Page 53 of The Last Sanctuary
Moving quickly, her eyes stinging, she unlocked the gates and flung them open. Suki, Loki, and Aspen were the only ones left. She scanned the grounds for the bodies of the other three. Several patches of blood gleamed in the moonlight. The bodies were gone.
The Headhunters must have shorted out the electrified top wires of the fence with a branch or something similar, then climbed inside to retrieve the carcasses of the dead wolves, since they couldn’t open the gates. Sour-sick nausea sloshed in her stomach.
“The gate is open,” she whispered. She pushed the heartache somewhere down deep. She couldn’t think about the dead. She had to focus on the living. “Come on, Suki. Let’s go, Loki. I’m sorry for your pack. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save them. It’s time to go.”
The wolves’ howls ceased abruptly. They rose to their feet and padded toward her on silent paws, their heads and tails low.
Her brain told her she should feel fear, but she didn’t. Not after her terrifying night with the hybrids. Compared to them, the timber wolves seemed practically tame. They knew her. They had known her father.
Still, caution was needed.Stupid gets you killed every time,her dad used to say.
Raven pulled the gate back against the fence so that it made a triangular shape with her body safely inside it, the gate between her and the timber wolves. It wasn’t much protection, but the wolves had more important matters on their minds than bothering with her—like escape.
Escape they did. Loki and Aspen galloped out of the enclosure. They took off in the direction of the lodge. Perhaps they scented the meat left in the rendering shed. Or the lingering scents of the Headhunters who’d slaughtered their pack.
Only shy, meek Suki remained inside. She whimpered, lowering her furry belly inches from the ground, her tail curled beneath her.
“It’s okay, Suki,” Raven murmured.
Suki had been brought to Haven as a young pup after the mother had abandoned her lone surviving offspring. The long nights cradling Suki’s tiny, shivering form against her chest for warmth. The hours spent bottle-feeding her. Sometimes, Suki had suckled the milk from her fingers, her tiny teeth pricking Raven’s skin.
Suki inched closer to Raven. She whined unhappily. Something dark stained her muzzle. Raven couldn’t see clearly in the night, but she knew what it was. Blood. Suki must have nuzzled Echo or Titus as they lay wounded and dying.
“Come on, girl,” Raven said. “You have to come out now. You have to run away. We both do. I know this is your home. It’s mine, too. But this is the only way.”
Suki wouldn’t come. Her whine deepened into a frantic, bewildered growl. The hackles on her spine raised in alarm. The wolf was confused and petrified. She responded to her terror with aggression.
No matter what Raven tried, she couldn’t coax Suki from the enclosure. After more time than she could afford to lose, she gave up. She had too many tasks tonight. She couldn’t force Suki to leave her paddock. She could only hope the wolf would work up the courage to escape.
Raven left with the gate propped open with a stick.
As the bleak mist continued to envelop everything in its path, she crept to the bear habitat. Kodiak and Sage were napping. They looked like great black humps in the gray murk.
Quietly, she opened the service door and then the night house drop gate, careful not to wake them. Unlike the wolves, she wasn’t dumb enough to think they might listen to her.Hopefully, they’d figure it out on their own when they awoke in an hour or so.
After the bears, she went to the bonobos. When they spotted her, they hooted and hollered, swinging frantically from their rope netting. Gizmo puffed up his chest, grabbed a handful of excrement, and threw it at her. It struck the viewing window with a splat and oozed down the glass.
He huffed a hoarse, goofy laugh, then grinned in delight.
“That was so classy, Gizmo.” She opened the metal door inside their night house. “You’re pissed you haven’t been fed in a while. I get it, buddy.”
Bonobos weren’t as strong or as aggressive as chimps, but they could be dangerous without meaning to be, though the two female bonobos had never shown any inclination toward violence, and Newton was the calmest of the bunch.
Gizmo, though, was the excitable one. She wasn’t sure what he was capable of when he was agitated, or if she could adequately keep him calm. In the same way as with the timber wolves, she opened the gate fully while backing herself into the space between the wall and the door, using the gate as a shield.
Like the wolves, the bonobos were much more interested in escape than in pestering a boring human. Gizmo was the first to leave. He whooped to the others as he scampered out of the enclosure onto the flagstone path. Pepper and Newton followed, with Zephyr, who was older and slower, taking up the rear.
The four bonobos immediately charged the snack house, hooting joyously. They’d spent years watching humans relish delectable treats. Now they were determined to obtain those treats for themselves.
Next, Raven opened Hera’s cage. Her wings were clipped, but Raven freed her anyway, because she had to. Then she opened the door to the otters’ habitat, too. There was a river less thanthree miles away, though she doubted the otters would be able to find it.
But she couldn’t worry about the next steps, only the here and now.
She freed the tortoises and the ostriches. Maybe it made her an awful person, but she left Winston the boa constrictor in his glass aquarium. He might outlive them all.
When she invaded the porcupines' paddock, the porcupines, Duke and Duchess, waddled toward her in outraged fury. They turned their backsides toward her in warning, wiggling their sharpened quills. She exited swiftly with the door left open and left them to their own devices.
After pausing to check for danger, Raven kept moving. She circled to the western side of the park. She freed Sal, the zebra, and the leopard, who was conveniently napping, so she could slip away silently. Then the foxes, who scurried between her legs and streaked to freedom. Electra the bobcat gave her a moody stare from her perch atop a faux-rock outcropping, her black-fringed ears flicking grumpily.
