Feeling the Way, CH 25 (Patreon)

It was my own fault.

I spent so long under the water, Marrows had the time to make the arrangements to pay for the room. He wouldn’t even tell me what the total was, and I knew he was hoping it would piss me off enough for a repeat performance. The smugness basically dripped off him.

“What did Donal tell you?”

“Just where to meet him.” He motioned to the houses ahead of us.

The neighborhood was old and not well maintained. The houses barely held together from the last coat of paint they received. If one of them was approved for habitation, I’d be surprised. Kids stopped playing in the front yards. Some semi-virtual thing by the way they were looking through their phones as they ran. 

I so wanted to think about how this wasn’t a thing back home, but I’d be lying to myself. As much as we wanted to give homes to everyone, we were just one family, one city. This was the kind of thing that needed state and federal level action.

The squirrel was sitting on the steps leading to what might have been a beautiful three-story home with gothic influence at one time. Now. It was a danger to anyone living there.

“I was expecting you yesterday,” Donal said, “or did you not get my message then?”

Marrows grinned. “Something came up that had to be dealt with.”

Donal looked between us and rolled his eyes. “You people need to learn to prioritize. There are more important things than sex.”

“It’s called worshiping,” Tom corrected, and I rolled my eyes. What we did wasn’t anything close to worshiping, even if He got his tithe out of it.

“What did you find?”

“I found you a survivor,” the squirrel answered, standing.

“Wanna Be left one alive?”

“Now, that’s questionable,” Donal said. “He’s breathing, but is that enough to qualify as being alive?” I followed him up the steps, with Tom taking up the rear. 

The inside wasn’t any more impressive than the outside, but I wasn’t worried about any of this falling on my head anymore. Someone had reinforced the structure using whatever was available. It wasn’t pretty, but it looked like it would hold.

Each room we passed had multiple beds, except for the kitchen, where food was being prepared by three women old enough to be great grandmothers. Donal led us to a room at the back. A room with only two beds. On one, the one under the window, a kid: a jaguar no more than fifteen sat, looking outside. Next to the other bed, another jaguar, his mother, sat in a chair, watching him worryingly. She glanced at us and immediately returned to watching him as if he might vanish at any moment.

Donal said something in Spanish and she answered. I got a few words, but not enough to work out the quick conversation.

“She says he hasn’t moved all morning,” Donal said, “so you shouldn’t expect too much. On days when he doesn’t move, he’s even less communicative.”

“Can I approach him?” I asked.

Donal relayed my question, and she shrugged.

I moved closer, and the kid didn’t react. He didn’t even twitch when I entered his peripheral vision. His eyes fixed outside; on the street as if he was waiting for something.

“Does he understand English?” I asked, not taking my eyes off him. His ears didn’t twitch at the words.

“He learned it,” Donal answered, “but these days, it’s questionable if he understands anything.”

“What happened?”

“When he was seven,” Donal said, “he disappeared for four days. Along with maybe a dozen other kids around his age over maybe five months.”

“No one did anything?” the question was perfunctory. I knew no one did anything. If the police had been involved, my people would have found out.

“The fathers and older boys looked for the missing kids, but they were never found.”

“How was the kid found?” Tom asked.

“Enrique walked home.”

I looked at the squirrel. “He walked home? As in, he escaped?”

“Escaped, was released. There’s no way to know because Enrique isn’t telling. Gloria says he talks on his better days, but never about those four days. She used to try to get him to say anything, but it just shuts him down, so she stopped. Now, when he does talk, it’s about characters on shows he used to watch. Nothing after that time.”

“Like time stopped for him then,” Tom said. “Can that kind of trauma cause something like that?”

“I’m not the right person to ask,” Donal answered and looked at me.

“I’m not either.” I sat next to him and watched, trying to get a read on Enrique, get anything. If not for the breathing, I could be looking at a statue. “What is he looking at?”

“He’s waiting,” Donal answered.

“The devil,” the mother said, her accent thick. “The devil did this to him. The devil will come back to finish his work.” I couldn’t tell if it was fear or hope that accompanied the words. She simply wanted this to end, one way or another.

I looked at him again, sitting there, waiting for his abuser to come back. “Why do you think Wanna Be is who took him?”

“The age’s right,” Tom said. “Multiple boys over a few months, then nothing. Sounds like who you’re after.”

“Look at his arm,” Donal said.

I looked, and the hand was fine. Carefully I took it and immediately notice how the fur wasn’t growing properly at the wrist, just under the sleeve. I pushed it up and saw the scars. My breath hitched, both at how many there are and the fact they weren’t random. I didn’t recognize any of the patterns, but they were patterns, of that I had no doubt.

“Is it just his arms?” I asked, reaching for the buttons of his shirt. His mother was up and Donal held her as she yelled at me in Spanish. I watched without moving.

“It isn’t just his arms,” the squirrel said once she calmed down. “It’s everywhere except his face and his hands.”

My gaze dropped at the implications.

“Yes, even there.”

“How did the kid even survive that?” Toms asked in a mix of awe and disgust.

“Magic?” Donal asked.

“As far as we know, Wanna Be isn’t from one of the factions,” I said.

“It doesn’t mean he isn’t without access,” Tom pointed out.

“Why go through this if he has access to magic?” I asked. I shook my head. “This feels like he’s looking for something.” Or someone. Fred said there were similarities, and no other factions scared bodies in this way.

“I’m not clean.”

The voice was so faint I thought I imagined it, and then I realized it was accented and looked at Enrique, who was looking at me.

“I’m not clean,” he repeated, despair in his voice. “He only takes the clean ones.”

I looked at his mother and the shock on her face told me she never heard that before.

“How are you not clean?” I asked gently.

“Can you make me clean?” he asked, hope filling his voice. “If I’m clean, he’ll come back and take me.”

Take? “Where? Where does he take them?”

“Make me clean,” he demanded, and I shook my head. Was the only reason Enrique was still alive because Wanna Be considered him unclean? What could have marked him as such?

His face didn’t so much fall as ceased to be. He was a breathing statue again and his head turned until he was looking outside.

“What was that about?” Tom asked.

I had a suspicion, but I couldn’t test it. Only one person I knew has a chance of being able to tell if I was right.

* * * * *

“He’s magical,” Elder Brislow said, exiting the bedroom where Enrique was sleeping, his mother at his side.

“How is that possible?” Donal asked.

“Don’t ask me, being a champion didn’t come with the manual on how the whole thing works. I barely know the parts that deal with Him, and that’s not because I’m a champion. I called in Fred, he’ll ask around and try to find the time to come. If anyone knows what’s going on or someone who can figure it out, it’s him.”

“Good,” Marrows said, “it saves me the trouble of visiting him.”

“Okay, but it makes no sense,” I said, looking at the men in the room. “Wanna Be is after magic. He had Enrique in his hands and he let him go because he’s magic?”

“Was he able to tell that?” Donal asked.

“What else would qualify in this situation?” I replied

“Then is your main assumption correct?” the elder asked.

“If Wanna Be isn’t looking for magic, why all the attempts at sigils, or the marks?”

The cheetah shrugged. “I don’t know. All I do know is that if you have new evidence that contradicts your assumptions, those are what’s wrong. Something in what you think this Wanna Be is doing is wrong, and that will what explains this boy.”

“Can he be healed?” Donal asked.

“His body, yes. What was done to him isn’t magical, so that’s easy to fix. His mind, that’s different. I’ll reach out to people who know more about it than I do. He’s still in there, so there is a chance. I’ll make sure he has the best care available.”

“Lucky him,” Donal said bitterly.

“Donal?” the elder asked.

“Look, I’m happy you’re going to help him, okay? But look at what it took to get you to do anything. There are hundreds of families just in that neighborhood you aren’t doing anything for. Do they all have to get abducted by some magical terror before anyone will do something for them? You’re supposed to be a Champion, Denton. I don’t see you do much championing.”

“I’m not the world’s savior, Donal. I just barely saved my god from Damian, and there was a good deal of luck involved. I wish this was something that could be magicked away, but magic has limits. This is a social problem and I am doing what I can to help. You know that. Me, Martin, and more than half the wealthy families in Denver support most of the shelters not affiliated with the church.”

“I know!” the squirrel dropped in a chair as I stood. “I’m sorry. Seeing him, knowing how rough the winter was on those who weren’t lucky enough to have a bed in a shelter, a community to go to, or magic,” he snarled, looking at his hands.

I was out of the room. I wasn’t interested in the social discourse this was going to become. If I was going to spend time on that, I’d do that at home.

“Hey,” Eddy grabbed my arm and pulled me into him. “You look like you need a change.”

I grabbed his ass. “What I need,” I growled, “is for you to help me forget the last six months.”

He grinned. “I don’t know if my dad’s going to give me the kind of time off that would need.”

“Fuck your dad,” I snarled, undoing his tail trap.

He chuckled. “Stay here long enough, and you know that’s going to happen.”