Xavier came in through the front of the barn. He looked terrible. Blood flowed from his forehead and ran down his face.
“Get me out of this cage,” I said very quietly.
“Oh,” Xavier frowned. “Let me tend to the girl first.”
“Now, Xavier.”
“I don’t think you can kill him, he’s in custody.” Xavier began untying the little girl and identifying himself. She cried as her arms fell to her sides. Her pain was second to her terror at the moment. It would change when she discovered she was safe.
I had bound the jaguar with zip cuffs and the woman in the cage with me wasn’t going anywhere. I stood very close to the bars. Gabriel brought in August. John brought in Gertrude.
“Let me out,” I told Gabriel. Gabriel looked at me, then at the woman on the floor, then back at me.
“I can’t,” Gabriel told me. “Not until both suspects are secured.” This really meant protected.
“Let me out,” I repeated.
“Go out the back,” John said. I had forgotten about it. Gabriel looked like he had just choked on a bone. He made a gagging noise.
Once outside, I didn’t walk to the front of the barn, I ran. August consumed my thoughts. I wasn’t just feeling the calm, I was filled with rage. More than I had ever experienced before. The door swung open hard, slamming against the outside wall of the barn. John and the little girl rushed past me, away from me. Gertrude and August weren’t so lucky. Gabriel had a firm grasp on August and was standing in front of him. Xavier had backed my great aunt up, almost touching the bars. For a moment, I wished I had released the woman in the cage.
“Get away from him, Gabriel,” I growled.
“I can’t let you kill him in custody, Ace,” Gabriel told me.
“That woman in there is feral, Gabriel. Feral. She’s been a prisoner in this barn since she was three years old. She can’t speak. She doesn’t walk upright. She’s battled jaguars all her life to stay alive and god only knows what this son of a bitch has done to her. Just walk away, Gabriel, just walk away. We’ll tell everyone that I went into the barn and found myself alone with the two suspects and the kidnap victims, no one will ever know.”
“How do you know she was three?” Xavier asked.
“Because that woman is Vera Callow,” I spat at him. “August has been keeping her as a pet since she was three when he kidnapped her.”
“Are you sure?” Gabriel asked.
“Callow had a very particular shade of blue eyes. In the pictures of Vera, she had them too. That woman has them. It’s her.”
“You sick fuck,” Gabriel suddenly reached back and slammed August into the bars of the cage. “You kidnapped a child and forced her into cannibalism? I ought to give you to the jaguar and your prisoner.” He slammed his head against the bars again. Blood began to run down the cold metal.
“Gabriel,” Xavier let go of Gertrude and grabbed hold of our boss. Gabriel drew back, like he was going to hit him and stopped.
“I’ll take Gertrude out,” Gabriel looked at me. “Xavier will escort out August.” He paused. “However, I would like nothing more than to let you have him.”
“Then let me,” I told Gabriel.
“I can’t, Ace.”
“To hell with the law,” I told him, taking my Marshal creds out of my pocket and tossing them on the floor at his feet.
“It isn’t about the law,” Gabriel moved in very close. “If you kill him now, in this state, you may never come back and I don’t want to lose you. We’ve lost too much lately anyway.”
“Why don’t you guys just get a room?” Gertrude snorted. “And don’t think I’m not going to tell everyone that she tried to kill August or that you beat him up while he was in handcuffs.”
“Tell them,” Gabriel spat at her. “Tell them I Tasered you too.” With that, Gabriel pulled his Taser and shot my aunt with it. Her body crumbled into a heap and she made mewing noises.
“I think everyone needs medical attention,” Xavier said. “Including the little girl and John.”
“Oh shit,” I felt the calm slip away. “I must have scared her to death.”
“You scared me to death,” Xavier quipped. “If you ever look at me like that, I’m fleeing.”
“It was deserved,” Gabriel looked at August. “He should die, slowly and painfully. If we still did executions, I’d pull the switch myself.”
“That’s why we don’t have them,” I said. “If the profession of executioner still existed, we wouldn’t have had botched executions and we wouldn’t have had the controversy with continuing them. Since it’s an extinct profession, we now have The Fortress.”
“With friends inside,” Gabriel added. I didn’t point out how twisted it was that Gabriel had immediately thought of my “fan club” inside The Fortress. I had thought it, but we had never encountered a killer that made Gabriel want to torture them. He might want revenge from time to time, but that was different.
“What do we do about her?” I asked, pointing into the cage.
“Do you want to take her out and control her?” Xavier asked. I noticed again that he looked like he’d been in a brawl.
“Not really,” I said. “What happened to your face?”
“I was attacked,” Xavier scowled. “By a freaking capuchin monkey. Who trains a capuchin to be an attack monkey?”
“I offered to go first,” Gabriel looked at my great aunt. “You know, we have a few minutes. I can’t leave Aislinn and Xavier unsupervised. John will be getting back-up out here, but let’s face it, it’s going to take a while. So, let’s talk.”
“I have nothing to say,” Gertrude answered, sticking her chin into the air and turning away from him.
“I think you do, here’s your one-time offer. We won’t report you as assisting a serial killer, we’ll just process you for fraud. This means that you’ll go to jail for a year or so, but it won’t be in The Fortress. In exchange for this very generous deal, you’re going to tell us how The Butcher kept tabs on Aislinn and you’re going to tell us where he is,” Gabriel told her.
“Go fuck yourself,” my great aunt responded.
“Wow, that was very unladylike.” I spoke in long, drawn out tones. “Here’s where you should be brought up to speed. He has never actually attacked me. Also, we are going to collect August’s DNA and prove that you and your brother are his parents. This says all sorts of weird things about you by the way...”
“He is not August’s father!” Gertrude looked horrified. “He did try to feed August to a hog, but not because he’s his father. That’s not just absurd, it’s disgusting.”
“Lee said he was,” I told her.
“Lee is wrong,” she huffed at me. “August might not be Lee’s son, but he certainly isn’t my brother’s.”
“Then who is his father?” I asked.
“That is none of your business,” she sniffled ever so slightly. Bells went off in my head.
“You don’t know, that’s why my grandfather tried to kill him.” I shook my head. “That’s what Nina has over you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do,” I looked at my great aunt a little differently for a moment. Nina once told me that during the 1960’s she went to a party. Someone slipped something in her drink and she woke up nude in a strange bed. She always claimed she went alone, but I hadn’t believed her. Now, staring at Gertrude, I realized that I had been right. They had gone together. I was willing to bet they had both been drugged and raped. Gertrude’s had resulted in August. “So, you told an unstable man that you had been raped and August was the result and he tries to kill the child. When that fails, he redirects his rage at his wife and slaughters her.”
“Nonsense,” Gertrude said.
“Fine, but I’m making sure to run August’s DNA through CODIS and any other databases on the planet to see if there’s a match.” I told her.
If she was going to say something it was interrupted by the arrival of paramedics and sheriff’s deputies. There was even an FBI agent, not Malachi or a member of the VCU, but a different one that I hadn’t seen yet.
“Hey!” I shouted at a paramedic that was nearing the cage. “Be careful. She seems to be feral. I’d suggest full restraints. She’s been injured, but treating her will not be easy. I’m not even sure she understands language.”
“That will make it hard to identify her,” the sheriff’s deputy closest to me said.
“Her name is Vera Callow. She went missing roughly twenty years ago. I’m not sure how much family she has left. Her uncle is dead, her father committed suicide within a few days of her uncle dying. I don’t know about her mother or if she had siblings.” I looked at Vera. She wouldn’t know any of them and in some ways, it would be better to tell her family they’d found her body. She’d been turned into a wild animal, living off human flesh and whatever else August gave them to eat.