Page 102 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
“I’ve no choice.” His gaze hardened. “I deliver you, or my freedom is forfeit.”
I waited for more. If he wanted me to understand, he’d need to elaborate on his past this time. I wasn’t a mind reader.
“I’m a slave, Shorty,” he finally confessed. “I didn’t come to this God-forsaken realm willingly. I was taken, plucked from a battlefield during the revolution by two of Gentian’s Milesian slavers. They said they scented my power from ten miles away.”
I figured his shadows were the extra gift he’d claimed Gentian bestowed on him when he became a harbinger, but I hadn’t seen him using any other powers during our journey. Or I wasn’t aware he’d been using them. “What are your powers?”
Pete gnawed his lip, the strain of voicing this tale apparent. “At birth, I was blessed with what they call predatory prowess here.
“Long ago, I thought I was just a damn fine hunter—damn fine fighter too—but now I see the differences between me and the other men I knew. I’d always been able to smell things others couldn’t, hear things miles down the road, and I could track anyone, no matter their stealth. And my strength—” He shook his head. “Always knew there was something more than human about it. My vision was so sharp, I never missed when shooting. I became an acclaimed marksman in General Washington’s army. Though I spent the bulk of my time fighting under the Marquis de Lafayette. He was actually quite fond of me.”
I stared. “You knewLafayette?”
“Aye, I did. Good-humored chap, he was, with a brilliant mind for strategy and a gallant heart. I hear he became something of a legend after he helped defeat the redcoats.”
“You could say that.”
His memories of a better life faded to bleakness. “Rightly so.”
I watched him for a loaded beat before I pried, “So, you were on the battlefield when they found you?”
“The battle of Monmouth Courthouse, New Jersey. An erratic, poorly organized battle—so hot I was sweating my bollocks off. Didn’t know what the feck was happening half the time. I was stationed with Major General Greene on a hill where I could snipe at the redcoats. Things went mad. I was dodging musket balls when I was lassoed and hoisted into the air by what I first saw as a seraph. I thought maybe I’d taken a bullet and was being winged to Jesus’s arms. Might’ve been better off if I had.”
“Didn’t anyone try to help you?”
“In the heat of battle, nobody noticed me being carried off. Not that they could’ve saved me anyhow.
“I wasn’t the only human they took that day, but I was by far the largest. One or two tethers easily controlled the others. Me—they bound me in chains of morgana silver to drain my power and forced paralytic potions down my throat. I lay trapped and powerless for weeks before we reached the Shadow Palace.
“Gentian paid handsomely to add me to his stock of cage fighters—fodder for his blood sport, treated worse than livestock. His gaolers threw me in a cage I barely fit in with no blanket to keep me warm or pillow to rest my head upon. Not even a chamber pot to piss in.”
I winced.
“When the paralytics wore off, and I’d eaten what they thought passed as a meal for a man my size, they prodded me into the ring to fight like a cock—the very thing they did to me every week for the next 224 years.”
WTF!Pete had suffered for a horrendous amount of time in a place that sounded like one of Dante’s nine circles of hell.
“How many other cage fighters were there?”
Pete shook his head, peering off into space. “Hard to say. There were new ones every week to replace the losers.”
I stilled. “When you say losers—?”
Pete met my gaze dead on, hating the truth while refusing apology. “Draws happen, but rarely. Cage matches generally don’t end until all but one fighter are dead.”
My throat tightened to a painful degree. “How—how many men did you kill, Pete?”
He shook his head. “Not only men, Shorty. There were women. There were feyrs of all races, beyns of all races.” His voice roughened. “In the ring, I took nearly 20,000 lives—so I could live to see another day.”
I stifled my shock. He’d killed off the population of Johnstown! My heart ached for all who’d met their end at his obviously lethal hands.
It also ached for him.
“When a fighter achieves 15,000 kills, Gentianhonorshim with a position as a harbinger.” He sneered. “When he first honored me, I turned him down—kept doing so for years.
“At least fighting in the ring, I knew my opponents were bought for some strength, agility, or aggression. They were already inclined to combat in some way. But to think about turning my prowess on the innocent world, about becoming Gentian’s pawn?” He shook his head. “I preferred bondage to that.”
Was it weird that I wanted to hug him? “What changed?”
