Furious Flames (Elemental Book 3) (16 page)
Read Furious Flames (Elemental Book 3) Online
Authors: Rain Oxford
* * *
It was only a three hour drive to the small fishing
town Henry lived in and with the address, his house wasn’t difficult to find.
It was small and had the same moderate amount of water damage the rest of town
had. There was nothing particularly note-worthy on the outside.
The inside, however, was a different story. The lock
was broken, as was just about everything inside. Every bit of fabric, from his
clothes to his couch was shredded by a serrated weapon, every window and mirror
was smashed, and there was a large blood stain on the living room floor.
Darwin knelt beside it and sniffed it. He looked
sick. “It’s Henry’s.”
My instincts kicked in and I had the sudden and
peculiar desire for ice-cream. This wasn’t how my instincts normally worked,
but I went to the kitchen anyway.
“Is this really the right time for a snack?” Darwin
asked as I opened the freezer.
“If you’re hiding something from someone who has an
extremely acute sense of smell, where would you hide it?”
“Oh right, because of the ice.”
I pulled out a small, white box of frozen burger
patties and set them on the counter. The second I took my hand off of it, I
sensed it. I shut the freezer door and opened the box of patties. Instead of
meat, there was a sketchbook, a silver cross, and a fake I.D. with Henry’s face
on it.
The sketchbook and I.D. I could understand, but
crosses were not Henry’s thing. Just like in the jail cell, I found myself
pulling out my vision ring. “I have an idea. With the ring, I can induce
visions using objects that are personal to someone. I did it with a playing
card and Langril’s ball one time.” I flipped through the sketchbook as I made
my way to the couch, which was torn up. I sat down.
“What’s in it?”
“Pictures of a woman and sunset beaches,” I answered.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Okay, I don’t know if this will work or how
strong it’ll be, so try not to make any odd noises that could wake me up.” I
slipped the ring on and my vision instantly grew black.
However, instead of invading another person’s head, I
was forcefully expelled from Henry’s. For a moment, I had no senses whatsoever.
I opened my eyes, surprised to see Darwin.
“What happened?” he asked.
“It didn’t work.” I barely managed to get the words
out before I was thrown back into it. My vision was clear this time. I was
standing in a cage with a large tree, large flat rocks, a small stream, and an
artificial den made of plastic tubing. One wall of the cage was glass.
Outside the cage was a man, quickly joined by a
second man. They were both conniving, greedy bastards, but the first was worse.
I could feel their minds without trying. “Is that the infant?” the second man
asked.
He was talking about one of two jaguars inside the
enclosure. One of them was sprawled out on the ground beside the stream. Her
left shoulder was poorly bandaged, allowing blood to seep out. She panted, not
allowing herself to look at the two humans staring at her. She knew she would
die without treatment and she accepted it, as long as she could create a
diversion for her son to escape. Unfortunately for her, the tiny cub nestled
against her chest would never voluntarily abandon his mother.
The cub had no real thoughts yet, only the instinct
to fight for his food source. He was curious of these moving creatures, which
was pretty shocking to me because Darwin had said jaguar cubs were born blind.
“Is the infant sick? It isn’t moving much,” the
second man said.
The first man wore a tan uniform displaying the name
of the nature reserve. “The mother was malnourished and had to have help with
the delivery. The sedatives won’t wear off for another few minutes. The mother
actually recovered too quickly and attacked one of the handlers who was taking
the infant to the enclosure.”
“Is that normal for jaguars?”
“You really think that’s a jaguar? How many jaguars
do you know have fangs that long? Joe and Connie found the female last night
out beside the highway. She had been hit by a car. Joe said when he tried to
give her a sedative for transportation, he was struck by her wing.”
“Wing?!”
“Apparently. X-rays were inconclusive, but he swore
she had bat-like wings that vanished when he got her into the truck. We’re
going to put her with our other female jaguar.”
The mother didn’t understand the words, only that
they wanted to take her son from her.
* * *
My vision changed again to show a baby crying in a
cage that was no more than a dog crate. The cage was opened and the baby was
wrapped in a blue blanket. He didn’t stop crying. “They’re going to catch us,”
a man said, half growling. The baby cried harder and the woman held him to her
chest, trying to quiet him without smothering him.
Both the man and woman were athletically built with
dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and natural tans. The woman shushed the baby.
“If you don’t stop crying, they’ll find us.”
“Leave him,” the man said when the baby didn’t
immediately stop.
“Absolutely not. He’s ours now.”
* * *
The scene jumped ahead about seven years. Henry was
with his mother in the crowded streets of London in the mid-1990s. He was
frustrated, tired, and confused. He never understood why he disliked being
around people. A fit of defiance made him stop in the middle of the street.
“Why did we have to leave home?”
His mother stopped, instantly fed-up with his
disobedience. She put on her false smile and took his hand. “The bad men found
us, honey. We’ll be able to go home soon, though.”
Henry knew the bad men were the police. He also knew
it was his parents that were bad, but he didn’t know what to do about it. “Why
do they always find us?”
“Because you’re not normal.”
He gave in and followed her. They often told him he
was a freak, but he didn’t understand why. His parents were jaguars too, so he
didn’t know what was so wrong with him. Having let his hand go, Luana didn’t
notice that her son had stopped again. This time, however, self-doubt warred
with the sense of confinement. Luana was out of sight before he took off for
the more deserted streets.
Henry knew better than to shift; people tried to kill
him when he took his beast form. He ran all day. While he wasn’t the most
coordinated person in his two-legged form, years of ridicule and punishments
just for being him pushed him to run further.
After several days, hunger called for a new strategy.
Fortunately, he picked up begging well and was just young enough to pull it
off. He targeted young women who gave off mothering vibes. Since his own mother
was so uncaring, Henry seemed to be able to detect the mothering instinct in
others and naturally gravitated towards them. One thing he swore off the moment
Luana Lycosa was out of sight was stealing.
And he found he didn’t have to. Many women on the
streets were happy to spend a few minutes mothering him. For them, it was no
more a commitment than petting a lost puppy and offering him a treat. For
Henry, it was life or death, because he was nothing if not stubborn. He wasn’t
the only one on the streets and the others all gladly resorted to stealing.
Henry decided he would starve to death before he followed in his parents’
footsteps.
It wasn’t as easy as he’d hoped. Within two weeks,
the figurative well of generous women had run dry. He moved from street to
street, relying on his feline nature to keep him out of danger. Several times,
he resorted to trash and leftovers, but never outright stealing. He would die proud
of himself, at least.
Then one morning, everything changed. Snow blanketed
all of London, which meant there were few people enjoying street food and those
who did eat outside were not of the charitable nature. He was walking, just
trying to keep warm. His clothes had been top notch, for his parents told him
appearance was critical in keeping the bad guys away. “If you look like a bum,
people treat you like one.” For this reason, he tried to wash his clothes in
rainwater, rather unsuccessfully, and managed to be more embarrassed about the
poor state of his attire than his begging.
A man stopped suddenly in front of him, blocking his
path and startling him out of his daydreaming. He froze, thankful he hadn’t
bumped into the man. “Sorry,” he said quickly, not looking up at the man’s
face. His father was not as big as this man, but he could still break bones
with a simple smack, so it stood to reason that the bigger stranger could break
him just with a glare.
“Are you hungry, son?” the man said, startling Henry
again.
Henry managed to drag his eyes up to the huge man’s
face. Obviously the man was confused; Henry wasn’t his son. Since he could
smell lies, telling them was unnatural and physically uncomfortable for him, so
he just shook his head and turned away.
The man grabbed his arm, not tightly enough to hurt,
but firmly enough that Henry was forced to stop. He tensed up, prepared for a
blow. His father always started low unless he fought back. If Henry resisted,
Matheus went for his head and throat. He couldn’t have been more shocked when
he felt the stranger’s heavily muscled arms close around him gently. “You’re
freezing.” The stranger’s tone was gentle, as if he was talking to a scared
puppy instead of a jaguar shifter who could take off his arm. “What’s your
name?”
Henry just shook his head, causing the man to laugh.
The man thought Henry was just being stubborn, but fear had closed the child’s
throat.
“I’m Scott Morgan.” He picked Henry up.
Henry balled up as best as he could, happy to be warm
for the moment even as he expected to be brutally beaten and murdered after he
was set down.
But he wasn’t beaten. Scott brought him into a warm
apartment, set him down at the dining room table, and placed a plate in front
of him with Christmas dinner. Scott’s wife was not happy. She glared at Henry
until he couldn’t even reach for the food he was starving for.
“You are not eating at this table like that.”
Before Henry could bolt, Scott picked him back up,
carried him away from the food, and made him a bath. He set Henry in the water
and frowned. “Are you old enough to wash yourself?”
“I’m ten,” Henry lied.
Scott nodded to himself. “I will lay some clothes out
for you on the bed. Once you’re clean, get dressed and come eat.”
Left alone, Henry wasted no time in scrubbing the
last two weeks off of himself and enjoying the soap while he had the chance.
Hunger and the cooling water drove him out and he found a bedroom right across from
the bathroom. It was a simple bedroom with a computer, a brown dresser, and a
full-sized bed. The posters on the walls of cars were the only sign of personal
effects. On the bed, Henry found a white t-shirt and jeans, which he dressed in
quickly before heading back to the dining room.
Sitting at the table was Scott, his wife, and a
teenaged girl.
Scott was a big man, but he wasn’t brutish in
appearance; he was clean-shaven with styled hair and simple, clean clothes. His
wife was a very beautiful woman with shoulder-length, curly blond hair and
piercing blue eyes, and she was just starting to develop lines around her eyes
and mouth. She wore a long, dark blue dress.
Their daughter was about sixteen with long, straight
blond hair and a blue dress to match her mother’s. Henry wondered how the
family had clothing that him since he could smell that there wasn’t another
child in the house.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” Scott’s wife asked.
The strictness in her voice made Henry flinch, since he associated it with
anger. When he glanced at the door, she sighed. “Do you want to be out there,
starving and cold, or enjoying good food and good company in here?”
Henry sat. He learned that the family had a teenaged son
who just moved to America on an exchange program. Thus, they had an extra room.
Henry stayed the night and then Scott’s wife, Debra, took him shopping for
clothes the next day. He was floored when Debra paid with cash; she didn’t
haggle, slip anything in her purse, or make Henry put something on under his
clothes. These people were not like his parents.
He told them his first name, but when they asked for
his last name, he refused to tell them. “The bad guys will find me.” In this
case, the bad guys were his parents.
Days turned into weeks and Henry found himself
enjoying this life. Scott was an architect who took Henry to the office
sometimes. Henry found the sketches fascinating and watched everything the big
man did with nothing short of admiration. Scott got him a drawing pad and some
colored pencils. Even at seven, without having ever gone to school, Henry was
very good at learning from others. Sitting on the floor in Scott’s office, he
drew for the first time. He drew the scene in which Scott found him, the family
as he first saw them together, and every moment that was happy to him.
He drew the scene in which he lost sight of his
mother. After that, he started on the sad moments as well. In a few hours, he
told the story of his life in a way he could never say out loud.
Scott’s daughter, Sandra, teased him about his
American accent. Although his natural instinct was to stop talking altogether,
Scott pushed him to talk more, especially in vocalizing what he wanted.
Therefore, Henry picked up a British accent. Since this pleased Sandra, she and
her friends took him to the park just for fun. He was playing on the bars when
he heard Sandra’s friends berating her. Apparently, they only talked to her
because they liked her older brother. One of the three girls started talking
about Sandra’s brother in a very vulgar and inappropriate way and wouldn’t stop
no matter what Sandra said. She didn’t see Henry sneaking up behind her. He bit
her on the arm, causing her to scream.
Sandra took Henry’s hand and told the girl she got
what was coming to her. This was the moment she really stopped treating him
like a new puppy and started treating him like a younger brother.
For months, everything worked out flawlessly. Then
Debra tried to enroll him in school. With no citizenship, last name, or birth
record, Henry’s new life came crashing down overnight. Debra and Scott fought
over what to do, which Henry could hear from his room.
Scott went to his room, sat on his bed, and asked
Henry to be honest with him. Knowing it would get him kicked out or given back
to his parents, he told Scott everything, including that his parents were
thieves. He admitted that he was forced to steal, but promised that he never
stole from Scott’s family.
After a while of sitting there in silence, Scott
ruffled his hair and stood. “Sometimes you got to do what you got to do to
survive.” He walked out, leaving Henry confused. Henry was sure Scott was going
to kick him out.
He never found out what Scott would have done. Since
he had cried himself to sleep, his ears and nose were clogged. He never heard
or scented the jaguars breaking in. He slept deeply, only waking for a moment
from the sharp sting in his arm.
* * *
Henry woke the next morning in the living room,
covered in his foster family’s blood. His pajamas were torn to shreds. Luana
and Matheus Lycosa sat on the couch, each without a speck of blood on them.
They drank coffee and chatted about the new home they found as Henry tried to
pull himself out from under the murky fog that clouded his mind. “What
happened?” Henry asked, wiping blood from his mouth. The coppery taste made him
gag, but the ever-present consciousness of the jaguar inside him refused to
vomit.