CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Rain came down so hard it erased the upper leaves of the jungle, turning the canopy into a black, thrashing ceiling and the earth beneath it into a river of mud.
Beyond the trees, the coliseum squatted like the rib cage of some dead god, its stone arches running with water, its fighting ring already ankle-deep in brown floodwater.
Inside the cages stacked along the arena wall, eyes burned gold, green, and red in the torchlight, and every one of those eyes belonged to an animal marked for death.
Blake stood in the open gate with her hair plastered to her face and one hand pressed against the iron bars of a tiger’s cage. The tiger’s thoughts crashed against her mind like claws against a door: hunger, blood, rope, fire, men laughing, the ring.
Blake swallowed the fear that rose in her throat and pushed back with the strongest calm she could summon. Not sleep. Not surrender. Run.
“If you want to live run to the river. My friends will help you get home or you can stay in this jungle as your home.”
Beside her, Irene drifted through the rain as if the storm had forgotten how to touch her. She was pale silver at the edges, her dress lifting in a wind that did not exist, her eyes fixed on the cages with an aching fury.
When she spoke, every animal heard her in the language of bone, feather, scale, and tooth.
“You were born under open sky,” she told them. “I will not let you die for applause.”
Gaspar fought with a lock that had clearly been designed by someone who hated fingers.
“If any of you are considering eating us,” he shouted over the rain, “please remember we are the helpful meat.”
The hyenas in the nearest cage answered with a chorus of sharp, cracked laughter, and Gaspar froze.
“I regret saying meat.”
Luke drove his shoulder into a wooden brace until it splintered, then jumped back as three starving boars slammed against their gate. Their thoughts were blunt and furious, all tusks and empty bellies.
“We know,” Luke said, palms up, his voice shaking but steady enough. “You want the men who put you here. I promise, if we see them, we’ll form a very respectful line behind you.”
Trak was already waist-deep in mud near the far wall, hauling at a chain wrapped around the cage of a black bear whose ribs showed beneath rain-slick fur.
The bear’s rage was immense and old, a storm larger than the one outside.
Trak closed his eyes, pressed his forehead to the bars, and let the animal feel his own exhaustion, his own terror, his own refusal to leave anyone behind.
The coliseum groaned as floodwater poured down the steps where crowds would soon sit, cheering. The cages rattled in answer.
Leopards snarled at antelope, wolves snapped at monkeys, and a hornbill screamed insults so specific that Blake briefly lost concentration.
“Irene,” she said through clenched teeth, “tell the bird that nobody’s mother smells like boiled mushrooms.”
“I will not censor the oppressed,” Irene replied, but a smile flickered through her ghostly face before she turned her power outward again.
Her voice spread in waves, passing through iron, wet stone, and panicked minds.
“To the river,” she called. “Down the eastern chute. Do not fight here. Fight by livin’.”
At the chute gate, Alvin lay half-submerged in runoff, looking like an extremely judgmental log. Blake had asked him to guide the animals toward the river. Alvin had agreed, though his agreement felt less like enthusiasm and more like a damp legal contract.
When a cage of capybaras bolted past him, he opened one yellow eye and projected, in the general direction of everyone, I am not a ferry.
Hank and Oscar, were less subtle. They stood side by side on a fallen beam, rain hissing off their armored backs, tongues tasting the air like black ribbons.
Hank hissed at a nervous herd of deer, not to threaten them, but to keep them moving. Oscar, who enjoyed authority far too much, added a mental shove that translated roughly as: Single file, no biting, and if you faint I will be disappointed.
The first locks broke, and the arena exploded into motion. A tiger leaped free, landing so close to Blake that mud splashed up her legs. Its hunger flared hot enough to make her stagger. For one heartbeat, it saw her throat.
Then Irene appeared between them, transparent and terrible, and the tiger saw through her the memory of moonlit grass, wet leaves, cubs hidden beneath roots, and the river shining like a road.
Blake caught the tiger’s gaze and added her own command, not with force, but with certainty. Run now. Hunt later.
The tiger snarled, a sound that shook water from the bars, then turned and sprang toward the eastern chute.
“Thank you,” Gaspar called after it, still wrestling with a lock. “Very mature of you!”
There were far more animals than had originally been reported. No doubt, some were meant to be food for the others. But they were all to be saved.
Luke ducked as something unidentifiable sailed over his head, an animal tossing a broken lock to the wall.
“I’m not saying that was useful,” he shouted, “but I respect the commitment.”
Two guards suddenly appeared, realizing what was happening in the darkness of the coliseum.
Trak saw them first. He drove his shoulder under the chain of the bear’s cage and pulled until something in the mechanism screamed. The gate sprang wide, and the bear stepped out slowly, every inch of it soaked, starved, and done being patient.
Trak did not command it. He only pointed toward the guards and then toward the river, offering the choice as clearly as he could. The bear huffed, considered murder, considered freedom, and chose both in a practical order.
It charged the archway, scattering the guards like dropped pins, then lumbered down the chute with rain steaming from its back.
Blake moved from cage to cage, her mind splitting into threads. She soothed the antelope without weakening their speed, steadied the wolves without dulling their instincts, and convinced a python that the phrase temporary allies did not include swallowing Luke.
Each animal was a separate storm, and she held them all with both hands inside her skull.
Irene did what Blake could not. She went into the cages before they opened, passing through bars and crouching beside the animals too broken to trust any living voice. A chained lioness snapped at her out of habit, teeth passing through silver light.
Irene did not flinch.
“I know,” she whispered. “I know they took everythin’. Take one thing back. Take the door.”
Gaspar finally got his lock open and celebrated for half a second before realizing he had released six crocodiles. They slid past him in a low, armored wave, all teeth and offended dignity.
“Wonderful,” he said, flattening himself against the wall. “More logs with opinions.”
Alvin, overhearing this, turned his head just enough to inform him that some logs had excellent hearing.
The eastern chute clogged where panic met hunger. A leopard had cornered a wounded gazelle against a broken column, both of them trembling, both too far gone to listen.
Hank and Oscar waddled in with the grave confidence of old generals and planted themselves between predator and prey. Oscar flicked his tongue at the leopard and sent one thought: If you must make bad decisions, make them after the river.
Blake reached the leopard a breath later, Irene gliding above her shoulder. Together they poured calm and urgency into the animal until its muscles stopped bunching for the kill.
The gazelle bolted first, slipping in the mud, then finding its legs. The leopard watched it go with murderous regret, sneezed rainwater from its nose, and followed.
Thunder cracked so close that the coliseum stones jumped. One of the half-constructed upper walls gave way, sending a sheet of clay, and carved blocks crashing into the ring.
Luke shoved Blake aside as rubble slammed where she had stood.
“I’m fine,” Blake coughed, though mud covered half her face and her knee screamed when she stood. Irene hovered close, bright with anger.
“You are not fine. You are upright, which is different.”
Blake almost laughed, then heard the remaining cages shriek in her mind and turned back toward them.
“Then help me be upright faster.”
The last row held the worst of it: animals meant for the finale, half-starved until their rage would entertain the crowd.
A jaguar paced in a circle too small for its body.
A rhinoceros slammed its horn against iron already bent from hours of effort.
Vultures clung to their perches like old judges, waiting for someone else to die first.
Blake and Irene joined their strength, living heat and ghost-light braided together, and the effect rolled through the last cages like dawn forced into a nightmare.
The jaguar stopped pacing. The rhinoceros lowered its head, not to charge Blake, but to accept the direction she showed it. Gaspar, Luke, and Trak broke the final chains while Alvin waited in the chute, muttering that nobody appreciated traffic control.
Then the arena emptied. Hooves, paws, claws, and bellies thundered through the eastern chute toward the river, guided by Blake’s fierce mind, Irene’s unbreakable voice, Alvin’s grim patience, and the Komodo dragons’ deeply irritating sense of order.
By the time the last vulture lifted into the storm, the coliseum behind them was only rain, broken iron, and the fading echo of a crowd that would never get its show.
Within moments, they were headed to the railcars to release the last of the animals. When they were clear of the coliseum, Luke sent the message.
“The ark is empty. Have fun boys.”
“What now?” asked Blake.
“Now, we get the animals out of the rail cars and see just how many want a ride to their true homes,” said Gaspar.
“Do you think they’ll eat one another?” frowned Blake.
“It’s animal nature, honey. They’re starving and some of those animals were meant to be dinner for them. We can’t stop that. We got them all out, that’s all we can do.”
Blake nodded and looked up to see the railroad tracks on front of them. The cars would have brought the animals directly toward the underlying doors to release the animals. It was all so sick but she felt the pride in her chest at having known she was helping to prevent it all.
“Let’s go,” said Trak. “The night is not over.”