you. I just want to get Big Dog, Trainz, and BillCo and take them back to the club so that we can deal with them. I want no part in whatever you got going on here.”
“Well that’s a shame, considering you don’t even know what we’ve got going on. Do you?”
Demon had given him his theory about what was up here, but it had sounded like a lot of bullshit. And he’d gotten his information from a ghost, or imaginary friend, or whatever, with Demon there was no telling what was going on. “No, and I don’t give a shit either. I just want to take my guys and go home.”
“How can you make an informed decision if you don’t know all the elements involved?”
“You want to wipe out all the ‘non-humans’ right? Ain’t never gonna happen. So why should I worry about it?”
Frederick’s eyes narrowed, the first facial expression he’d shown, “Why do you say that?”
“Humans don’t know half the shit that goes on right under their own noses. No matter what kind of science experiment you are, you’re still human. There’s shit older than your entire species hiding under the hills in your pretty little subdivisions and you don’t know nothing about it.”
“And you do. Which is why we want to work with the shifters to accomplish this. But which shifter, or group of shifters, is in charge? Well that’s up to you. I’d love to work with the Dogs of War. You have a good reputation in your community and you don’t seem as… uncivilized as some of the other groups. And you, Ryder, seem like the best suited to lead. In fact, I’ve heard you’ve been voted interim president during Big Dogs… absence.”
Red’s head snapped towards him, causing all the pain in his neck and head to flair, how the fuck did he know that? Someone was passing him information. There was still a traitor inside the Club. Red thought over how he should best respond.
“Yes, I was. I find it a little surprising that you already know that.”
“Oh Ryder, we know a lot. So consider your answer carefully because regardless of what your personal decision is, there are those eager to take your place. But we can give you some time to think about it.”
Red thought the man was going to leave, but he paused at the door. “Maybe you need some more information to make an educated decision. John, why don’t you push him as we take a tour of the facility.”
He was wheeled out the door and down a corridor, doors to rooms probably just like his lining the hallway.
“We did have more test subjects but we had an… incident a few nights ago that reduced us to one. But here he is. John, help him stand so he can look through the window.”
The grey door boasted a large window lined with grey stripes, the industrial glass that was supposedly unbreakable. With the help of the little man Red stood and peered in, and was revolted by what he saw.
“Do you have a file on this subject John?”
“Yes, sir. Hold on one second, it’s on my tablet in the office.”
“Hurry,” Frederick said, his eyes never leaving the nightmare behind the window. Red stared in numb horror at the blob of red flesh on the table. It was no longer recognizable as a person, or whatever it had been. He couldn’t imagine what had happened to it to leave it in such a state, but whatever it was, he wanted no part in it. There were always casualties in power struggles, Red could understand that. He’d killed plenty of men in his life, but this was something else, there was no honor in this.
The little man returned at a dead run, Red didn’t blame him, if his boss were capable of something like what was before him, there was no telling what he’d do.
“Ah, here we are. This man’s name is Lynard Eugene Renke, sounds German or Dutch maybe. Know him? He’s a shifter.”
“Yeah I know him.” Red wasn’t going to let the man know how disgusted he was with the scene before him. Lynard was about the lowest a person could get. He sold people into slavery, he sold hard drugs to kids, he’d kidnapped Red’s daughter and he still didn’t deserve this.
“Friend of yours?”
Red had a feeling the man knew exactly how he felt about Lynard, and there was no point in lying anyway. “No, bastard kidnapped my daughter.”
“Well, good. You can see we’ve dispensed justice for you. Have a seat we’ll show you the next room.”
They wheeled him one room over and stood him up again. It was exactly the same as the room Lynard was in, except tied to three corners of the table were Big Dog, Trainz, and BillCo.
“We haven’t decided what to do with them yet. It’s obvious they’re not going to be able to go back and work for us among the shifters. I imagine you might like to see them in the same situation as Lynard. Since they were complicit in the kidnapping as well.”
How stupid did this man think he was? He knew who was in charge here and if anyone was ultimately responsible for his daughter being taken it was the man standing right beside him. But when it came down to it, Big Dog and the others should have had more loyalty than to work with someone like him. “Yeah, that’s probably what they deserve,” he lied. Death is what they deserve, but not like that, never like that.
“And if you’ll cross the hall you’ll see the last of our guests.”
Painfully he shuffled across the floor, his arm around the scared little nurse man. Same room, different people. Squint and Squirt, neither one tied, but sitting on the metal table in the center of the room. Squirt’s face was red and he was breathing heavy. The kid had been crying hard and it reminded Red that that’s all they were; kids.
His only solace was that he didn’t see Tinker, that either meant he was dead or he’d somehow gotten away.
“These two are a problem. I don’t have a reason to kill them, and one of them was useful to Big Dog’s prior efforts, but unless you agree, I can’t let them go running back to your group and telling them everything they’ve seen here. Most people wouldn’t understand, you know?”
Red nodded. If he told Frederick to go fuck himself and accept his fate, then these two boys would die as well. Unless Tinker had already informed the guys and they were on their way to rescue them. But he couldn’t pin his hopes on that because he just didn’t know.
“Roll him back to his room John, he has a lot to think about,” Frederick said, dismissing both of them.
“Wait,” Red put his hand out and grabbed Frederick’s arm as he turned to walk away.
He started to ask about Tinker, but thought better of it. If he had gotten away he didn’t want them sending anyone after him. No, he had to be dead, otherwise Frederick would have mentioned him.
“Just tell me why, why go to the trouble of killing so many creatures? And why do you even need shifters if you’re so strong you can beat us to a pulp?” he motioned down to his broken body.
“I’ll answer the second question first, because we have more important things to do. We need shifters to take out all the other creatures while we concentrate on our… more lofty goals,” he gave a smile that sent shivers of fear down Red’s back, “and as to why we want to kill all the supernatural freaks of nature? Let me put it like this, if God had a brother or sister who might get jealous and try to knock him off his throne, what would he do, for the good of his kingdom?”
Frederick acted like that answered everything, when it actually answered almost nothing. But then he continued.
“And also because we can. Choose well Ryder… or should I call you ‘Red’?”
The Jeep jangled as it hit every pot hole in its path and Sidney wondered if she were making a mistake. She’d called Demon and told him she’d meet him at the park because she could only imagine riding on the back of his motorcycle and holding on to him. She didn’t want to risk being lit up like a Christmas light while in the middle of traffic. Since it was affecting him too, they’d probably end up dead, splattered across the front of a semi like a firefly with bad luck.
It probably was a mistake. But she’d already committed so why not see it through. Maybe she could get some answers. Hell, she’d take an answer to anything. Which one of her parents was the closeted witch, why she’d been attacked in the lake, why Red was such a small minded bigot, and why her and Demon acted like firecrackers every time they touched. If she could get just one answer, she would be somewhat satisfied.
They’d agreed to meet at the one and only park Three Rivers had which took up two blocks in the middle of town. The rolling hills, shady trees, and duck pond looked inviting in the bright autumn sun, but she still felt the trickle of nerves in the base of her stomach.
It wasn’t just because Demon was so annoying. She was nervous because she didn’t want to be around him any more than she had too. All she wanted to do was find out what this weird connection they had was and leave. That’s all she wanted.
Sidney parked near the picnic tables, assuming that was where he’d be, but she didn’t see him so she got out and found a table under the shade to wait for him.
She didn’t have to wait long.
“Our table is this way,” she jerked around to see him standing there in a tight black tee-shirt and jeans that fit him way too well.
“Do you own any color other than black?” she asked, a little perturbed with herself for noticing how good he looked.
“I own exactly three shirts and all of them are black,” he grinned, her jab not bothering him at all.
Dogs of War Episode 5 Page 5