Chapter 4: Tiger
Tennessee 2085
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 Blacksnake 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 six or seven hours,” she replied. “Maybe less. It felt like forever!” 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 waste 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. “We’ll have to report what you’ve learned as soon as we get back.” Scott appeared to notice her alarm because he relaxed, smiling at her. “FORCE stopped him once about a year ago out west. He was drawing so much power from a nuclear reactor that he blacked out a whole state. A few months ago, Shal-ir and his family crashed the royal yacht not too far away from here while escaping from their homeworld of Val. We helped FORCE pick them up. Blacksnake got wind of the crash and managed to steal the yacht’s power plant from under FORCE’s nose. It produces more energy than any conventional reactor, yet is comparatively portable. The crash did enough damage to the ship’s hull that he only had to enlarge the tear and cut it free of its mountings. Last we heard he still could only get a fraction of it’s full capacity.” He shifted in his seat and looked at her.
”And Shal-ir? Who is he?” she asked.
”He is a Valani. He looks similar to Tracker, here. He and Isan-ira are the exiled royal family of Val.
”Back to you, though. 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 the 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.”
”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 let 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.”
