Callie's Guardian: White Tigers of Brigantia (Book 1) by Lisa Daniels (60)

Chapter Three

“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” Elinor said.  Gathered in the small room where the captured werewolf was tied to a chair, Luelle, Evo, Frey, Elinor and Yanus observed him.  For obvious reasons, Arina and Markus had been shoved aside in matters.

The werewolf in question leered at them, his yellow eyes glinting in smug triumph.  It made Luelle want to punch him in the mouth, just to wipe off that expression.  She badly wanted Arina to come in here and blast his brains out, because seeing him here in person convinced her of his evil.  He was practically saturated in it.

She examined Evo in concern, noting some scratches to his dark cheeks, and a hardness in his icy blue eyes.  Evo or Frey didn't have any history with this creature, so why did they look at him with such hatred? 

“Why, it's like none of you have seen a werewolf before,” Ricten said, stretching his yellowed teeth into a rancid grin.  “My dear niece.  It has been too long since I've set eyes upon you.”  He nodded toward Elinor, who let out a tiny hiss.  Her dark blue eyes crinkled into slits. 

“You realize we've put an order out to find you and kill you, right?  Since that's the reason you've been skulking in the shadows for all these years like a pitiful dog.”

“Oh.  Not in the shadows.  I've been in Russia. Getting to know some of the locals there.”

“What do you want?” Yanus said.  Ricten ignored him. 

“I will only talk to my niece, as she is alpha.  The rest of you are dirt beneath my shoes.  Especially you, human filth,” he snarled at Frey, who flexed her muscles.  Her right hand twitched to her Taurus.

“You will speak to all of us if demanded,” Elinor said.

Ricten merely smirked, running his tongue over his lips.  “Well, if she stays, I don't mind, as long as I get a juicy bite out of her soft flesh.  You know, I've never tasted a darkie before.  I imagine they'll be quite cooked, don't you?”

“Ugh,” Frey said, taking deep, self-controlled breaths.  “This fucking piece of slime.”

“Won't you stay with me a little while, pig?  Come a little close, so I may taste you for myself...”

“Stop this,” Elinor barked, “or we'll kill you on the spot.  No chance to plead.”

“Well, do it.  Then you can't have the information you'll so desperately require from me.  The filth leaves.  Now,” Ricten snarled.  His expression brooked no compromise, no chance to say otherwise.  His eyes gleamed manically.

Frey, shaking in incandescent rage, left the room in silence, looking as if she was biting her tongue.  Yanus followed after her, leaving just Elinor, Evo and Luelle.

“I smell another one.  I recognize that scent.  The little girl that got away so many years ago, right?  Here?”  He began giggling, rocking back and forth in the chair, the bindings holding him tight.  “Oh, I've been wanting that one for a while!  Human loving whelps, Markus and the Lubanov, I punished them so hard!  I wonder if they remember?”  The hysterical giggling slipped from his mouth, making all three werewolves glance at each other in alarm.

He's mad, Luelle thought.  Cracked.  The hint of madness scared even the most stolid of werewolves.  No one wanted to associate with insanity.

The grime under Ricten's nails, the sunken, haggard face that merged with his tangled beard, and the mud-stained clothes all indicated a life lived without luxury.

“Will you let her in to see me?  I've been wanting to meet her for a while...”

“No,” Luelle snapped, her teeth beginning to sharpen in her mouth.  “She'll kill you.  You stay away from her, you sick fuck.”

“That human?  Hahaha...” He gave a breathy laugh.  “Her brother tasted so sweet...”

With a demonic scream, Evo launched himself at Ricten, and slammed a fist into his face.  The chair topped over, and Ricten continued screeching in laughter as Evo leapt upon him and flailed, beginning his transition before Elinor and Luelle pulled him off.  He growled incomprehensibly, spitting curses but allowing the two women to stop him from potentially killing their informant.

Ricten, sprawled out on the floor, blood trickling from his chapped lips, cackled before coughing up what sounded like his lungs.  He continued coughing for a moment, his face purpling, before drawing a deep, rattling sigh.

Elinor tapped her foot.  “I'm not actually sure if we are going to get any information out of him.  But there must be something.  No one in their right mind would turn up at the doorstep of people who want them dead without some kind of backup or importance.”

Luelle felt a strange, wild urge to laugh, and the sound bubbled up in her throat, before she suppressed it.  She rubbed Evo's back as well, helping the man to calm down.  “Do you really think he's in his right mind at the moment?”

“No,” Elinor said.  “But he was never stupid, either.  Just a cruel, twisted individual.”

“How does someone like you become alpha?”  Ricten wheezed, his voice rasping and harsh.  “Have we become extinct in the male line or something?  I recall there being a lot more options apart from a woman and a human-loving nephew.”

“Because, dear uncle,” Elinor said sweetly, eyes glinting, “the world around us changes.  Unlike you.”

He laughed weakly again.  “Well, you have spunk, I'll give you that.  Are you sure you didn't slaughter your relatives for the top spot?  Whore your way there?  I'd commend you for that...”

Elinor helped right up her uncle again, the chair scraping on the wooden floor.  “Unfortunately not, uncle.”

“Shame,” he murmured.  Supercharged silence flooded the room.  Luelle tried her best to massage out the tension in Evo, which vibrated through her palms to her bones.  She suspected part of his outrage came from the insults to his sister, the insinuation that Ricten enjoyed devouring the flesh of the helpless.

He would have eaten Arina, all those years ago with the corrupt Lubanovs and Spirovas, had Markus and Danniven not spirited her away.  How must it have felt, to be her age, and to watch her baby brother and father die before her eyes?  What damage did that do to someone's mind? 

Death couldn't come soon enough for a creature like this.  And Luelle had seen a fair few of defiled old souls in her lifetime.  Luelle, however, had a psyche that fought torment with escape, with hope and daydreams, with constant scheming and interaction with the locals in the remote villages of Siberia.  She learned the language, she made friends.  Everything she did was to engineer the preservation of her sanity, and to escape.

At least some of the werewolves had been kind as well. 

“Ricten.  Give us one good reason why you think you're valuable enough to warrant us sparing your life.  I am out of patience, and the others here hate you enough to make it... difficult to protect you for long.”

The old wolf let loose a smirk again.  “Simple.  I can tell you precisely where they're staying and what they plan to do.”

“Can you?” Elinor stared at him, deeply suspicious, along with Luelle and a resentful Evo.  A thing such as Ricten, with his wily, sly mannerisms, didn't exactly invoke an aura of trust and belief.  “And how might you have stumbled across this sensitive information?”

“You could say,” Ricten said, smiling with blackened gums, “I had my fair share of humans in the Siberian villages.  And two wives.  The first one died in quite, ah, mysterious circumstances, of course.  The second was a rather timid and weak little thing from the Nikan family.  Which I believe is one of the families that is invading your beloved territory, is it not?”

Luelle bristled.  Koroslav.  Nikan.  Urayenkov.  The three families she had gotten to know intimately over her tenure in Siberia.  All of them considered themselves ancient and proud bloodlines, much like the Bulgarian families that dwelled the mountains and believed it their right to feast upon the human cattle.  What a horrible shock for these kind of families, Luelle considered, to have humans organizing themselves into peacekeepers and criminal hunters, using technology to track down the murderers. 

Living in the past paved no way for the future.  The inbred Siberian families were no exception.

“I highly doubt they would have chosen to convey any sort of information to you if they knew you were a Spirova – the same family they're harassing right now.”

“Ah, but they didn't know I am Spirova.”  Ricten tapped his nose.  “And I learned Russian from the crib.  I could fit in with barely a ripple upon the water.”

Elinor crossed her arms.  Evo glanced at Luelle, who tried giving him a reassuring smile.  It hurt her to see Evo so maddened, and she wanted to just take him into her arms and hug the anger out of him, and tell him everything would be okay.  He wouldn't understand why she did that, of course.  He likely thought, somewhere, as did the rest, that she was an amalgam of trauma and suffering.  Broken on the inside.

She wasn't.  She was alive, and stronger from the trials faced.  Her nightmares were mere moments of weakness, that vanished with light.  The other women though, ensnared into the web of those families from abroad, they still existed in that doom spiral.  And they had far less backbone than Luelle.

Nothing compared to the taste of long sought freedom – though Luelle still hadn't stumbled out of the woods.

“Why would you give such information?  Aren't you loyal to your wife?  The people who took you in?”

Ricten gave a tiny giggle, rolling his eyes around the room.  “They're not too fond of me right now.  Of course, they don't realize it was her fault.  She shouldn't have been snitching on me.  Cheating behind my back...”

“Ugh.”  Luelle shared the look of disgust with Elinor.  “Can we not just kill this piece of trash already?”

“Trash?” Ricten pulled himself upright, glaring daggers.  “How dare you.  None of you are fit to lick the shine off my boots.  You're all the weak, liberal whining generation.  No respect at all.”

Elinor scratched at her chin.  “I'm going to have to interrogate this one further.  Alone.  You two.  Out.”

The steel in her voice prompted Evo and Luelle to leave.  Hardly had they exited the room, and heard the lock of the door inside before they burst into fury.

“I can't believe that man!” Evo shuddered, his ice blue eyes alight in rage.  “I can't believe that someone so foul actually exists.  Even our parents were better people than that.”

Luelle sighed.  “There's plenty like him.  Plenty who turn their noses like that, as if they're still living in the tenth century, thinking they can do what they want and have no consequence for it.”

They continued storming down the corridor, past simplistic paintings of Bulgarian villages and countryside, to plant pots dotted along the sides and a curving bannister that lead towards Luelle's hotel room.  They passed an anxious looking Yanus by the unisex toilets, and halted.  Arina came up the stairs the same moment, chewing on a packet of lightly salted chips. 

“What's going on?” Luelle asked, confused.

Yanus paced up and down.  “Frey's sick.  She was vomiting in the toilet.  She's been complaining of dizziness and nausea for a while.  I think she's getting ill with something.”

Arina and Luelle exchanged glances, then stepped into the bathroom, with an anxious Evo and Yanus hovering outside.

Frey was slumped over the sink, wiping her mouth, beads of sweat on her forehead.  “Go away,” she rasped, “I'll be fine.  Probably ate something bad.”

Arina and Luelle, both adapting a no-nonsense attitude, began drilling her.

How long had she been feeling like this for?  What had she eaten, what had changed in her life?

Frey grunted her answers.  Luelle grinned atrociously and Arina mirrored it.

“What the fuck are you two looking so smug for?”

Arina placed an arm around Luelle, sharing a sisterly manner.  “Well, Frey.  You have an incurable condition.  It's dreadful.”

“Fatal,” Luelle agreed.  “Will change your life forever.”

Frey scowled at them.  “What are you on about?”

Evo and Yanus, of course, could hear them at this distance.  Luelle and Arina kept laying it on thick.

“You'll be having weird cravings for exotic foods,” Arina said.

“The cravings will last just under a year too, and then the parasite you're infected with will be gone.”

“Then, of course, you'll have a new host of problems to contend with.”

Realization struck Frey like a thunderbolt and she gaped at them.  “What.”  Her eyes grew as wide as moons.

“WHAT?” Yanus bellowed outside, and dashed into the bathroom.  Evo followed as well, terrified and excited.

Luelle smirked at her brother's reaction, and on Evo's dawning expression of wonder.

In all the shit going on around them, it buoyed Luelle up to receive some good news for once.  Frey walked away from the sink in a daze, drying off her hands with tissue.  “That can't be possible.”

“Why can't it?” Yanus said, eyes shining like stars.  “It's not like we were wearing any protection...”

“Fuck sake,” Frey said, blushing furiously.  “I was not expecting this.”

“Maybe we should talk about this some more,” Yanus purred, a smile threatening to split his face.  Luelle recognized the expression as pure joy, and laughed in reaction to her brother, happy to share such positivity.

Yes.  We need some good news like this, with everything happening.  We do.