Chapter Ten #2
Dame inhaled deeply and stood beside her, massaging her hair in the back.
“When they race dogs, they use a rabbit. The dogs have an instinct to follow it. In the old days, they used a real rabbit to run in front of them and motivate them to top out their speed. Now they use a fake rabbit on mechanics to push the dogs. They have to chase it. For Cats, sometimes our animals connect to a Rabbit. It becomes an obsession. It’s the ultimate hunt.
Most of the time it’s a prey animal, and it’s an easy end.
Rarely, it’s another predator, like a rival Cat.
Extremely rarely, the animal chooses a human Rabbit. ”
“When they’re super fucked up in the head and unsalvageable,” Mars deadpanned as he glared at Stellan.
The devil was in Stellan’s smile. “I could kill you,” he told Mars.
“But you don’t,” Dame said. “You don’t finish the fights with us. Why is that?”
“Because you are both weak. It’s a waste of time. Your death wouldn’t bring me any honor.”
“Nah,” Dame said, squatting down beside Misty’s chair. He cocked his head and studied his caged brother. “I think it’s because you understand that you are in an Ambush with us.”
Stellan narrowed his eyes. “Fuck you and your Ambush. I don’t do that.”
“You care.”
“Fuck you,” he spat out again, and now the mask was slipping. He paced to the back of the cage and crouched there in the shadows, his eyes glowing unnaturally, like an animal in headlights.
“We are an Ambush,” Dame repeated.
A snarl ripped out of Stellan, and he blurred to the cage door and slammed against it with a resounding boom!
Misty startled hard and stood up, then stumbled toward the door.
“Stay here,” Dame told her, his eyes flashing with seriousness.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I want to keep you both,” he said somberly. “And now I have to figure out how to do that.”
“Well, what’s the plan then? Huh?” she asked. “Just make me sit in here with a monster whose sole drive in life is to kill me? To hurt me? To bleed me?”
“Yes. Do stay,” Stellan said.
“What’s your first memory with your favorite family member? Don’t name names, just tell me the first memory of them.”
She shook her head, feeling protective of her Uncle Tim. “Why?”
“What did you want when you were a kid for your birthday that you never got?” Dame asked, accepting her denial.
She swallowed hard and looked from Dame, to Mars, to Stellan, and back to Dame.
“Just talk to me,” Dame murmured.
“Getting to know her won’t change my desire to hunt her,” Stellan said. “I don’t want to hear about her boring life. It’s a waste of my time. Tigers don’t care about the mundane workings of Rabbit life.”
“Still cocky,” Mars muttered.
“I’m a realist.”
“You’re an animal speaking like you know shit about fuck,” Dame barked.
“Shut up and listen or I will take that cattle prod and electrocute the shit out of you again until you pass out. And then we will tell her stories to your twitching carcass, and I know you can hear the oath in my voice. Stop. Talking.”
Whoo, Dame could be stern when he wanted to. Misty stared at the ground like she was the one getting in trouble. The dominance was kind of hot.
Stellan snarled up his lip and dragged the cot across the floor, slammed it down, then sat on it, still staring at Misty with bloodlust in his eyes.
Well, this was a fun night.
“Can I have a drink?” she asked.
“We have straight whiskey or straight whiskey,” Marsden enlightened her.
“I meant a bottled water.”
“We don’t have bottled water.”
She pointed to the fridge. “What’s in there?”
“Steaks defrosting to feed that asshole,” Dame explained. “We have water in the jugs over there,” he said, gesturing to the side wall. “Room temperature okay for you?”
“Okay, I don’t want to be high maintenance, but sometimes lukewarm water makes me gag a little.”
Marsden turned an unamused gaze upon her. “I’m about to let him out of his cage and spare us all another story like that one.”
Dame growled, Stellan stood and gripped the bars and tried to shake the cage and offered to pay Marsden a hundred thousand dollars if he would let him out, and Marsden made his way over to a table by the fridge that housed what looked like three bottles of whiskey and little shot glasses in the shapes of bullets.
“Have you never had a woman in here?” she asked seriously.
“No,” Dame answered.
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s a good thing.”
“He’s had lots of women in here,” Stellan said.
“He’s fucked them all in here. One over there, and one over there,” he said, pointing to different places.
“He doesn’t love you. He just craves you.
We don’t pair up. We destroy. He’s going to destroy you.
He’s going to make you watch him fuck other women in here. ”
Dame grabbed a long red rod and walked nonchalantly over to the cage, and Stellan backed away in a rush.
He aimed the end of it at his caged brother and pushed a button that created an electric current on the end.
“Cut it out. Here is your last warning. You don’t get to talk to her like that. ” He shook his head. “Quit.”
“Then let me out.”
“If I let you out right now, I will kill you,” Dame yelled.
His voice echoed through the barn, and Marsden and Stellan both froze and wore matching surprised looks.
“I’m going to go ahead and guess that there was some truth in his voice,” Misty said softly.
“Dude, are you good?” Marsden asked.
“No. This is last ditch effort time. Stellan has been asking me to put him down when the tiger isn’t there.”
“What?” Stellan demanded in that guttural, terrifying voice.
“When you aren’t taking over his mind, and he has clarity, he wants me to put him the fuck down!” Dame barked out.
“Bro, that’s not an option,” Mars said as he walked over and handed Misty a shot of whiskey. “We haven’t even discussed that—”
“Why would I discuss it with you, Mars? You’ve been here for all of like…five minutes. You’re fresh. I’m freaking exhausted.”
“If you try to put me down, I’ll put you down first,” Stellan promised.
“Hey, hey,” Mars said, holding his hands out. “This is too much.”
“Too much truth?” Dame asked. “Here’s more.” He gestured to Misty. “She is mine.”
“No, she’s my Rabbit.”
“I’m not saying she’s my Rabbit, Stellan. She’s mine.”
Stellan frowned. “No. She’s mine.”
Dame turned and pulled his shirt off him and threw it on the ground, and gave his back to the cage.
“Whoa,” Mars said low as he saw the claw marks Misty had made on his back. “Hey man, it was one thing to mark her. Do you understand what you have done now with this little move?”
“I know exactly what I’ve done. I wanted it. I’ll always want it. If you kill her, it’ll kill me,” he told Stellan. “And I want to live. I need her to live. So, if you come at her, I will make a choice.”
“Guys,” Mars warned.
“I’ll choose her.”
Stellan’s eyes flashed with rage. The tension in this room was so thick, she could cut it with a knife.
While she loved that declaration of loyalty, even against his own family, she did not love the new wave of rage that washed through Stellan’s face when he looked at her.
Or the way he shook the bars so hard, the whole cage rattled.
Or the way he was now pacing back and forth like an animal at the zoo and never breaking eye contact with her.
“You did this,” he growled. His voice couldn’t pass for human anymore.
“Me?” She asked. “Pretty sure I just came out of my house five years ago for an early shift and you were the one who attacked me.”
“Not you, Rabbit! I mean Dame!”
Okay, this was officially too much.
“I’m pretty sure you did this,” Misty said, standing. She threw back the shot of whiskey and handed the empty to Mars. “I think I need another.”
“Fair,” Mars muttered, taking it back to the table. “That’s fair. It’s a real weird night.”