Chapter 16 Teddy #2
“Treating me like one of your critters.” He tried joking, flipping his hand over and letting their fingers slot together, skin on skin, warmth and comfort traveling between them.
“You’re no critter,” Wren said with a huff, then he left the statement hanging in the air between them. Teddy wanted to know what he stopped himself from saying, but he also wanted to keep the tenuous peace and ease between them for as long as he could.
So he said nothing.
He twined their fingers tighter, closing his eyes for a split second to imagine them back at their spot at Nexus, before opening them again and driving toward their destination.
The location the mystery texter had sent them to looked even worse in person than it had when they’d looked it up online. Apparently, the photo had been taken at the peak of the street’s beauty, which had been in decline ever since.
The row of buildings in front of them was near falling apart, cracks in the walls plastered messily to try and save them, steel bars sticking out of balconies and windows swinging on hinges that barely held them up.
“Didn’t know Arcstead did grunge,” Wren commented as they exited the car, Teddy already missing the feeling of his fingers between his own.
“Oh, it does.” Teddy walked around the car to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. “The contrast makes it worse.”
“I guess.” Wren nodded, reaching out to stroke a finger over Blu’s head when he landed on his shoulder. “Keep an eye out.”
Blu chirped back and flew off, leaving them alone to trudge down the nearly empty street looking for the correct location.
They left the main street and waded through a gigantic muddy puddle stretching down a deserted passage between two buildings.
The passage spiderwebbed into a series of smaller passages, all clearly dead ends but holding several rusty metal doors.
“It has to be one of these, right?” Teddy asked, and Wren pulled his phone out to check the location again, keeping his phone turned so they could both look at it.
The little pin was pointing to a light gray door just under a rickety fire escape.
“Had to be the worst one,” Teddy said.
“I’ve been in worse places.” Wren shrugged, and Teddy glared at the door as if personally offended.
“Do not remind me,” he growled, and heard the sharp intake of Wren’s breath.
“I always liked that voice,” Wren said before walking off toward the door, leaving Teddy to try and get his heartbeat under control.
If they held any hope of walking into the place stealthily, it was shot down by the awful, metallic screeching the door produced when Wren pulled it open. It could have alerted everyone on the planet that they were walking in.
It gave Teddy pause, but Wren seemed to take it as a challenge, as he charged through the dark, humid hallway and into a barely lit room, leaving Teddy to stumble after him.
They came face-to-face with a bald man covered in shitty tattoos, who was scrambling to push a struggling ferret into a tiny crate clearly made for a smaller animal, while several other creatures screeched from their own crates.
The scent in the air made Teddy’s eyes water. Urine and feces and decay. The walls were falling apart around them, chunks of concrete and plaster missing in places. There was a single lightbulb hanging from a wire in one of the corners, and the rest of the room was pitch black.
Teddy felt himself getting angry at the condition in which the animals were being held, but it was nothing compared to Wren.
His fists clenched and his chin jutted out, that glowing eye of his shining in the darkness. He charged at the man like an avenging angel, swinging his fist into the man’s face and knocking him out cold.
The man crumpled to the floor, releasing the ferret, who clambered up Wren’s leg and pushed his way into the front pocket of his hoodie, trembling.
Wren crouched and curled into a protective ball around the animal.
“Shhh,” Teddy heard him whisper. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now. I won’t let anything bad happen to you anymore.”
He looked up and caught Teddy’s eye, rage blazing on his face as he rocked the ferret back and forth.
“How many?” he asked and Teddy turned around, walking a bit farther into the room to count the animals.
“Five that I can see,” Teddy said.
“Can you tell what they are?” Wren asked, shushing the animal in his hands.
“Another ferret,” Teddy said. “A parrot, a tarantula, a lizard of some sort. And then a snake in that terrarium over there.”
He walked over to where Wren was still crouched on the floor and nudged the man sprawled on the ground next to him with the toe of his boot.
“We won’t be getting much out of him like this,” Teddy said, and Wren scowled.
“Fucker deserved it,” he hissed, rearing up like he’d stomp the man to death while he had him at his feet.
“I am not disagreeing at all,” Teddy said when those blazing eyes turned to him, filled with righteous fury. “But we do need answers.”
“He’ll come to soon enough.” Wren deemed the poor ferret calm enough for him to stand up and look around the room. “Gives me time to do damage control here.”
Between one breath and the next he had all of the animals settled and calm, out of their cages and piled on top of him like he was their king.
The snake hung around his neck, the parrot was on his shoulder, the other ferret had joined the first one inside the pocket, and he held the lizard and the tarantula in gentle hands, cooing at them quietly.
He made it look like a cuddle session, but Teddy could see that he was checking each animal over carefully.
“This is definitely the spot,” he whispered to Teddy after a few minutes.
“How can you tell?” Teddy asked, and Wren turned the lizard around to show him a series of numbers on the lizard’s stomach.
“Sable has these tattooed inside his ear. Liam’s dog, King, too,” he said. “The organization provides animals for illegal fights. I’ve been tracking them for years. Cut off so many limbs but never managed to get to the head itself.”
“I doubt these animals are good fighters,” Teddy said, trying to lighten the mood to stop himself from joining Wren in his rage.
“Apparently they’ve updated their list of services,” Wren said. A blue flash fluttered next to Teddy’s head and he watched as Blu landed on Wren’s shoulder. Wren chirped at him, a tiny little tinkering trill, and Blu flitted from one animal to the next for a few seconds before returning.
Wren’s cursemark glowed brighter for a moment before dimming to its usual shine, and a tiny smile flashed across his face.
“We got here in time. None of these are cursed yet, but they need somewhere to go. The ferrets I believe will be okay to just be released, but the rest don’t have a natural habitat anywhere near here. ”
He pulled his phone out and dialed, holding it between his unoccupied shoulder and ear.
“Bianca,” he said when someone on the other end clearly picked up. “Do we have space for a few new darlings? Yes, that was a rhetorical question. I’ll need pickup for a parrot, a snake, and a tarantula in Arcstead. How fast can you get that organized? Perfect. I’ll text you the address.”
He cut the call and stood up, still decorated with all of the animals.
“Bianca will have pickup for them arranged tomorrow,” he said.
“Are they gonna be safe here until then?” Teddy asked, and found himself on the receiving end of a look that clearly called him a moron in several animal languages.
“We are obviously taking them with us,” Wren said, tucking the lizard into one of his sleeves and the tarantula into the other.
“I doubt Echo will be happy with that,” Teddy said.
“They can join the unhappy club, then,” Wren said. “We can even make them president.”
The man on the floor stirred.
“Wren…”
“I am not leaving them here, Teddy,” Wren said.
“I’m not saying you have to.” Teddy pointed. “He’s waking up.”
“Oh. Good for him.”
“What the fuck?” The man grunted, lifting a hand to his face and looking around himself, disoriented. His eyes widened when he caught sight of Wren, and he scrambled backward until his back hit a wall.
“Who is the lizard for?” Wren asked, and the man shook his head.
Wren advanced, covered in animals, looking like a feral creature out to destroy.
The man clearly had some wit to him because he wasn’t underestimating Wren for all his small stature. He looked terrified out of his mind, and Teddy was sure if he could have he would have merged with the grubby wall behind his back.
“I won’t be asking again,” Wren said. “Who is it for?”
“You know—” Teddy went to crouch next to the man, holding out a hand toward Wren, palm up, as if to stop him in his tracks. “—my partner here has a very, very short fuse.”
“And he is at the end of it, so move,” Wren said when Teddy looked up at him and threw him a soft wink. A sign.
“How about you tend to the animals and let me and Mr.…?” He trailed off, looking at the man.
“Adam,” the man said.
“Mr. Adam, have a tiny little chat,” Teddy said.
Wren glared at the man so hard Teddy thought he’d disintegrate on the spot before turning around.
“Fine,” Wren spat. “You have five minutes. After that I am feeding the ferrets. One finger at a time.”
He stalked as far away as he could in the tiny room as the man squeaked and pressed himself harder against the wall.
“He’s insane,” Adam said.
“He’s…spirited.” Teddy smiled. “But he means well.”
“That was him meaning well?!”
“Yeah,” he said somberly. “You should see him angry. It’s not pretty.”
“Oh my god, I don’t want to fucking die,” Adam said. “I only took this job to help a friend. I didn’t even… He didn’t say there would be crazy people knocking me out. I just…”
“Hey,” Teddy said, voice as soothing as he could make it. “Hey, it’s okay. Deep breaths. They send me with him to keep him in check. He won’t hurt you as long as you act nice and cooperate.”