Page 91 of The Last Sanctuary
They waited until Zachariah and the other keepers had gone for the night, then they viciously attacked their leader. The two chimps bit off their victim’s fingers and testicles, then left him to bleed to death on the enclosure floor.
The next morning, when she went with her father to clean out their night house, it was Raven who discovered the dead, mutilated chimp.
She could still recall vividly the damp chill of horror. The way her father had stepped back with an involuntary gasp, shielding her eyes with his hand, though she’d already seen enough. She’d seen everything.
Her father had believed that animals were elevated, evolved, and honorable, somehow above the horrors and atrocities of humankind.
Perhaps for the most part, they were. But not always.
Animals weren’t free of the stigma of brutality.
In the wild, groups of chimpanzees waged war on other troops. A group of chimps would hold down an enemy while the others dismembered him, tearing the enemy apart, limb by limb.
When a male lion joined a new pride, he would kill the cubs sired by another lion. Juvenile foxes, owls, and hyenas sometimes killed and then ate their siblings. Orcas had been known to sadistically torture and kill other living creatures simply for their entertainment.
But it was humans who had turned the murder of other humans into an art form—en masse, by the hundreds of millions, by the billions. One man butchered another for greed, jealousy, or power. Or for no other reason than perverse pleasure. Because they could.
“We are not slaves to our natures,” Raven said. “We can choose.”
“I doubt that.”
She closed her eyes, saw again the blood slick on her hands. To survive, she would kill. But not for nothing. Not like these vicious bastards. “You can choose not to kill me.”
“Perhaps.” Vaughn shifted slightly in the dark. “You may be right. Perhaps we can come to an agreement. There is an alternative. If you will consider it.”
Thunder crashed. The rain pounded harder against the roof. She swallowed and stared blindly up at the ceiling until her vision blurred. She was parched. Her mouth caked with sand. She hadn’t had anything to drink for hours.
The silence grew thick between them. He waited for her to respond. He wanted to dangle a bit of hope, then wrench it away.
This was part of the enjoyment for him. The way wolves ran a bison to exhaustion before attacking, wearing down its hope, draining its will to live, step by despairing step.
She should ignore him. She shouldn’t give him anything. If it was her fate to die, she was determined to do it on her terms. Not by begging. Not by losing herself.
With every minute that ticked past, with every painful breath, her resolve eroded. Hope, after all, was the very last thing to relinquish itself. Even in the face of catastrophe, of devastation, of despair, hope was the thing that stubbornly held on.
The wind shrieked around the tiger house, beating the maple’s branches against the walls and roof. Thunder boomed and crashed. Nature itself shrieked its outrage.
Raven said, “What is it? Your proposal?”
Vaughn grunted. “Finally seeing reason, are you?”
“Just spit it out.”
The sharpened edge of the knife glittered. He dragged it along the folded edges of the paper map. “The white wolf. You came back for it, to save it. A few of the men claimed they saw you in the woods with the white wolf and the black wolf. I must admit, I am intrigued by you. A girl and a wolf, together. And not one wolf, but two. How fascinating.”
Raven said nothing. Her stomach curdled.
“You have a relationship with them. They trust you. You know where they go.”
She thought of the wolves. Of the night spent sleeping between them in the den. The steady, comforting warmth of their bodies. The coarseness of their fur against her skin, the dank feral smell of them in her nostrils. The awe and wonder and astonishment of it.
“What do you want?”
“You can take me to the wolves. The white wolf in particular.”
She closed her eyes. “You want their pelts.”
“Those wolves are like nothing I’ve ever seen. Like the modified ones. Genetically engineered, but not like the piss-poor substitutes the labs create. These hybrids are truly something special. Larger than regular wolves. Stronger. Smarter, too. You can see it in their eyes. Pure cunning. The white one is… marvelous. He’s the alpha, there’s no doubt. I’m an alpha. He’s an alpha.” She could sense him grinning in the dark. His eyes shone greedily. “We’re meant for each other.”
