One of the twins gaped at me. “Your hellhounds?”
I patted one of the huge heads. “Do they look like they belong to someone else?”
Callum chuckled, and the blond warrior gave me an appraising look. Seamus and Niall stared at the other two men as if expecting one of them to say something. When neither spoke, one of the twins said, “They got here yesterday. That’s all I know. I don’t normally handle any of the beasts.”
“You have other animals here?”
He made a noise. “I wouldn’t call them animals, but yes, I think there’s usually a few in the menagerie.”
The image of young trolls trapped in a cage flashed through my mind, and outrage filled me. “You have a menagerie here? You put creatures on display?”
“That’s just what we call it. It’s where we keep some of the creatures we capture that are causing problems for the humans, until we can figure out what to do with them.”
“I want to see it.” He looked like he was going to object, so I said, “If my hounds are living there, I want to see it. Besides, how else do you plan to get them there?”
His eyes flicked warily to the hellhounds, and he sighed. “Follow me.”
I trailed him, keeping a safe distance as he led me to a cluster of stone buildings at the back of the property. The hellhounds walked beside me, but I saw how they constantly surveyed our surroundings, looking for anything they perceived to be a threat.
Claire hadn’t taken me near these buildings during my tour, and I’d figured they held weapons or more training rooms. The largest one was a long rectangle two stories high with windows on the second story only, and a domed roof that looked like thick glass but was most likely a much stronger material. There was one entrance, and my guide pulled open the heavy reinforced steel door, allowing me and the hounds to go ahead of him.
Whatever I was expecting, it was not the bright, airy, two-story room separated into eight caged enclosures of varying sizes. Between the cages were solid walls, presumably to keep the inhabitants from bothering each other, and metal bars lined the front of each cage. I could not see inside the cages when we first entered the building, but shuffling noises at the far end of the room told me that at least one of them was occupied.
“Can I look around . . . which one are you again?”
He grinned. “Seamus. Go ahead, but you’d best be putting up your beasts first because they make the other critter nervous. And me, too.”
“Where do they go?” I hated the thought of caging any animal, but common sense told me the hellhounds could not be allowed to run free. At least not yet.
“There.” Seamus pointed to the first enclosure that was at least twenty feet wide and fifteen feet deep. There was a slot at the front near the floor where food and water could be pushed inside, and at the back I saw an opening that led to a dark cave-like structure.
I waved at the open door to the cage. “All right, in you go, boys.” The hounds hesitated for a moment, and I thought they were going to refuse to enter the cage. I couldn’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to be caged either. But they went in without any further urging, and I closed the gate behind them. “I’ll come visit you every day. Maybe they’ll let me take you for walks if you behave yourselves.”
Seamus made a face that suggested no one would ever trust the hellhounds enough to let them walk around freely no matter how well they behaved. We’d have to see about that. These hounds were my responsibility, and I would not keep them locked away like zoo animals.
Seamus examined the locking mechanism on the gate after I closed it. “Hmmm, this doesn’t appear to be broken. How did these two get out?”
“Maybe someone forgot to lock it.”
He shook his head thoughtfully. “The locks engage automatically on the cages, and they can only be unlocked from the main control panel or with a coded key. I’ll have to get security to pull up the surveillance for today.”
I looked around until I spotted a number of security cameras fixed at regular intervals high up on the walls. There was one camera for each enclosure and two near the entrance. It made sense that if you were housing dangerous creatures, you kept them under close surveillance.
I left Seamus muttering over the lock and walked toward the other cages, intensely curious about what kinds of creatures they kept there. The first three cages I passed were empty, but my pace picked up when I saw what looked like wisps of smoke drifting out of the fourth one.
“Watch it, lass. Don’t get too close to that one,” Seamus called just before the interior of the cage came into view. Heeding his warning, I moved to the other side of the floor before I turned to see the occupant of the cage. My jaw dropped and my eyes nearly bugged out of my head.
“What the . . . ? You have a freaking dragon in here!”
I gawked at the greenish-brown creature breathing small puffs of smoke as it watched me with large green eyes eerily similar to those of a crocodile. Leathery wings were folded against its scaled body, and it crouched in the back of the cage like a cat about to pounce. It was small for a dragon, roughly the size of a very large bull, so I figured it must be young. Dragons are not native to North America so I wondered what in God’s green earth had brought this one here.
“Not a dragon, a wyvern actually.” An olive-skinned man with short black hair walked up to stand beside me. “And a mean one at that. This one burned five people and killed two in Utah before we managed to catch him.”
I tried to remember what I had read about wyverns. They are smaller and faster than their dragon cousins but not as powerful. They breathe smaller flames, and they have two legs instead of four. Whereas dragons are intelligent, wyverns are closer to animals, kind of like a crocodile with wings and just as deadly.
I shivered. “What will they do with him?”
“We have a place down in Argentina where they actually train them to hunt vampires. We’re holding Alex until they can send someone to get him. Don’t get too close to him. His flame has a good three-foot reach, and he won’t think twice before trying to fry you.”
I couldn’t stop the laugh that burst from me. “Alex? You named a wyvern Alex?”
The man chuckled. “One of the men who caught him gave him that name. He said the beast was as surly as his older brother.”
Shaking my head, I smiled and held out my hand. “Hi, I’m Sara.”
“Sahir.” His dark eyes were warm when he smiled. “I have heard much about you.”
I made a face. “Yeah, you and everyone else, apparently. I think warriors gossip more than the girls at my old high school.”
Sahir’s laugh was deep and rich, and I liked him immediately. He moved toward the hellhounds’ cage, and I followed. The hellhounds growled menacingly, but he ignored them. “I have cared for many creatures, but this is the first pair of fell beasts I’ve ever had in my care. They are extremely rare. When I heard how they were captured, I must admit I thought the story was fabricated – until I saw you walking with them.”
“Damndest thing I ever saw,” said Seamus, who had finally stopped studying the lock on the hellhounds’ cage. “I thought for sure someone was going to die when I saw them coming at us. Sahir, you have any idea how those beasts could’ve gotten loose?”