AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A wave of hunger slapped Dax and drew his attention. Forgetting Minh for the moment, he grasped onto the hunger and found the life thread attached to it. They’d found Rory’s beast.
The factor stopped near an empty cage. “I think near our newest specimen will make for a nice display.”
A guard jogged over and unlocked the cage via a punch pad lock.
“Put it in the cage,” the factor said.
Tomi moved toward the cage, but Dax stopped, refusing to follow. Two barrels were shoved into his back.
“You can go in the easy way or the hard way. Don’t matter to me. Either way, I get paid.” Boudreaux shoved again.
Reluctantly, Dax took a halting step then another after the barrels poked into his back again.
The factor followed at a discrete distance, stopping about fifteen feet from the cage’s entrance. “Leave the chains on him. We can handle them later. Or if the boss isn’t interested, you can take him with you.”
Dax backed into the cage, bumping into a bar along the entrance. Nothing but the feel of hard metal translated through the touch. The cage appeared to be perfectly mundane. He’d have no problem with the metal bars when it came time to spring their plan.
Dropping the chain Dax had been led in with, Tomi stepped away. The guard swept in and closed the door. A faint click sounded, but Dax thought he heard it in the mundane realm and in the aether. He looked around the cage. Something had changed when the door was closed.
“Don’t touch the bars. Not if you value your health,” the factor said, turning to the guard who’d shut the door on the cage. “Let the wizard know we have a potential new display for the boss’s menagerie. The boss will want his opinion. And have him check on the cage to make sure it’ll actually hold…whatever it is.”
The guard nodded and jogged off.
Wizard? That meant that whatever had activated with the closure of the door was likely magical. Dax had never met a wizard. He wondered if they actually manipulated magic or if they were a charlatan, though he wasn’t sure which would be preferable. A charlatan would be easier to escape from while a real wizard—whatever that designation meant—would be a curiosity worth checking out. Especially since this wizard pedaled in pain and misery.
“There’s a bench down there. You two may wait there while I go apprise the boss of your offer.” The factor didn’t wait for a reply, turning and walking back toward the door they’d entered through.
A pair of guards pointed with their guns. One grunted and chucked his chin toward the bench. Taking the less than subtle hint, Tomi and Boudreaux strolled in the direction they’d indicated, using the opportunity to scope out that end of the solarium.
Looking around his new home, Dax found a seat waiting for him. He sat on it and looked around. A brief shadow passed over head. Looking up, Dax smirked. A large rat shaped shadow skittered along the glass roof. A second and third joined it. If he had lips, they’d have quirked up in a sinister grin.
Now all they had to do was wait to see who this “Collector” was.
Chapter Eight
Dax had no idea how long the factor and his boss kept him cooling his heels. He didn’t have his phone, watch, or a clock on the wall to check. Nor could he ask Tomi or Boudreaux since they weren’t friends for this scenario. Plus, the guards kept them away from him and any of the other “exhibits.”
He was only able to sit for so long before he had to stand and pace about the cage like a…caged animal. After a while, he grew tired of the limited circuit and its view—only an empty cage and some night plants. His mind clouded by annoyance, he leaned up against the bars. A low-level shock pushed him away and made his body tingle. Shuddering a few times, he clenched his body and forced the involuntary twitching to stop.
Reaching up, he ran his bony fingers over the shoulder of his leather jacket where it had touched the bars. He felt no lingering warmth or any damage to the coat. This time, he extended his arm and carefully let the back of his fingers touch a bar.
His hand clenched involuntarily, drawing his fingers away from the bar. Several hard shudders ran over his body. As he shook, he tried to back away from the bars so he didn’t accidentally trip into them. The charge had been much more intense against his unclothed fingers.
“Quite an interesting sensation, isn’t it?” a new voice said.
Once his body returned to his control, Dax looked up to see a man in a conservatively cut bespoke suit. The factor stood a discrete distance behind.
“My factor says you can speak. A neat trick for a monster.” The man’s lip rose in a sneer.
It took a moment for Dax’s mind to clear, but the man looked familiar—not in a generic rich white man kind of way, but in a definitely have seen him before kind of way. Everything about him looked average, from his height to his build to his haircut. The only thing that set him apart was that he was wrapped in the trappings of extreme wealth. The man had a rich voice, but each word dripped with a haughty disinterest for everything around him.
“It’s been quite the week for my little menagerie of the paranormal, hasn’t it, Gabriel?”
“Yes, sir,” the factor—Gabriel—replied.
It was the voice that finally tripped Dax’s memory. Bruce DeForbes IV. The DeForbeses were considered one of the founding families of Red City. And if half the rumors about the current scion of the family were true, Bruce had more than supernatural beings in his menagerie.
He had politicians ranging from local to national in his pocket, as well as a wide array of cops, public defenders, prosecutors, and judges who gladly overlooked a bevy of sins for a little taste of the pie. People said—if they risked speaking about him at all. People who spoke against him rarely did so twice within hearing of anyone—he could shoot a child in the face and the authorities would say the child had it coming.
