Page 34 of Consumed
Con wasn’t sure there ever had been a situation like this. Not exactly, anyway. But Isaac was right—surely the Bureau hadsomethingto say on the matter. Feeling sweaty, Con wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Orcs are classified as inherently dangerous.” Not many sentient species had earned that designation. It meant somebody at the Bureau had decided that there was no hope that they’d just wander off and mind their own business. Merpeople were in this category—nasty, venomous creatures that enjoyed human flesh. Ghouls definitely counted. Basilisks. Windigos. And orcs.
“So we’re supposed to kill it?” Isaac asked.
The orc responded with more urgent grunting and attempts to jerk his body free. Apparently he understood at least that much English.
“He’s not an imminent threat,” said Con. “So transportation to the facility in Nevada is probably the more appropriate option.”
“Ugh,” said Isaac, and Con had to agree. The place was, essentially, a supermax prison, and the incarcerated had no hope of ever being released. The only exception that Con knew of was Des, who’d spent seventeen long years in a cell there and who still shuddered when he thought about it.
Isaac was regarding Con gravely. “Rules can be bent. Look, I have no taste for torture, and I’m guessing you don’t either. But if one of us shoots him now, nobody will ever know that he wasn’t coming after us. Honestly, I doubt anyone at the Bureau would bother to investigate.”
“Is that what you want to do? Kill him?”
“No.” Isaac looked miserable. “I’m sorry. I can totally understand if you want to, and I’ll back you up no matter what, but pulling a trigger in cold blood….”
“Is murder.”
Isaac shrugged. “Justifiable, some might say.”
“There are always people who find ways to justify murder.”
It wasn’t fair that Con had to make this decision. Kill. Ask Isaac to kill on his behalf. Call the chief and arrange for the orc to be dragged away and locked up forever. None of these sat easily on his soul.
On the orc’s skin, coyote bite marks had scabbed over but looked painful. He wondered whether orcs scarred.
And then, overtaken by an urge he couldn’t name, he walked closer to the bound creature. Close enough to see that the orc, too, was sweating, and that he had what looked like a tiny spiral-shaped tattoo on one cheek.
Con traced his fingers down his own cheeks, feeling the familiar grooves and divots. One claw had missed his right eye by millimeters. Another had sliced open his forehead. One had caught on the muscle beside his mouth, so that his smiles and frowns were eternally lopsided.
A human had no claws. But Con had a good knife, and a blade would do just as much harm.
“I used to be not-bad-looking,” Con told the orc. “Now people stare and whisper. Your people did this to me.”
The orc’s eyes widened even more and his sounds became more desperate. But Con wasn’t finished. He had to… had toshow. He dropped his suit coat onto the floor, heedless of the dust, and unbuttoned his shirt. He tossed that aside, along with his undershirt. This was the second time he’d intentionally revealed himself to another this week, only this time he kept his pants on.
“They did this too.” Gouge scars on both arms that pulled when he moved the wrong way. Ugly marks on his sternum and belly. And if hehadundressed completely, the orc would have seen craters where muscle ought to be. Dimpled indents that were the souvenirs of individual fangs. Zipper-like slashes where surgeons had gone in to remove infected tissue and then sewn everything up. “I’ll never walk properly again. Never be able to do the things I used to. Never spend a day without my joints aching.”
Con’s voice was low, conversational, really. Now his anger felt icy-cold, as if he’d fallen through the ice of a frigid lake.
And the orc—the orc was nodding.
The knife slid easily from its sheath. This wasn’t the one he’d lost in the cemetery, of course. As Bureau policy dictated, Con had packed a spare.
When he raised the blade, the orc went silent and entirely still—except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest. Isaac made a small sound, but Con didn’t turn to look at him. Instead, he put the knife against the orc’s face… and cut the fabric that gagged him. The fabric fell to the floor, followed by what looked like a soggy athletic sock that had been stuffed in the orc’s mouth.
The orc coughed several times and licked his lips. When had he last been able to drink? Con remembered the broken-glass sensation in his own throat and the temporary relief of water being poured on his face. But right now he had no water.
Some of the orc’s teeth were broken. Con hoped they hadn’t ended up imbedded in one of the coyote shifters. Anyway, the orc had plenty of fangs remaining, more than enough to cause permanent damage.
When the orc spoke, his voice was so ragged and his accent so thick that at first Con didn’t realize he was speaking English. Not until the orc repeated himself. “Welearn.”
“What?”
The orc made a sound remarkably like the one that Con did when he was frustrated, then tried again. He spoke haltingly, as if searching for the right words, and his mouth was clearly not well constructed for making English sounds. The broken teeth probably didn’t help either. “Here not home. We new. We want know. We learn.” He made a biting motion. “We eat, we learn.”
Utterly confounded, Con only stared.
Isaac moved in closer, however, and addressed Con. “Jesus Christ. I think— One of my biology texts, back when I was a kid? It said that if you teach a… a flatworm, I think it was, to do something, like avoid the dark side of a petri dish? And then you feed that worm to another one, the new one will know to avoid the dark side. They can learn stuff by eating guys who already know the stuff.”
