CYRUS
“Almost the same way they got you.” I told him, “I just left a bar and suddenly, there were a lot of men caging me in. Tried to fight, but they shot at me until I became weakened. There was also this has they threw at me. Don’t know what it was though.”
“I didn’t see the men attacking me, but I sure as hell remember them throwing a very bad-smelling gas at me.”
So the same gas had been used on him too.
“There’s definitely something about it, all right. I think it’s meant to weaken us.”
“Maybe.” He said thoughtfully, “Or maybe it’s meant to make us sleep off.”
That could also be true too. It could have been the bullets that caused me to pass out. The same way it could have been the bullets that weakened me. Either way, that gas was just as deadly as the weapons the mortals carried.
We studied each other silently. A part of me still couldn’t believe that he was standing in front of me. After all these years of thinking that he was dead, I was now seeing him again. This was definitely going to take some time of getting used to.
From the way he was staring at me, I could tell that he couldn’t believe he was seeing me either. My God. If not for the barrier the bars caused, I would have given him a sound hug and a pat on the back.
“What did you do?” He asked me all of a sudden.
“Huh?”
“What did you do? Why did they take you?”
“Hell if I know. They’re humans, Rhys. We don’t have any business with them. What could we possibly have done?”
He shook his head, changing his stance to lean his weight on his right leg while still resting on the bar. “For two years, I’ve thought about it. Thought about what we could have done to get on their bad side and I keep coming up short.” He shook his head again. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
He seemed to be getting weaker. He was trying to be discreet about it when he had casually changed his stance, but I could tell. He was so thin, it hurt to look at him. He didn’t have the strength he used to and that was obvious.
Who even knew whether talking for such a long time was having a drastic effect on him?
According to what he had said, he was being tortured. It would me smart to conserve all the energy one could at a time like this. Burning energy unnecessarily wasn’t a smart idea.
Just as casually as he had changed his stance, I slid down to sit on the ground right next to him. He got the hint and sat down next to me. The iron dug into my back in different places, and the pain of the iron digging into my back and the bullets burning my chest was almost too much for me to take.
When the pain got too intense and I checked to see why, I saw that the injuries were starting to bleed.
“They really did a number on you, huh?”
I looked up and saw Rhys staring at my chest with something akin to pity in his eyes. If there was anyone here that deserves pitying, it was him.
The man had been undergoing torture for fucks sake, while no one knew of his location because we all thought he was dead.
“Judging by all you’ve said, I’m guessing this is only the tip of the iceberg for me.”
He laughed out loud. A full belly laugh that reminded me of the old days when we used to hang out and have fun with our good old ribbings. And when I turned to him, he looked like the man he used to be.
Happy, brave, bold, and full of life.
“Do you want to talk about what happened that night?”
It was a very sensitive topic, but I felt like we had to talk about it. I had always wondered who the traitor was. The insider that had leaked all our information to the opposing team. Till date, no one knew who the person was. We all just assumed that it had to be an insider because no one else knew about that information.
“I mean, why not?” He shrugged, “I’ve not had anyone to talk to for years other than these asshole humans and it’s not even fun teasing them anymore.” Then he added, “Not with them torturing me anyway. If that’s their way of letting me know that they enjoy my teasings, then they’re seriously fucked upstairs.”
“Rhys?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re digressing.”
He laughed. “True. Okay, yeah so… While everybody was fighting, the whole camp going down in flames, I found one of our men escaping.”
I perked up, sitting at alert. I was finally going to know all what had happened that night. The betrayal that had prompted me to lose my best friend.
“He wasn’t escaping alone, he had a woman on his arms who he was trying to protect.” He glanced at me meaningfully. “I ordered them to stop, of course. At first he lied, said he wasn’t running that he was just trying to get his wife to safety. But get this, they both had satchels containing their clothes and the man damn sure wasn’t dressed for war.”
We heard a clang from the distance, like a piece of metal had landed on the ground. We both froze and he stopped talking. When no sound came again, Rhys continued talking.
“I immediately knew that there was something fishy, and with everyone already suspecting that information was leaked, I started to question him. He attempted to dodge all my questions and when he still wouldn’t talk, I threatened to kill his wife. That got him talking pretty fast and I was too focused on what he was telling me, that I didn’t know that his wife was retrieving a blade from her shorts. She stabbed me with it, but before they could run away, I ran my sword through one of them.” He shrugged, “I still don’t know who I killed or injured-the man or the woman. The next thing I saw when I woke up, is this place.”
I tried to make sense of everything he just told me.
“So the man is the traitor?”
He nodded. “Gave everything we talked about in secret to the woman. Get this, she wasn’t a lykae. She didn’t have horns, but I think she was a demon. What I’m trying to say is, she was the one that leaked everything to our opponents.”
Fuck.
We had warred with demons that day. To think that everything that happened that night could have been avoided, had it not been a foolish lykae that thought with his dick, not his brain.
“Fuck.” I breathed.
“My reaction.” He smiled at me fondly, “I could hardly blame him. The woman was hot as hell. Looked too young to be his wife also.”
“I wish everything happened differently.” I found myself saying.
Since when did I turn into a pussy? For fucks sake, who was this new version of me, and how the fuck could I kick him back to whatever deep, dark place he had come from?
“Well, we reuinited anyway.” He grinned, trying to lighten the mood. “Is there any other greater reuinion than this?”
The sound of a door opening was loud and clear. Unmistakable. From the sound of it, there were more than two footsteps. People were coming.
“Brace yourself, brother.” Rhys sighed, “Someone’s about to be tortured. And since you’re new, they’re going to think that you have better chances of co-operating.” He held my eyes when he said, “It’s your torture session.”
The footsteps sounded closer and after a while, they were striding in our direction. The three men standing in front all had on head to toe overalls and the two standing behind on either sides of them, had on uniforms. They also had guns in their hands.
Security.
I stood up from the ground,-my chest muscles screamed in protest-backing away from them slowly. Rhys was still on the floor, but he was watching them warily.
“The door is about to be opened, and you’ll be led out for question.” One of the men in overalls said, his face obscured by a black mask. “You are advised to co-operate to make things easier for the both of us. However, if you try to fight us, you will regret it severely.”
Well, with a threat like that thrown at a man like me, what was I expected to say?
There was movement next to me, and when I turned, Rhys was shaking his head no vehemently. He was trying to convince me to not fight the guys and since he knew better, I was going to go with what he said.
He was trying to be discreet about it, probably not to let the men know that we knew each other. They might decide to separate us.
With my choice already made for me, I nodded for the men to open the gate. I had just inadvertently told them that I wasn’t going to fight. That I was going to co-operate. I hated that I was doing it, following their rules.
But the consequences of not obeying them, was dire. And I didn’t want to risk their wrath.