Page 1 of Taken for Granite
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Tas
Bits of conversation drifted into his cell. Tas shifted, listening carefully to the hushed voices. Something had happened. His captors planned to move him to another facility, this one in America.
The voices grew louder as they approached his cell.
“Moving day. On your feet, Creature.” An unseen male yanked on Tas’ chain, forcing him to his feet unless he wanted to be strangled by the slip chain.
Tas lunged forward, his claws catching the male by the arm.
Foolish human.
Tas reveled in the satisfying scream of pain and panic, the warmth of blood on his claws, before the familiar prick of a sedative dart hit him in the neck. Just as the darkness took him, Tas felt the ping of his sigil.
Someone had activated the rescue beacon.
* * *
Tas woke, his head foggy and limbs heavy as stone.
Salt permeated the air. The sounds of machinery surrounded him. The floor rolled with barely perceivable motion. He believed his captors had transported him in the cargo hold of a ship.
Waking in an unfamiliar environment was not a new experience. His captors, the Rose Syndicate, often sedated him before moving him to a new location. They understood that if Tas had the chance, he’d tear their throats out with his fangs, crooning a song of happiness.
He crooned now, just to hear the sound bounce back. He mapped out the interior, finding every dent and ding in the surface. From the way the sound waves bounced back, he knew the crate to be constructed of wood with steel bars reinforcing the sides.
Tas tested the manacles at his wrists, and found them loose enough to slip free. He could smash the crate to splinters and free himself, but to what end? He’d be on a ship in the middle of the ocean.
He had experienced Earth’s cold ocean once. With clarity, he recalled how the Khargal ship sank, and water poured in. Shifted in his stone form to survive the impact, the weight of that form dragged him down. He struggled to reach the surface, and many of his fellow soldiers drowned.
Never again.
His sigil sent a gentle ping. That was a new experience, so new he hesitated at how to process the information. The sigil, a communication device, had a message. For the first time in one thousand years, agrackingmessage.
He could sense its location and the distance between him and the device. It might as well have been on the other side of this abysmal planet. He needed to retrieve the device, to read the message and discover if rescue came at last, but Tas felt the weight of the chains binding him and he had to exercise patience.
Instead, he analyzed the snatches of conversation he overheard before being knocked out.
Something happened. They were nervous.
Tas absently chewed on the iron chains binding his wrists, the metallic taste saturating his tongue. Whatever nutrients his body could get from gnawing at the chains, he’d take them. After decades under the care of the Rose Syndicate, he was intimately familiar with humiliation and its companion, degradation. They were the favored tools of his captors.
He pushed thoughts of humiliation and degradation out of his mind and focused on vengeance, particularly the satisfying cries of the last male he injured. Cocky and foolish, the male underestimated Tas. If his captors insisted on calling Tas a creature, he’d act like one.
Fantasies of vengeance fed his will to live but they did not feed his body. Tas continued to gnaw at the chains. Kept on the brink of starvation by his captors, he needed raw minerals to not only take off the sharp edge of hunger but to regain his strength. With enough fuel ingested, his body could repair its injuries, no matter how long ago they may have been inflicted.
He rolled his shoulders. His captors had not bothered to bind his wings as they hung uselessly behind him, and he knew exactly who had issued that order. After all, how far could a soldier get on broken wings?
Agent Rhododendron had been his handler for the last few years. The female proved adept at delivering a new level of degradation and insult beyond the standard pain. Failing to truss him properly spoke to Tas being a non-threat. Rhododendron wounded him more keenly than any knife.
Tas stretched and flexed his legs, the chain connecting his wrist cuffs to his feet rattling. Unfettered, his tail swept behind him, brushing along the wooden crate.
He wouldn’t have to get far, as he intended to use the chain to strangle the first human he saw.
Saw. Ha. Funny.
Isolation had made his sense of humor sharp and brittle. Tas had seen nothing since the Rose Syndicate blinded him. Frelinray would have laughed, though.
