Page 14 of Phoenix Falling
The big, shaggy shifter shuffled his way to the chair. Azrael followed behind, my strongest warrior. His clan tattoo blazed from his bare biceps, declaring his loyalty, while his chilling black eyes could cow the most confident shifter. Baer had no need to be cowed; that had happened weeks ago.
“He’s requesting time with Beckan again,”Azrael told me silently. The shifter’s youngest brother was also a prisoner here. The two had served Maddox, though from what we could gather of their background, not willingly. The family of four werewolves had been captured as babes after Maddox had killed their parents, and now only two survived. What to do with the two shifters was one of the hundreds of questions beating at my brain on a continual basis.
“Make it happen,”I replied, eyeing the defeated slump of the werewolf’s shoulders.
“Baer, we have brought you here to once more delve into your knowledge of the Anigma.”
The shaggy head rose, allowing dull hazel eyes to peer at me. “I will tell you all I can.”
We had been assured of that for weeks, but another questioning session might uncover details we hadn’t thought of before. I nodded to Basile, who stood.
“Who exactly did Maddox answer to?”
Baer did not look at his questioner. “There are four US generals, one in each quadrant. Maddox was head of the southeast quadrant. All of the generals answered to one Anigma: Helios.”
“Did he ever come here?”
Baer’s gaze went distant as if remembering. “Yes, a few months before…everything. I made sure we were away. Kept my brothers out of sight.”
He didn’t want them coming to anyone’s notice, or more likely Maddox didn’t. Baer and his brothers had been in charge of changing human males into shifter soldiers, which made them privy to Maddox’s plans—plans this Helios would not have been happy with.
“What do you know of him?”
Not much, apparently. After an hour of questioning, we had very little to go on except the general locations of the other regional headquarters—cities, not lairs, which Baer had never seen—and the fact that this Helios was the one in charge of collecting psychs from each quadrant at specified times. That was why he’d come to Nashville, to inspect Maddox’s efforts at gaining psychs for the Anigma. A small group of females had been sent to a specified location about a month later, to be picked up for the Anigma collection, but as we already knew, Maddox had not sent all of the psychs he’d had in his possession. Whether Helios realized that or not, Baer didn’t know.
“Baer.” Lyris stood and walked around the table, moving right up to the seat that held the werewolf. “How did they find the females?”
“I was not involved—”
She waved him off. “I know you weren’t involved with them. But you knew something, heard something, even if you didn’t want to. Tell me how the Anigma found them.”
Baer hung his head. “The females needed mental treatments. They would not respond to normal human medicines because their depression was not human; it was a result of being untriggered.”
“Yes,” Lyris said, “that’s true.”
“There is a chain of stores, holistic medicine and alternative treatments for mental disorders. They have a high rate of success, Maddox said, but not with Archai females. The stores have Anigma plants, doctors who try to identify likely candidates and provide their names to the Anigma. The rest of the employees are normal humans, but there is always one…”
“A traitor,” Basile said.
Baer raised his head, though he still didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “Yes.”
“Do you know the name of the chain?” Lyris asked.
“No.” He shook his head. “Maddox never said a name, not that I heard.”
Lyris put her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Baer.”
Azrael removed Baer from his seat. On the way out the door, Baer pulled back from Azrael’s grip to face me once more. “What do you plan to do with me? With us?”
He asked me this question at every opportunity. Unfortunately I still did not have an answer.
“I do not know, Baer,” I said honestly. Prisoners of war were unheard of among the Archai since the Great War. “For now you are as safe as I can make you while still protecting my people from any harm you might have planned.”
“I don’t plan—”
“I know.” I’d heard his declaration of peace repeatedly since he’d been brought here. “Consider this the sentence for the harm you perpetrated on the human world. Though you never took a female, you were not innocent, as you full well know. When I decide the best way to handle that, you will be informed.”
The werewolf’s powerful shoulders slumped as Azrael led him outside without a word. All eyes turned to me for final instructions.
