Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
After Vlad was gone, Raven slipped from the tiger house and headed toward the grassy fenced enclosure at the center of Haven, where the flamingos preened in the pond. She’d forgotten about the flamingos and needed to release them, too, as well as the peacocks.
The fog drifted and slithered around her legs. It was impossibly sluggish, an opaque white haze. She knew every loose flagstone in every path of Haven by heart. Yet in the misty darkness, the wildlife sanctuary took on an eerie otherworldliness that prickled the hairs on the back of her neck.
Walking through the fog gave her the strange sensation of sinking into a strange world, into a deep, impenetrable substance, alien and unknown.
A scuffling sound came from behind her.
She swung around, peering into the fog. To her right, the reptile house loomed. To her left rose the snack shack. A birch tree stood beside it, its leaves almost gone, bare branches raking the sky.
If someone was out prowling the park and had a light, they’d turned it off. She could see nothing amiss, could hear nothing out of place, other than the bonobos calling to each other from the roof of the snack shack.
She turned back and kept walking, her footfalls muffled.
She stilled. Her heart jolted in her chest. Had she heard another footfall, just after hers?
She spun around again, searching the fog to the left, then the right.
She couldn’t see more than fifteen feet in any direction.
Distance was impossible to measure. The world outside her circle of visibility might have vanished entirely, and she wouldn’t know.
She listened for sounds, heard only her own ragged breathing.
She’d never escape at this rate. She had to get moving. She couldn’t let her fear of the unseen control her, damn it.
Raven braced herself, straightened her shoulders. She tucked her tranq gun in her waistband and grasped her hunting rifle, shifting it into both hands. Her finger curled around the trigger. She resumed walking.
Something dropped to the ground directly in front of her.
Alarm flared through her body. Raven resisted the urge to leap back in terror. She clamped her mouth shut to keep from screaming and raised the rifle.
A blurred shape leered out of the murky shadows. A bonobo materialized. It hooted at her. It jumped in glee. Its lips peeled back from its teeth as it smiled. Its licorice-black eyes glittered eagerly up at her.
Relieved, she lowered the rifle. Her hands trembled from the adrenaline.
“Gizmo,” she said. “You about gave me a heart attack, and I about shot you in your smug little face. Go terrorize someone else, would you?”
Gizmo reached out his leathery fingers and took her hand. For a moment, he clasped her fingers gently in his. Startled, for a moment she didn’t move.
She stroked the black fur on the back of his hand.
“Thank you,” she said, not sure what for.
Abruptly, she felt like weeping. It was the middle of the night.
She was exhausted, sore, and frightened.
Her home was under attack. Three of her wolves had been killed.
And her own safety was in jeopardy, her risk increasing every moment that she remained here.
And here was a captive ape, giving her a moment of reprieve, the smallest act of kindness. It almost shattered her fragile heart.
Gizmo hopped on one foot, hooted softly, and gave her that hoarse, goofy laugh of his.
Her eyes pricked. She blinked rapidly. “You’re free now. Go. Find your troop. Live a good life.”
Gizmo rose on his hind legs. His smile changed—his lip curled up, revealing his top teeth. To the untrained eye, Gizmo still looked like he was smiling. Raven knew better. He wasn’t smiling because he was happy.
It was a fear grin.
Urgency crackled through her veins. She pivoted, lifting her rifle, finger already tracking toward the trigger. Too late.
Footsteps sounded behind her.
A gunshot shattered the air.
Gizmo let out a tortured shriek.
Before she could orient herself to the danger, to find her target and squeeze the trigger, a hand clamped around her mouth.
Something knocked the rifle out of her grip. Rough hands seized her arms. Her backpack was torn from her shoulders and tossed onto the ground.
Her spine was shoved violently against something hard—a man’s chest. The cold muzzle of a gun kissed her temple.
“Don’t scream,” Rex said into her right ear. Hot breath scalded her cheek. He stank of sweat and beer. The sour stench of him clogged her nostrils. “Or go ahead and scream. I love it when they pretend they don’t like this.”
Her heart bucked against her ribcage. Her chest filled with molten panic. She tried to wrench free. His grip was iron.
At her feet, Gizmo writhed in agony. His furry hands clutched his stomach. Blood oozed between his fingers. He looked up at Raven. His small black face contorted in pain and confusion. In his entire life, a human had never hurt him.
Hot outraged tears streamed down her cheeks. “You monster!”
“It turns me on when you whisper sweet nothings to me, you know.”
“You didn’t have to do that!” she cried in a strangled voice. “He wouldn’t have hurt anybody!”
“You got her,” a second voice said. A figure materialized out of the fog a few yards to her right, carrying a flashlight in one hand, a pistol in the other. A semi-automatic rifle was slung across his shoulder. “I knew you’d find her.”
“You bastard,” she hissed.
Damien smiled tightly, his eyes in shadow. “That’s me.”
“Shut that thing up already,” Rex ordered.
Damien glanced at the shrieking ape, aimed his gun, and shot the bonobo in the head. Gizmo’s furred body slumped and went still.
A cold fury rose within Raven. Gizmo was only here because he wanted to greet her, to perform his usual antics, to show off, to say thank you and goodbye in his way.
Instead, Rex and Damien killed him.
Rex toed the dead ape with his boot. His gun was still pressed to the side of her head. “Too bad we can’t get a pelt out of this thing.”
Somewhere to the east, invisible in the heavy fog, another bonobo wailed in grief. It was Zephyr, Gizmo’s mother. Bonobo mother-son pairs were closely bonded for life. She must have seen what happened from a perch on the reptile house roof or one of the elms lining the path.
Zephyr wailed again. She knew what it meant—her son’s body lying limp and still. Raven felt the bonobo’s pain like her own. Grief stitched into her bones.
“Kill that one, too,” Rex ordered. “I can’t stand their damn screeching.”
Damien swung the handgun and pointed into the fog, firing off several random shots. The sound thundered in her ears.
“Stop it!” She tried again to wrestle from Rex’s grip. She kicked backward at his shins and clawed at his skinny forearm with all her might. It was no use. “Leave her be! You don’t have to kill them!”
Rex gave a guttural laugh. “They’re glorified rodents. Filthy beasts. We’re doing them a favor.”
She choked on helpless anger, unable to speak.
Damien lowered his gun and peered into the murk, shining the flashlight from tree to tree, from building to building. He frowned at the sound of tiny nails scrabbling over a metal roof.
Unseen, Zephyr scurried to safety, still shrieking in anguish.
“We’ve been looking for you,” Rex said. “And to think, the others almost gave up on finding you. Dekker and Vaughn will both be thrilled.”
“Screw you! I hope you die!”
Rex only laughed. “Now, let’s get down to business,” he said in her ear, his breath hot on her cheek. “You’re the one who let the damn monkeys out, aren’t you?”
“They’re not monkeys, they’re apes, you moron,” she spat.
His fingers dug painfully into her shoulders. “Now, I like a bit of spunk, little girl. Too much and you’ll see a side of me you wish you hadn’t.”
He wanted to see her afraid. She’d rather die than give in to him. “Go to hell.”
“You’ll be sorry for that, you little—”
An ear-splitting yowl echoed through the night. It sounded both close and directionless, like it could be ten feet away or a mile. A harsh, guttural bark answered from somewhere nearby.
Rex went rigid. In shock, his right arm dropped. The gun slipped a few inches from her temple. “What the hell was that?”
A smile spread across Raven’s face.
Damien spun, gun up, sighting nebulous shapes in the shifting fog. “Which animals did you let out?”
Her smile widened. “All of them.”
He shot Raven a horrified look. “What do you mean, all of them?”
“Just what I said.” She let the tremble creep into her voice, let the panic clawing up her throat escape. “That yowl you heard? That’s Vlad, the man-eating tiger. It’s the sound he makes right before he attacks.”
It was a lie. The grating yowl came from Electra the bobcat, not Vlad. And the dog-like bark belonged to the zebra. Neither animal would attack three full-grown adults.
But Rex and Damien didn’t know that.
Their faces drained of color. Rex’s attention strayed from Raven to the menacing fog, which hid any number of clawed, fanged, and deadly creatures who desired nothing more than to eat him alive.
“Where is it?” he cried. “Shoot, damn it, shoot!”
Damien crouched, his gaze sweeping in a slow circle. “I don’t see anything!”
Rex gestured with his gun. “Shoot anyway! Scare it off, damn it!”
This was her chance. Raven jerked her head backward. The back of her skull slammed into Rex’s chin. Simultaneously, she stomped on the top of his foot.
He grunted. His one-armed grip loosened. She jerked free.
Whirling, she shoved her hand into her pocket and seized the whittling knife. She yanked it out, fumbling to flip it open.
She didn’t think. She simply acted on instinct. Carnivores always went for the most vulnerable points of the body—the belly, the neck. So did she.
Angrily, Rex lunged for her.
Raven plunged the blade deep into his throat.