Wild Tiger Chase - Chapter 43: Chapter 43

— Satina —
She closed and opened her eyes, trying to get used to the brightness and the blurred everything around her. Something covered her lips and nose, as warm and delicate as the silk she felt against the rest of her body. The face of a man took shape in front of her, bit by bit. He kept a finger against his lips as if asking for silence... and that was enough to jolt her awake.
"Hey, shh, it's okay," he said. "Keep it down, I'm just—"
Satina widened her eyes. Her training kicked in, and she grabbed the man's wrist, twisting it down and aside. She jumped from the bed, pushed the expensive comforter away, and twisted him around to knee the backside of the man's leg. He fell on his knees, and she twisted his arm further, keeping it tight against his back.
"Don't you know it's rude to get near a lady when she's sleeping?" She twisted his arm even more until a painful wince escaped his lips. "You fucking creep. I should tear your arm off," she growled.
"I'm sorry," he said under his breath.
Then he chuckled, and the amusement in his voice made Satina tighten her grip; any tighter than this, and she might break his wrist, so she had to be careful. The man's face was getting redder; his hand was getting darker.
"Okay, okay!" he said. "I can explain, just—shit! Please. I-I need your help. You don't know where you are, do you?"
Satina looked around and a deep crease formed between her eyebrows. Until a moment ago, she, her family, and friends were all ready to escape Toni and Jackal. Now, she was in a windowless room; there was a king-size bed taking up almost half of the space inside, vases with flowers, a tray propped on a small dresser, a golden-frame mirror to her left, and the softest, fluffiest rug under her feet. Wait, was that a bowl of shrimp paella on the tray?
Oh, there was also a man on his knees before her, kept in place and hurting by her best and most brutal arm lock yet. Satina looked down; her wrist gadget had disappeared—and with it her chances of hacking her way out of this place—but she was still wearing the same clothes as before, which was a good sign. Satina twisted her lips and rubbed her thighs together. Yep, her hidden knife was still there, safe and sound in its concealed sheath.
All right, time to get some answers.
"Let's start slowly." Satina softened her grip enough to let new blood pump onto the man's hand. Then, she twisted it again, making him wince. "I don't care who you are, just tell me where are my friends. What do you want from us?"
Satina expected a lot of reactions from him, but not a bark of laughter. She blinked, and in that moment of surprise, the man managed to free his left arm and swing it backward, aiming his elbow on her face. She dodged the blow but had to let him go. With his arms free, the man jumped to his feet and reeled backward, putting distance between them.
His movement was so quick and so desperate, he lost his footing and bashed hard against the wall, knocking down a standing lamp beside the dresser. Satina furrowed her brows. In a swift motion, she slipped a hand under the skirt of her dress and pulled her knife, readying herself for a fight.
"I'll ask again," she said. "What do you want from us?"
The man winced and groaned in pain. With certain difficulty, he straightened his back and massaged his arm. Satina used this moment to study him better. Curly raven hair, brown skin, beautiful face; there was nothing special about him or his body, except for the slight curve in his right shin—a badly healed broken leg, Satina was sure of it.
"You and your cousin are really one and the same, huh," the man said. He narrowed his eyes and placed his hands on his waist. One of them was still darker and redder after Satina's attack. "Although... to be fair, he didn't give me this much trouble when he woke up. And he had a tigress with him."
A... tigress? Satina's eyes widened; her lips trembled. "What the stinky fuck did you do to my cousin? Where is he? I swear, if you as much as touched a hair in his head, I'll—!"
"Oi, oi, chill. Keep it down, we don't want to attract any more unwanted attention, do we?" The man cleared his throat. He took in a deep breath. "We have to consider this noise must have attracted some already." He pointed at the knocked lamp on the floor. "Plus, I'll need to be quick or people will start questioning my reasons. It won't do to have the leader of the Barbarians bringing food to a prisoner and staying for a visit, would it?"
The leader of the Barbarians? Satina had heard enough from Jackal during their flight to OC to know the kind of mess Léon was in, but she never thought she would meet Caetano Coelho, a.k.a Count Cae, in person. And after looking at him in flesh and bone, the dossiers she had read didn't make any sense. They all described Count Cae as a quick-witted monster with a scary business sense, a grudge towards the government and big companies, and a deep thirst for money.
Still, the man in front of her looked nothing but normal. The innocent civilian kind of normal.
Man, Iara would love to hear about this. Satina's next report would be lots of fun to deliver.
She raised her knife and opened her lips for her next question, but she wasn't as focused as before. The man stepped forward, and it was almost as if he had disappeared. His hand closed around Satina's wrist, and his movement was so precise and so quick, she almost didn't feel anything when he twisted it.
The knife slipped from her fingers, and the man caught it with ease.
"Usually, I'd let you keep it so you'd feel safe, but neither of us has the time." He narrowed his eyes, tossing the blade up and catching it again. "If you're like your cousin, you want answers first and a proposal later, so let me take care of that." He raised his chin. "Léon is alive, as are your other friends. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure for how long, but I know Jackal wants their help."
Well, shit.
Satina stared at him. She had close to zero reasons to trust his words, but if this was an opportunity to gather information and help Léon, this wasn't the time to hold back.
Before she lost conscience, back in the ruins of Aunt Kali's house, the situation was already fucked up. Rob was almost knocked out, Pipo was terrified, Auntie had never looked so anguished, Rob's sister was spent, and Phillip looked barely alive. And Léon... hell. Léon, her darling cousin, the one person she considered a brother, seemed one breath away from broken.
Satina knew him better than anyone else on this damned planet, and she had never seen him like that. It wasn't his appearance per se, but something deep within. Something in his hoarse voice or in the slower way he moved, with legs and arms and a heart so heavy, he seemed to carry the entire world at his back.
She had met some desperate people in prison; people so sad and scared, so remorseful and hopeless, that they grew ready to do anything to find a way out. Satina saw it happen once or twice.
The exact moment a person's eyes changed from human to monster was always scary as fuck.
"Where are they?" she asked. "And what kind of help does Jackal need?" Maybe I can find a way to stop her.
The man only looked at her for a moment. His fingers tightened and loosened around the knife's handle as if he was deciding what to do with it. While Satina thought about her cousin, his smart dark eyes never left hers, and the intensity of that stare almost made her think he had read her mind.
"I don't know for sure what she wants, but I know your people are locked in a place that isn't real," he finally said; his next words came like a warning. "I never met anyone so quick to take advantage of new information as Jackal. I told her about Caidara's pocket dimension, and she immediately started to dig around it. She found a way to use the memory and the cosmic trace to create something similar, I suppose, and now things are what they are," he completed in a somber tone. "Do you know what I'm talking about?"
"A pocket dimension?" Didn't Léon have an undimension or something like that? Was that something all cosmic trace wielders had? She racked her brain for info and merged the scraps and bits she found from the conversations in the airNAV. She didn't have time to think about it. Right here. Right now. That's what matters. Her voice came low and dangerous when she said, "Is it the place where my friends were before you found them? Didn't you take them by force?"
The man's eyebrows shot up. "Well... yeah, I'm... sorry about that too." The boyish way he chuckled and scratched the back of his neck seemed out of place in him. "I hope you won't hold any grudges."
"Hold any—?" Satina made a show of widening her eyes and barking out an ironic laugh. "Okay, creep, enough chit-chat, or I might just punch your face into oblivion. You're here because you want something, and whatever it is, I want something back. Where are we and where are my friends?"
His eyebrows twitched as if he tried hard to keep a neutral expression. "Why don't you call me by my name? I know you already recognized me." He sighed and tossed her blade aside. It fell on the rug without a sound. "We're in Cidade Santa, in an old manor that should be abandoned. I always heard it was haunted, so I never tried to invade it."
"Are you afraid of ghosts, Mr. Coelho?" Satina retrieved her knife and slipped it back to its concealed sheath on her thigh. Cae hadn't tried to hurt her, but it's never wise to trust people too fast—mainly people like him.
"So you know my surname, huh." He scoffed. "You must be working for Iara, then. That river piranha has more webs than any other black widow I've seen." Cae shook his head and sighed. He took the standing lamp and put it back in its place. "Answering your question, no. Not even I would steal from spirits."
Satina couldn't hold back an impressed little chortle. "So it's okay to kidnap children from their mothers, as you did to my little cousin?" She scoffed. "You seem to draw the line in a weird place, man."
He narrowed his eyes and for the first time, his voice wavered to something other than controlled. "You don't know shit about what happened, and we don't have the time to talk about it."
"Well, since you're deciding, please tell me what we have time to talk about!" Her hand twitched to hold her knife, but Satina stopped herself. "While at it, tell me why the fuck you're here, you bastard." She needed to keep a clear head, dammit. Control yourself, woman!
"Because, like Jackal, I need you too!" His expression hardened, thick eyebrows knitting together. "And I want to make sure you'll listen to me before Jackal comes back. Cause by the looks of it"—He swept the room with his gaze, taking in the expensive decoration—"Jackal is taken by you, and she will stop at nothing to have your cooperation."
"My cooperation with what?"
Cae's voice was somber when he said, "That's what I was hoping you could tell me, Miss Hamman. I'm out of options here; all I know is that you're the only one who was separated from the others, so you must be important. Here, I'll show you." He stopped a moment, then added with a smile, "That's what we have time for, after all."
Count Cae fished for a card in his pocket and felt the entrance door until his fingers found a thin slot half-hidden among the veins in the wood. He inserted the card in it and took it out again before the door whirred to the side.
Satina flinched back and stared as Cae left the room and beckoned her to follow.
"C'mon. We don't have much time."
That was a trap. That must be a trap. She looked around the windowless room and her mind's eye replayed the way that Cae had opened the door. Without the right equipment, she'd never leave that place.
Maybe...
She nodded. Satina would follow the Count, discover whatever she could, and, at the first opportunity, escape. She could make a few calls. She could help Léon! Right now, she was probably the only one left who could do it.
Satina stepped out of the room and paused.
All around her, the corridor was cold and dark, filled with a scent of rotting wood, dust, chemicals, and neglect. From what she could see, this place looked like a weird mix of architectural styles and eras, with half-broken, baroque plasters, aged gothic woodwork, and the same feel that old bandeirista houses had. The mold-covered cement in the walls was dirty, cracked, and missing large pieces that let the rusted metallic structure show; the Arabian rug on the floor was frayed, and every old portrait on the walls had their mouths, eyes, or ears slashed open to show the wall behind the canvas.
"What the fuck," she mumbled.
In the wall revealed by the cuts, she read the words money, power, deceit, mistrust, cowardice, and ego written in red. The corridor went on, and so did the slashed portraits.
This was the work of someone with a lot of resentment in their heart.
Satina looked back to the fancy room she was in and sighed. Maybe Cae was right; maybe Jackal was intent on having her on board. Yet another reason to run the fuck away from here as soon as she found Léon and the others.
Something cold snapped around her wrist. Her eyes widened.
"I know you're good with your commanding words and your psionic powers, so this is just a precaution," Cae said. "I like to be the one in charge." He winked and took a button-sized, flashing device from his pocket, only to toss it back into the room. When he closed the door, it all but disappeared. "If we're not back in your room in one hour, that thing in there will alert security, and your bracelet will broadcast your position to anything in a four-hundred-kilometer radius. I don't know how to stop it, and you probably won't have enough time if you try, so it's useless to... dominate me." The word made him smirk, and something seemed to cross his thoughts, but Cae pushed it aside with a wave of his hands. "Let's go; the clock is ticking."
She blinked the shock away. If Count Cae knew about her powers and found a way to counteract them, even if just for the time being, he was more cautious than Satina thought. He was more prepared for this than she was.
So maybe, just maybe he would be a good company in this hell of a situation.