“He does and there is. He and I are going to find the other women and see if we can help them.” Steele nodded. “Anyway. One day he came in and pointed to me and two other women. The cell door was open then and I thought I could rush him, escape, and come back for the rest. But before I could get up enough nerve to do it, five big fucking panthers came into the cell with us. They tore into us like they’d been starved and we were going to be a tasty snack.”
Steele wanted to find this guy himself and tear into him. To think of the suffering that these women had gone through, how much Kari had suffered. He stood up to pace again, and this time she didn’t say anything.
“One of the women died right away. They didn’t even try to save her. One of the others, a big man we called Thump, came in after it was over and pulled her out by her hair. The blood she’d left behind stained the floor. I think it was a nasty reminder that if we died, no one gave a fuck.” Steele honestly didn’t want to hear any more but knew that he needed to. “For five days this went on. One by one the women died, leaving only me and one that was so close to her death that I wasn’t surprised when the next morning she was gone, dead. That afternoon, he brought in two more women to stay with me.”
“How long?” She didn’t answer him, and he stopped walking to turn and look at her. “How long were you held captive?”
“I honestly don’t know. Weeks, I think. The two women with me at the end said that they’d been there for a while. They had already gone through the shift, they’d told me, and they thought that I would too. I fought it as much as I could. But then one day, when he came back to us, the panther took me. I don’t remember much after that, but when I woke, the others were there still and my clothes were gone.” Kari laughed bitterly. “I guess I might have scared him a little. They said that the few days I’d been out, no one had come back. It was nearly a week later when the police showed up. By then…by then it was too late. We were panthers and the rest of the women—I never knew how many—were all taken away by someone.”
“Did they take you to a panther? Someone that could have helped you?” She shook her head. “Then how the hell did they expect you to live? With no one to show you…Christ, it’s no wonder you have trouble controlling your animal. Someone should have been on hand to train you guys on this.”
“I don’t think they knew what had happened to us. I doubt that anyone thought about what we might have been changed into. We were healthy looking for the most part…starved, but healthy. We can heal when we shift.” She stood up and stretched. “Steele, do you know the man that is buried in your family cemetery? William Pike?”
He started to tell her what he’d found out, but the guard that had set them in this room came to them. “She’s about ready for you. Don’t want to see you, but she said she’s got something to say. If I were you, what I’d do is let her spew whatever it is she has to say and move on with your lives.”
“You don’t believe her either.” It wasn’t a question, but the man shook his head anyway. “Neither do I. Does she know who is coming to see her?”
“Her spawn, she said. I told her it was her son and she nodded and said spawn.” The man looked at him and nodded. “You can handle her. I’ve been working here a long while and you get to see all kinds come and go that are like her. You’ve the look of a man who can take her crap and dish it out too. Rules though. Don’t give her anything at all. Not a kiss, not a hug, or even a sheet of paper. She’ll use it to hurt you. This one goes right along with it, no touching. Not even to brush your fingers over hers. She’s chained to the table just fine, but she’s not one to settle when she’s supposed to. And whatever you do, don’t tell her that she’s going to get out. She’ll beg you to, beg you to let her go, that nothing was her fault, but to be honest with you, sir, no one would be safe with that woman out there. And neither would you. I have no right to tell you this, but your momma, she’s been talking to the dead.”
Steele felt his body tense up, and he might have stood outside the door where they’d been led had it not been for Kari. Her gentle push had him moving in, but his mind was still working on his mother talking to the dead. He wondered just who the dead might be. Steele hoped it was the women she’d helped kill, that she’d come back to haunt her. But for some reason he had an idea that it was his sister.
“Well, look who it is.” Steele looked at the woman at the table. There had to be some mistake. This was not the woman he’d seen every day for the first seventeen years of his life. This woman was old, used up looking, and her face looked…well, it looked like an old apple that had been in the sun too long. “Are you going to sit down or are you just going to stand there gawking at me like some sort of chimp in a cage?”