Chapter 4: Tigresse
Antoinette shivered again, and looked at the others in the van. “After I left the great swamp in Florida, I drifted north, stopping to sing or to dance in towns along the way. The nightmares, they grew worse, more violent, more terrifying. For the last two or three months, I have been dancing at the Nightbirds. Some men seized me one night about three weeks ago as I was coming out of work. They… they grabbed my mind somehow,” her fingers grew agitated as she fumbled for words, “and I … I had no control over my body. I did as they wanted me to. They put me in the back of a truck. They met with the Snake people, and sold me to them. The others moved me into their truck and drove for a very long time ––”
”How long?” Scott asked.
”Perhaps eight, or nine, hours,” she replied. She stared out through the windows of the van, for a moment oblivious to the people around her.
”Go on,” Tracker urged.
”They took me out and locked me in a small room. Over the next few days, they tried to persuade me to join them. They thought I could turn into the beast, although I did not know it then. I did not like them or trust them — they lied to me and to each other. When I kept refusing, they grew angry and began to hurt me. At last, the one they called the Blacksnake declared he could spend no more time on me; that his experiment was almost finished and then he would rule the world.” She paused. “What did he mean?”
”I’m not sure. I think it means he’s almost finished rebuilding his particle disrupter with that power source he stole from Shal-ir,” Scott said. His face grew grim as he considered her words. Tracker could scent her growing panic as she stared at Scott. Scott appeared to notice her alarm because he relaxed, smiling at her. “FORCE stopped him once, almost a year ago, out west. He was drawing power from a nuclear reactor and blacked out a whole state. Several months ago, Shal-ir and his family crashed in the royal yacht near here while escaping from their homeworld of Val and we helped FORCE pick them up. Blacksnake got wind of it and managed to steal the yacht’s power source from under FORCE’s nose. It produces more power than that reactor, and it’s relatively mobile.” He shifted in his seat and looked at her.
”And Shal-ir? Who is he?” she asked.
”He is a Valani, similar to Tracker, here. He and Isan-ira are the exiled royal family of Val.
”But back to you. What then?” Scott asked.
”He gave me to the dark man. He stripped me and chained me in a bare cell. Then he held up his hands. They began … They began to melt and … and grow back. He ran his fingers across my stomach. The … The pain!” She shuddered as she buried her face in Tracker’s tail. His jaw muscles tightened as her trembling fingers gripped it with painful force.
After a moment, she raised her head. Her face was pale. “I … I did not know there … there could … be such pain!” she said, her accent thick. “And he laughed. As I screamed, he laughed and touched me again.” She gulped and clutched Tracker’s tail tightly against her chest. “I think he enjoyed giving me pain the way most men enjoy going to bed with me.”
Tracker and Scott could feel her shivering.
”He is mad,” she whispered. “I fear him.”
”Can you give us their names?” Scott asked.
She dug her fingers into the fur of Tracker’s tail as she fought for self-control. “The … The people who were hunting me now are the same ones that bought me from the men that caught me the first time.”
”Lumen, Vengeance and Pneumata?” Scott said.
”Oui. I think so. And there was the one called the Blacksnake. And Ice Flow, a big man that could make ice. I think he was simple-minded. There was a man with a costume like a skeleton, who kept the mind lock on me. And the dark man. I never heard the names of those two.”
”Captain Jones, run a make, please,” Scott said.
”How did you get away?” Jay asked.
”For two, maybe three, days, the dark man played with me. I heal very fast. He would come and run his fingers across my body, my belly, my face, the insides of my legs with his … his hand. I would heal in minutes and he would touch me again, until I fainted from the pain. I would have gone mad soon. I went into my mind, willing myself to die. Instead, I discovered how to break the grip on my mind. Then I called out the beast and fled. For some reason, the beast is not bound by walls or chains.”
Tracker clenched his jaw as she talked. The vicious sadism of her torturer sparked his battle-lust. The scent of her distress was sharp in his nostrils.
”I would wake in the mid-day in woodland, or in a drainage tunnel under a road. When night came, I would concentrate on going home, then call out the beast.
”When I got home, I watched the rooming house. The same men who first found me were watching it now. They saw me. I hid, but the others came and started to hunt for me. Then you found me.”
”The ones that were watching your room were the Cartel thugs?” Red asked.
”I suppose so,” she said with a small shrug. “I do not know who they were. They were normal men with guns.”
”Why would you come back here to your apartment, where they could find you, after what they had done to you?” Jay asked.
”I had to get my guitar. I would have abandoned everything else without a thought, but I had to rescue Chantre.”
”I have a make on the new Snake members,” Captain Jones said a few minutes later. “No mention at all of the skeleton-costumed man. He must be new. Not much on Ice Flow, either. He is very strong and can manipulate ice. Does what others tell him. Current analysis has him as a high-powered goon. Little more.
”FORCE has a long report on the dark man, however. Based on your description, his name is Andrew Logan; he calls himself Death Touch. He was a sixth-dan black belt or higher martial artist and a research biologist working in a hospital lab. His last research was on cellular regeneration. Late one night, the security cameras recorded that he injected himself with one of his preparations. Interviews with surviving research assistants indicate that he was a very egocentric man. Cruel. Sociopathic.
“Latest reports say he’s psychopathic and he enjoys killing. When business is slow, he’ll kill on his own just for fun. He prefers women victims. He is wanted, dead or alive.”
Antoinette sat with her face buried in the soft thick fur of Tracker’s brush and shivered. He looked down at her hair, black silk against the russet of his fur. He was uneasy as she held his tail. He felt both exposed and hampered, but oddly protective. He stroked her arm. “We won’t let him hurt you any more, Miss Duval.”
Jay nudged Red with a smirk on his face and pointed at what she was holding. Red shook his head wryly.
”What will happen to me now?” Antoinette raised her head.
”If you let us,” Scott replied, “we’ll help you learn to control your abilities and we’ll protect you for as long as you choose to remain with us. I hope you’ll elect to join us, but it’s your decision.”
They rode on in silence Antoinette falling asleep against Scott’s shoulder, holding Tracker’s tail as though it were a teddy bear.
”Captain Jones,” Scott said softly, “call ahead and see if Magnum can meet with us when we get in.”
”Yes, sir.”
