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Memory flashes behind my eyes. My Puck. They shot my Puck.
A screech escapes me, my body trembling with rage. My gaze rakes the room, searching for any sign of where my Hydes have gone, but there’s nothing. Past the bars, the concrete floor goes down several steps on all sides and then continues until it reaches a ring of haphazardly placed chairs, like ones for an audience, except no one put them all away when that audience was gone.
Gritting my teeth against the way my body aches, I turn a tight circle. I can’t even tell where the gate on the cage is located, but the room beyond it has a door past the chairs. It’s made of dark wood, ornate and polished, and there’s a keypad beside it with a little red light glowing on top. Above the door, a gallery with more misplaced chairs stretches across that side of the room, as if providing more places for the audience to sit. Besides the abandoned chairs, I can’t see much past the short wooden wall and brass railing on top of it.
My eyes narrow. The other is asleep as always, but I remember her sneaky friends telling her about places like this. This is a place where traders bring their captives. A place where they put them on display and sell them to the highest bidder, like those rich people in that movie where the scientists made dinosaurs come back again.
In that movie, all the rich people got eaten.
I like this plan.
Grinning, I stalk toward the bars. I can flicker between them. No stupid cage is going to hold me. And when I find the ones who took me, who shot my Puck…
I blink out of sight and dart between the bars.
Or try to.
Electricity surges through me like I’ve stepped into a lightning bolt. I crash back to the concrete, screaming with pain while my body spasms from the residual shocks.
Slow clapping sounds push past the ringing in my ears. I pry my eyes open as the pain dulls.
A man walks toward me, the door swinging shut behind him. I get a glimpse of a long hallway with more doors and golden lights, and then it’s gone, leaving only me and him and a cage that bites.
“We know about your little power, Hyde,” the man says, smiling. Ordinarily, I’d appreciate that the expression looks like a shark, except this shark is between me and my Hydes and obviously knew about the cage that could hurt me.
I can kill sharks too.
Pushing to my feet again, I fight the way my body wants to wobble as I glare down at him. He’s wearing a black suit and a pale-brown shirt with a dark tie that has little gold symbols on it that match the keychain of the man I killed days ago. His hair is gray and his skin has that pale look white businessmen get from spending too much time in the office, but he still moves easily, like part of that time in the office is at the company gym.
He stops a few yards shy of the cage, tapping something briefly on his phone and then lifting the device so its underside is pointed at me. A click sounds like a camera shutter, and then he tucks the phone away. “Photos,” he says calmly. “For the marketing material.”
I’ll pick every one of his muscles apart.
“The accessory we’ve given you will suppress any other powers you might have.” He nods toward the bracelet. “We can get to the details on whatever those might be later. The buyers will surely want to know, plus it could raise our opening price. But in the meantime, let’s get the preliminaries out of the way.” His brow rises while he regards me. “Can you speak?”
I’ll make him eat his own liver.
The man waits and then sighs like my silence is disappointing but doesn’t really matter either way. “I suppose you’re wondering how we found you. Suffice it to say you subhumans really aren’t nearly as clever as you think you are. We tracked you after you killed one of our members a few days back, but several of our crew got a little ahead of themselves and burned your house down before we could acquire you. We could have lost you then, but thankfully, your security detail featured a few individuals we’ve had on our radar for a while, not that they or whatever agency they work for knows that. Once we spotted them, it wasn’t difficult to conclude a target of value was likely nearby. Imagine our satisfaction when that turned out to be you and your unusual companions.”
He scoffs to himself as if something is ironically amusing. “Companions. Is that the word you would use? Or are those three creatures your ‘mates’? Such a disgusting term—at least as you subhumans use it. But then, you’re all barely better than wild animals who can speak, so I suppose it makes sense you would find appeal in such a word.”
I quiver, my rage surging higher. “Hurt my friends. This is how you end.”
His brow rises. “You rhyme. How adorable.”
“Ate your buddy,” I warn. “Eat you happily.”
“Well, now that’s a sloppier rhyme, don’t you think? Buddy. Happily.” He shrugs. “No matter. The buyers will love that little trick. Perhaps they’ll want you as entertainment for their guests. Like a poet. Edgar Allan Poe in a cage.” Chuckling to himself, he takes out his phone again, tapping it briefly like he’s typing in notes.
Agonized screams rise in the distance. My eyes snap from the man to the door.
My Hydes. Someone is hurting them.
Rage floods me, and I lunge toward the bars, stopping just shy of the metal. Electricity tingles on my skin in savage little bites that warn of more if I come any closer.
Sighing, the man casts a brief glance toward the sound and then returns his attention to me. “I’m afraid not all your mates are as suitable for sale in their current state as you are. But the market for Hyde organs is… well, lucrative, considering how rare it is to capture one of you, let alone four.”
Lightning bites at me as I flinch forward, my fingers curling and my nails digging into my palms. This close to the bars, I can see the dead twisting around him, swirling through the air. Their forms are faint, though. More like a heat mirage than the misty shapes I normally see.
