White Tiger (Book 1 in the White Tiger Trilogy)

Chapter 33- The Visitor

"White Tiger"

2013 Copyright © All Rights Reserved.

Stryder Sweetman.

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Chapter 33

The darkness had become something I was familiar with. I glared at the calendar opposite me on the wall. My captor had fancied the idea of letting me see how long I had been here. He had placed it on the opposite wall, crossing out the days past. He put it over there because he knew that if I wanted to see it, I would have to strain my eyes, and if I did look, I would regret knowing how long I had been here.

2 weeks.

It didn't seem like long, but after hours and hours of agonising torture, bringing me to the brink of death, and then leaving, suddenly 2 weeks felt like years. The only thing keeping me going was knowing that someone was coming. Someone important. I couldn't remember who.

And then there were the visits. There was a boy here, a Rogue. I couldn't remember what the word meant, but it seemed important, so I held on to it. He was called Tristan, and he was 16. He had black hair with blue eyes, and tanned skin. He was neither tall nor thin. Neither buff nor skinny.

He had been making the imprisonment just a little more bearable. He had been one of my guards last week, and every day since then he had been sneaking in to chat. I was rarely able to form a proper sentence, but he still continued to visit, trying to take my mind off of the pain. It was a nice effort, and it did help, if only a little.

He would sit opposite me and tell me about himself, about his life, and about the news outside of this room. He told me of stories he had heard from the other shifters, story of a magnificent white bird, stained with crimson blood, wiping out camp after camp of Rogues with little help from other shifters.

They had named the creature 'Mort Blanche' which was French for 'White Death'. It had created large amounts of terror, though some said the beast had only been around for a few weeks, others said it was a lost spirit, coming for vengeance, a creature told of in tales thousands of years ago. I hoped that if Mort Blanche was real, that perhaps it would rescue me.

But I knew that the creature would end up a legend, it was probably just a tale told to keep my mind off of my latest session with him.

I had never learned the name of the brown-haired, green-eyed man I feared so much. Tristan told me that few in the camp actually knew. Tristan was a kind boy; he had lost his family in some sort of war. My brain was unable to retain the information in its vegetable-like state.

The man who tortured me enjoyed gloating, often speaking of his superiority, but he came in to the room, every couple of days, and would have a look of rage on his face, beating me until his anger had subsided. I hadn't understood his anger, and one day, in my hazy state, I had asked him. I immediately regretted letting the words escape my mouth, as he had gone into a fury, punishing me for asking.

I did, however, find out what was wrong.

He had revealed the reasons behind taking my blood, in a rage he couldn't control. He screamed of how he was taking my blood, copying it, giving it to the Rogues. He had been trying to harness my power to use it for himself. He was trying to copy the structure of my DNA to change his. But he hadn't been able to find anything special. He wasn't able to find anything in my genetic makeup. Thus the anger.

I had been fading out of the haze, coming to my awareness when he told me, so I was able to retain the knowledge. But since the serum was wearing off, I was also able to feel the shock his words inflicted, and the pain his swings caused.