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“Sir,” the man behind him said. “The EA wants to talk to you. They’ve sent someone to the mansion.”
The EA? Eamon? Maybe even Gunnar himself? The way the guy said “the mansion” made me think that wasn’t where we were now. Of course, he didn’t keep his illegal shifter zoo at his mansion. That would be silly.
I remembered his name now: Arthur. This was the family of ultra-rich witches who claimed to be related to the legendary royal line.
Angry and disappointed that I couldn’t shift—what was new?—Arthur threw my monstera charm against the wall, stomped out of my cell, slammed the door shut, and left. His armed guard followed behind him, and I was left alone with my two fellow prisoners.
I turned to the lion. “Thanks for protecting me.”
It chuffed but didn’t turn back into a human. They must have been given something to prevent them from shifting back. I was about to move away, but it pawed at me, claws retracted, and I took that to mean it didn’t want me to leave. I hesitated for a moment, but then decided that I was in no immediate danger from him and decided it was safe to stay.
I was exhausted. Whatever they’d dosed me with, combined with being tasered, had really knocked the stuffing out of me. So I leaned against the bars and closed my eyes.
---
I woke up to the sound of three sharp beeps. The paw that I’d fallen asleep on moved. There was a clicking sound, and the door to my cell swung open by itself. Both the lion and tiger got up and walked out of their cells. When I didn’t move, the lion chuffed, came into my cell, and prodded me toward the door.
Okay, then? I followed them out into a hallway and picked up my necklace. The chain was broken, but I was happy to see the charm was still intact. I stuffed it into my pocket and continued to follow the lion along a corridor that led up and up, confirming my suspicion that we were underground.
The door at the end of the corridor led out to a fenced courtyard with cloth stretched overhead to provide shade. The fences were tall with an overhang that jutted inward at the top, preventing any of the big cats from getting out. There was also a tower built in the middle of the yard with two armed guards standing on top of it.
The lion hurried over to a corner and raised his leg, and I averted my gaze as he relieved himself. I wondered if this was the only chance we had to do that. But I was stuck as a human and couldn’t just lift a leg like everyone else, especially since there was a pair of armed guards watching over us from the top of the tower. I decided that if they didn’t give me a bathroom break later, I’d just crap all over their marble floors. They could clean it up.
I rubbed my arms from the cold, wishing I had fur like everyone else. Around me were a dozen other animals, mostly predators. It was like recess for a shifter zoo, and this was our prison yard.
It wasn’t just big cats. There was a massive silverback slamming itself repeatedly against the bars of the fence, as well as a huge grizzly and a smaller bear, the species of which I didn’t recognize.
There were two wolves pacing back and forth across the yard, snarling. They’d worn a path of bare dirt where they paced; I guessed they did this every day. I had to remind myself that these were all shifters, even though I had no idea how long they’d been kept this way, unable to shift back. How horrible for them.
Hadn’t the Champawat Tiger, the Bengal tigress who held the Guinness Book of World Records title for the highest number of human fatalities from a single animal, been a shifter stuck in her shifted form? Or was that just a legend? It would explain how she’d managed for years to evade hunters from various villages, as well as the Nepalese army, racking up a total of 436 lives claimed across two countries.
Had any of these shifters been stuck as their animals for so long that they’d lost their humanity? The lion, I thought, was good. He’d protected me and offered me comfort, even if it was just a single paw through the cage bars.
I looked around at the animals around me and did a double take at the snow leopard, who was staring at me with a questioning look. I wondered if he recognized what I was by the way I smelled.
He took a few steps toward me, as did all the other shifters. They were all probably curious that I was in human form.
“I can’t fully shift,” I explained. I held out a hand and made a mitten. “That’s all you get.”
The snow leopard approached and sniffed me. It was strange to be surrounded by so many wild animals. Again, I had to keep reminding myself that these were all shifters with fully functional human brains and that no, I couldn’t just start petting one. No matter how soft the fur looked. Especially since, by the looks of it, the snow leopard was a male. He might get the wrong idea.
He sniffed my hand, so I made mittens again and showed them to him. “That’s all I can do. Arthur was pretty pissed.”
He chuffed.
“Yeah. I’d like to rip him to shreds, too.”
I surveyed the area. There was a farmhouse a little way away and a barn off to the side. In the field beyond the fences were bales of hay and several horses. Arthur had hidden his private shifter zoo under the guise of a farm.
Above the shade cloth, which covered the entire fenced-in area, was open sky. But the grass under my feet—they’d taken my shoes—was still green, which meant that the shade cloth had to be down some of the time. They probably only put it up when the shifters were let out. A bunch of wild predators hanging out in a horse pasture would look suspicious for sure.
I walked to the fence, and the snow leopard and lion followed me, both chuffing at a wolf when it got too close. The fence was heavy duty and bore the scars of many failed previous attempts to break through it. A kudzu vine that had started to climb up the fence caught my attention. Man, those weeds were everywhere.
It gave me an idea. I found what looked to be the weakest part of the fence, though I was sure, given the fact that the silverback was still slamming itself repeatedly against it with no effect, that that wasn’t saying much.
“Grow,” I whispered urgently. I mentally directed the vines to pull on either side of the weak spot. I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do, since I’d never tried it before, but it was worth a shot.
Almost immediately, the vine latched on and started to grow. When a tendril reached too far past the weak point, I touched it and redirected it to pull the other way. It did. Cool.
