A Shifter's Tale

Questions

~41~

I pushed into a sit and crawled to Jaelma, who was breathing steadily. He stirred as I gently shook his shoulder with hands that had been neglected to be retied and he groaned lowly.

“Jaelma?” I asked softly, gently slapping his cheek until his eyes snapped open and he tried to scurry backwards, only to hit the side of the cage. His eyes closed again momentarily as I guessed his head hurt before he opened them again and glanced about the cage, then out at the clearing where the men stood around the fire.

I choked on a giggle as he swore badly and pinned his gaze on me. “This not top of cliff!”

I grimaced. “I was stupid.”

“How does stupid make cliff to be cage?” he asked with a frown.

In as low a voice I could, I explained what had happened since I fell from the ledge, how I assumed to end up here and how he ended up here also. When I finished, he scowled at the far side of the cage, seemingly lost in thought.

“So…we are in cage because you like dogs?”

“Basically,” I replied with a humourless chuckle.

He nodded slowly. “Okay, when are we leave?”

“I’m yet to figure that out,” I admitted, trying to form something simple but effective in my head as I spoke.

He frowned slightly. “You like dogs? Where is dog?” I nodded towards the back of eleven remaining dogs, including Slivol, and Jaelma tipped his head back in confusion. “That is lot of dogs, how long I sleep? They big baby dogs?”

I covered a laugh with a cough and explained my theory of the dogs being linked to each of the men. I wasn’t sure how much of it he understood, but he sat and nodded along as I spoke, not interrupting. “So what are they?” he asked, nodding to the set of dogs tied to the tree, ones without masters. “Why split? Dogs there, dogs there…why?”

“Dogs that have masters and dogs that don’t,” I offered with a shrug.

His head snapped round and his silver eyes bore into mine, a look of alarm growing within them. “In the night I kill seven. Who do I kill?”

I grimaced; I’d guessed right. “Bad men.”

Relief crossed his face. He showed no remorse or mercy for people he believed to deserve to die, but he hated the prospect of killing innocents. I wasn’t sure whether to admire or fear him. “So do we stay stuck for long?”

“Unless we can find a way to get out…”

We waited out the day until it began to get dark. I was faced with a night locked in a cage with a killer, but as long as he was tied up and I stayed on the far side, he couldn’t reach me…I hoped.

I jerked out of a doze when the door to the cage was cut open and the feeder let himself in. He offered me a bowl of stew and some water, which I ate very little of. He turned away and tied the cage door loosely behind him, saying, “I’ll come back with some food for him,” he nodded at Jaelma, “but you’ll have to feed him.”

I had noticed that these humans all had common accents. Most humans had a middle-class or upper-class accent, with a few exceptions. I wondered if they spent a lot of time around supernaturals. I looked down at the bowl in my hands, and then my eyes shifted to the dogs tied to the tree. I hadn’t seen them be fed all day; if I fed them there was a possibility they could tie their allegiance to me…

The cage was stood on a slight pedestal, causing it to stand about half a foot off the ground. Acting on impulse, I twisted round and poured the bowl’s contents onto the floor, slightly beneath the cage.