“I don’t think this is a sidetrack—I think this is the track, straight to our goal. Perhaps they have this servant assist them in making the tonic. There’s a whiff of it in here.”
“All the whiffs I’m catching are putrid,” a fourth voice says, this one sharp and grating. It reminds me so strongly of the man who pinned me down less than an hour ago that I flinch.
There’s a pause, and then I sense someone else crouching by the cage. “No, Whitt’s right. Can she speak?”
“I don’t know,” says the poised one who’s apparently named Whitt. “This is all we’ve gotten out of her so far: a very adept impression of a crumpled blanket.”
“Well, we don’t have time to wait for her to warm up to us. Let’s see what we’ve got in here.”
The latch clicks; the hinges squeak. My body clenches up, my fingers digging into the coarse fabric, but of course that doesn’t stop him. A powerful tug on the blanket pulls it partway off me, exposing my bare back and legs to the room’s cool air.
It’s too much. Panic flashes through me, and without any conscious intention, I’m snatching at the blanket, wrenching it toward me, kicking out with my legs. My good foot smacks a solid arm. I jerk back against the bars of the cage, my pulse hammering—oh god, am I going to have my ankle shattered by these monsters?
The man with the resonant voice just… laughs. Not my captors’ jeering snickers, but a deep guffaw as if he’s a little impressed along with his amusement. “We’ve got a fighter,” he says. “Pitiful thing. Come on now, we just need to talk.”
And I’m supposed to believe that? I let the fabric tumble away from my face so I can see what I’m fighting against and find myself staring into a pair of mismatched eyes set in brown skin.
The man who’s leaning through the cage door looms even larger and brawnier than the first two, like a grizzly among lesser bears. He carries a mark of at least one violent battle. His right eye, fixed on me, is a dark brown as rich as his voice. The other shines milky white, bisected by a pale, jagged scar that cuts from his hairline across the eyelid to halfway down his cheek.
Thick waves of coffee-brown hair fall to his massive shoulders, but don’t quite obscure the steep points of his ears. Curving black lines of tattoos creep up his neck from under his shirt collar. More darken his forehead and the edges of his jaw. Every inch of his being emanates power.
The sense washes over me that if he wanted to, he could maul any of my captors to shreds without suffering more than a few scratches. Possibly all three of them at the same time.
I don’t stand a chance.
“There we go,” he says evenly. “Answer a few questions about your masters, and we’ll leave you alone. We’re not here to hurt you.”
Someone behind him makes a rough noise. The boyish man-who’s-not-a-man peers over the grizzly’s shoulder. “Somehow I’m thinking Aerik and them don’t have the same qualms.”
“It’s none of our concern,” the sharp-voiced man says from somewhere beyond my view. “Let dung-bodies wallow in dung. We need to know about the tonic.”
“Hush,” the grizzly says without looking back, quiet but firm. His attention stays on me. “What do they have you do for them, little scrap? Something like cooking? Can you tell us about it?”
My voice stays locked at the back of my mouth. I don’t want to tell them anything, but I’m not sure I could even if I did want to. There’s a lump as big and hard as a fist lodged in my throat.
“It appears she’s dumb in more ways than one,” the sharp voice says. “Drag her out and make her show us.”
I can see just enough of the poised one—Whitt’s—face to watch him roll his pale eyes. “Right. Fantastic plan. Take the creature that’s already terrified mute and terrify her more. That’ll definitely open her up.”
“There are other ways we could open her up,” the other snaps.
The grizzly slashes his broad hand through the air, its back dappled with another tattoo. “Enough.” As the others fall silent, his gaze roves over me. Even with the blanket, even though he only has one eye to inspect me with, I feel utterly exposed.
“Ignore them,” he says to me. “This is just between you and me. Your masters let you out sometimes, don’t they? They bring you to another room—somewhere they’re mixing things or bottling things? I only need to know where, and then we’re gone. We’ll see that you forget we were ever even here.”
I do want them gone. Gone so I can scramble out of here before those “masters” return. But I have no idea what he’s talking about. My captors never let me out, and I’ve never heard them talk about cooking anything.
My throat is still closed, but I manage to shake my head, willing him to understand. Willing him not to be angry. I don’t have what they want. I can’t help them with whatever they’re searching for.
“No?” He frowns, which turns his already intimidating face fierce. My pulse lurches. “Do they bring something in here for you to help them with?”
I shake my head again, not quite restraining a shiver at the same time, and the blanket slips over my arm. The grizzly glances down at my wrist, and even though he was crouching there unmoving before, somehow he goes even more still.
Before I can react, his hand shoots out to grab my arm just below the bandage. He yanks it toward him. A yelp jolts out of me.
I try to scramble backward, but there’s nowhere to go, and his fingers grip me tightly. He pulls my wrist level with his nose. His eyes widen.
“Please,” I say, my voice stretching so thin on its way up my constricted throat that it’s barely a whisper.
He doesn’t seem to hear. Still clutching my arm, he turns toward his companions.
“She doesn’t smell like the tonic because they put her to work on it. She smells like it because she is it.”
The one called Whitt guffaws. “She is the tonic? She hardly looks fit to be bottled.”
The grizzly glowers at him and jerks my arm up higher. “They bled her today. The scent is clear as anything. This is their wretched secret ingredient.”
Through the panic and my scattered thoughts, the pieces click together. What they’re searching for is the same as the reason the other monsters take my blood. They aren’t going to leave me alone. They’re here for me.
What fresh hell will they drag me into?
The moment that question crosses my mind, my body is already reacting. I flail and thrash, hitting out with every limb, a piercing wail wrenching out of me. No, no, no. No more. Not when I was so close.
“Shut her up!” one of them says.
The grizzly is already heaving me toward him, blanket and all. His powerful arms squeeze me against him, trapping my arms. The smacking of my knees against his thighs doesn’t make him so much as blink. His hand claps over my mouth, and a scent like earth and woodsmoke fills my nose with my next frantic breath.
As I squirm and kick, voices volley around us.
“This isn’t what we planned for. We weren’t supposed to be taking prisoners.”
“If she’s what we need, then she’s our new guest of honor. Let’s get her out of here fast, before she makes such a stir the neighbors catch on.”