Page 47 of From the Noblest Motives
When he wound down, he realized he'd talked too long, and the reporters had gotten wound up.
"How bad was the prison?"
"Is there really a torture box?"
"Did you have to eat in handcuffs?"
"Shudder! Over here! Did you know that you were supposed to be dead?"
"How did you survive?"
"How did you escape?"
"Are you turning yourself in?"
Over all the shouted questions, Shudder heard growling building behind him until Blaze finally bellowed, "Hey! What the fuck did I say at the beginning? Settle down and be fucking polite or this ends now!"
Mutterings and grumblings followed, but the flood of shouted questions petered out.
"Thank you." Shudder gave Blaze a nod as if he were hired muscle and tried to get his smile to rematerialize. Nope. Completely gone. Fine tremors ran along his legs now, too, a reaction to having all those people yelling at him. Not something that had ever happened before. "All right. I'll tell you about the prison and what happened there. Then I'll have to call it a day, I'm afraid. Still not at my best."
He gripped the lectern to keep his voice from shaking and told them about his arrival, the humiliating and unpleasant process of intake, and the actual living conditions, from the extreme isolation to the threat of the closet box. He even managed to get through the story of being threatened, then later attacked during the explosions, but at that point, his stamina, his courage—whatever was holding him together—failed.
The muscles in his healing leg locked up. The shaking seized him, and he bent over his hands, unable to continue. He tried to call for Blaze but only managed a squeak.
Lucky for him, Blaze had been hovering like a mother falcon. If they hovered. Did they hover? He certainly was as fierce as one as he took Shudder under the elbows and snarled at the sea of faces swimming in front of Shudder. "That's it. He's done. Keep your seats until Mr. McKenzie gets in the car."
Amazingly, they did. If only there was a way to bottle that glare. Shudder limped along at Blaze's urging, trying to keep his legs from turning into chilled jelly.
"You can do it," Blaze murmured close to his ear. "I'll princess carry if I have to, but I don't think you want that."
"Not in front of the children, dear. I'm okay. I am. Just… out of oomph."
With the truck blocking the reporters' view, Blaze lifted him into the passenger seat and patted his thigh. "That's done. Let's get you away from these vultures."
It took several minutes for the shivering to ease down enough that Shudder no longer felt his joints locking. He leaned his head back against the seat and dredged up a smile for Blaze. "I think I'd like to hire you for all of my press conferences."
"Had a lot of them?"
"Well, no. And now I'm not sure why I agreed to that one. But I might have to hire you in the future. You're very good at intimidation."
"Ha. Yeah. It's my best feature."
Shudder let his voice drop lower and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Oh, hardly that, Mr. Emerson. You have many good features. But it's a useful one."
The house was disturbingly quiet,once everyone settled after breakfast, though Damien reasoned this was because the place was so large. If he stood perfectly still and closed his eyes, he could hear small noises from time to time. A shift of bare feet over hardwood. A creak of a chair.
In theory, he could track any one of the residents if he needed to find someone. Though the ironic part of tracking one specific person's life signature in a place where they lived with others was that, in such close proximity, the lines crossed and recrossed so much that it became frustrating.
Sitting and waiting for Blaze and Shudder to return would most likely lead to a panic attack. His brain was already busy setting up endless loops of possible traps and Shudder ending up back in the hands of the authorities.
That way lies madness.
Instead, he concentrated on questions about Cyril, and at the top of that list, what did he do all day? Maybe other people would find it sad that Damien was so suspicious about his father, but there were too many suspicious things about the man. Not to mention, Damien trusted perhaps four or five people in the entire human population. No, six. He had to add Meemaw Sekhet to that list.
Suspicion came so easily to him.
The trails of Cyril's life were everywhere in the house, but Damien reasoned the best place to start would be the study. The concentration of trails would be thickest since he seemed to spend so much time there, and it would be easier to find the trails that went in directions other than the kitchen or the bedrooms.
