The Keeper of Wolves

Chapter 12

The scene this time was much cleaner than the one previously, Kosazana noted as she approached. But it wasn't saying much. Broken glass sprayed the street and the interior of the van, which was littered with bodies in black armor and masks. They lay, twisted and broken but mercifully bloodless, on the floor and seats of the van and one of them hanging out the back onto the road a bit. One had been thrown ten feet clear into a brick wall, where they lay, crumpled and lifeless, at the base of it. Only one body remained upright: the blonde man chained to the wall of the van.

The interior of the vehicle was entirely windowless, and had to be lightless as a result. The walls were doubled over with metal sheeting and insulation, presumably to prevent both noise and damage. Along the walls, several hooks had been set at varying intervals, to allow the attachment of multiple restraints, possibly allowing for multiple prisoners to be transported at once. In the center of one of these arrays was their quarry, a man with towering, twisted horns and enormous speckled brown wings tipped with thick, curved claws. His wings had been tightly bound folded in with various lengths of chain; both his wrists and ankles were shackled, and secured to the vehicle. Around his neck, a plain metallic collar glinted dully in the light. His eyes had been covered by a blindfold. Unable to see anything, he shrank from and sometimes violently reacted to any attempt to get near him. Curiously, he offered no reaction to Kosazana's approach, or the addition of her voice to the several already echoing through the street. They had bought themselves a few minutes, but not much time at all. They needed to get the man out and at least try to cover up what had happened here, if not disguise it as something else entirely. Mortals would soon begin to stir, and ask uncomfortable questions.

"Why won't he let anyone near him?" Kosazana asked, peering around the opened back doors of the van to glance at the single surviving passenger.

"All he knows is that the van crashed, and then there was a lot of violent movement on the inside," Voldsa explained. Solvecde and Soren, the prime orchestrators of the devastation, had stepped aside, the better to let Solvecde's blood cool. "And I'm guessing, based on how he looks...he's used to that being redirected at him."

Voldsa had a point. At closer look, Kosazana could see many bruises on the man's quivering limbs, in various stages of healing. His hair, which hung past his shoulders in white-blonde locks, was matted and disheveled. Flecks of blood littered his torso and white pants, apparently coming from his nose and mouth. His feet were bare, and the smears of blood on the floor and seats indicated that he had likely hurt himself fighting his captors and his restraints before he had been forced into submission.

"Well, he's not stupid, I'm sure he can hear us and he knows that we mean him no harm?" Kosazana attempted to confirm, looking around each of the faces clustered around the back of the van. Their sudden discomfort spiked her concern; what was she missing? "He...he can hear us, right? We can just talk to him?"

After another exchange of glances, much shifting of weight and eyes, it was Daria who spoke up, in a voice gently Latin-accented: "Kosa...he is a harpy."

Kosazana furiously wracked her brain for a correlation, and came up empty. Patience waning, hating to leave the other immortal chained and anxious for any longer than necessary, she stated, "I fail to see the connection?"

"Kosa, harpies are all deaf."

Kosazana swiveled to Tyr, shock exploding across her face. Harpies were not native to rainforest climates like hers: she had never met one. "But...why-?"

"Their voices," Tyr elaborated. "They communicate with each other with a series of clicks with their tongues, but anything else uses their power. Their vocal chords are not capable of normal speech. Make no mistake, they are as intelligent as you and I. But they must communicate either with their own language, or with their thoughts, which most do. They can broadcast them or keep them closed off at will. I'm guessing he's not letting anyone in right now, out of fear it's not friendly."