Day: February 12, 2018

mythsandmonsters:

Zeke couldn’t even say that he’d never killed anyone who was innocent. Most of his kills had just been orders followed with whatever details he’d been given. The best he could claim though was that he almost always made those deaths quick and that he didn’t really have any stomach for torture unless he knew without a doubt that it was deserving, partly because of some of the hellish things he’d been subjected to as a child in his own training to “toughen him up”.

“I told you I won’t tell anyone. I don’t expect you to trust me, but you have my word on that.”

“That means you can’t give warning about Salem and Genesis. They don’t deserve to die, Ezekiel. They’re babies,” she insisted, desperation creeping into her words. They weren’t her siblings, she knew that much, but they still smelled like family to her and she would have gotten them out herself if she could. 

If he managed to stop those pups from getting rescued, she would personally see to it that he didn’t survive much longer, but she kept that promise to herself.

mythsandmonsters:

“It’s not that simple. I don’t have the authority to deactivate their implants.”

In all honesty, Zeke hated the idea of those implants in the first place, especially since they didn’t just put tracking chips in the pups anymore. Sure, the one in him wasn’t wired to kill him if he strayed too far or tried to take it out himself, but he had some sense of the feeling of someone knowing your movements at all times even when you didn’t want them to.

Even so, Zeke couldn’t completely defy his training. Though he was sympathetic to Arcadia’s situation on some level, he still held prejudices that were drilled into him before he could really form opinions of his own about things, and that sort of programming was hard to undo, at least in a short timeframe.

“If you keep your head down and don’t give me a reason to come after you, I’ll pretend this conversation never happened, okay?”

“I’ve never given anyone any reason for the things that were done to me and if anyone finds out I’m here, I will tell him where to find you,” she warned. 

There was no way she could go straight home, not with him around. If he followed her back to the house, she ran the risk of him getting at the others under the protection of the family that had taken her in and she knew only an idiot would risk that. 

“Your people have been torturing and murdering my brothers and sisters longer than I’ve been alive so don’t sit there and pretend you’re any less of a monster.”

She wasn’t sure what was worse, the ones that made no attempt to hide how awful they really were or the ones that pretended to be kind, pretended to care even a little, only to turn around and do the same things the others did.

mythsandmonsters:

“They don’t have collars. Never have,” he assured her. His pups had implants just like the rest of them, but he never used any additional collars or other means of restraint. If anything, his pups were probably some of the best kept of all the ones his family had. They were somewhere closer to pets that bordered on younger siblings to him in terms of affection and how he treated them.

“I was just looking for leads on who’s been slaughtering family members across the country. Figured at least some of them were just dogs turning on their handlers and escaping, but I guess you kinda gave me a better answer to that.”

There had been rumours of someone else killing the handlers and taking the pups, but nothing concrete, since there were no witnesses and the bodies that did turn up where ripped to shreds like they would have been in a wolf attack anyway, and there were never any signs of a break in either to confirm outside interferrence.

“Disable anything that can kill them. If you actually care like you say you do, you’ll do it.” She doubted her would, but if she could find a way to make sure at least those two wouldn’t have complications, she would take it. The process to have her own stuff removed had hurt like hell and she knew it was because of the nerves and muscles having grown around them. 

The way he worded it made her wince and her jaw clenched a little. “We’re not just dogs or mutts. None of us asked to be born the way we were and we don’t deserve to be used or killed just because we’re not as human as you,” she snapped, trying to bury her fears in anger. Anger was easier to feel, easier to control, and it never made her feel weak.

“Those of us that have been gotten out are safe. Quit digging and just let us be free.”

mythsandmonsters:

“Okay,” he answered, nodding slowly, his hands raised a little in a passive gesture.

He knew immediately what she meant by using the pups to train younger kids. More accurate language would call it for what it was; using pups as sitting targets for kids to bag their first kill as a test to see if they had it in them to become a real hunter and not flake out like some of the weaker-willed ones had.

Zeke himself had never had the opportuniy to show any weakness. He’d been fast-tracked through training at a much younger age than the others as some sort of compensation for his older siblings failings before him. Still, when he had been given his first pup to train for tracking, he’d been uncharacteristically compassionate in his methods than his own training had dictated he was supposed to.

“Either way, he’ll make his way around to you eventually. If you’re smart, you won’t have those collars on them,” she warned, taking another few steps away from him. 

If Bailey and Molly weren’t collared or chained or baring signs of obvious mistreatment, Jeff might not kill him. She couldn’t guarantee it, but it was his best bet either way.

She was just about ready to bolt when something clicked and she froze, staring him down. “Why are you here?”

mythsandmonsters:

Zeke was starting to wish he hadn’t run into her. It would have made the situation a whole lot simpler. Now he had to pick between taking her in and her probably being killed anyway, letting her go and either having his own pups killed by his family as punishment, or whoever had killed Marni coming to kill him and take Bailey and Molly. None of which seemed preferable over the others.

“If I let you go, will you promise to not tell whoever you’re with about Bailey and Molly? They’re already safe with me. I don’t hurt them. Not like Marni hurt you.”

“They’re not safe as long as you stay with the others and you know it,” she pointed out. If it came down to things, she knew well enough that his family would murder those pups just as they had so many others before. Not that she actually believed he would just let her walk away without telling anyone he had run into her.

Glancing over her shoulder, she bit at her lower lip before looking back at him. “I only told him about Salem and Genesis. I-I overheard Marni and Caleb talking about them being used to train one of the kids.”

It was more than she should be telling him of all people, she knew that, but he needed to know what they were doing to the pups if he honestly thought his own were “safe” with him.

mythsandmonsters:

“Who?”

Even if it was true, Zeke still wanted a heads up in case they came looking for his pups so he’d know whether or not he even stood a chance at fighting his way out since Bailey and Molly were literally still kids. Hell, Molly was barely more than a toddler, and he didn’t want her seeing that kind of shit just yet.

“Who else do they know about, Cadi?”

She shook her head again, lower lip trembling a little as she continued to move away from him. She was only about a block from her new home and Chance had promised her that they couldn’t be killed. Jeff had told her she was safe there. 

“He’s saving us.”

mythsandmonsters:

Zeke had already guessed that the implant that was put into all the dogs had been removed from her since they were rigged to activate if they got out or their handler didn’t check in biometrically with the app that controlled them at regular intervals.

Whoever had removed it had to have enough medical knowledge to perform at least basic surgery, as well as how to hack the app or jam its signal long enough to take it out, so Zeke figured it was either an ex hunter who’d flipped sides, or someone who’d been watching them for a while, and either option wasn’t good in the long run.

“Maybe?” he answered calmly, keeping his own movements slow so he didn’t spook her any further. “But you know they’ll find you, right? Even if I let you go, they’ll justy track you down again, and they might blame you for Marni. You don’t want that, do you?”

The phone was in her hand, still mostly behind her back, and she knew the buttons on it well enough at least get the speed dial. It was one of the reasons they had given her just a basic old phone, it was easier to use and harder to break. 

Another couple of steps were taken, trying to keep as much distance between the two of them as possible. They were going to blame her anyway. If he took her back, she was as good as dead and she wasn’t about to go willingly. Not when she knew it wouldn’t be a quick death.

“They’ll protect me.”

mythsandmonsters:

“He?”

The tension between them could be cut with a knife, but it was understandable. Zeke was a hunter and she was a shifter, and beyond that still pretty much a kid at that. Arcadia wasn’t much older than one of his own pups, Bailey, so Zeke knew it was easier to get them to cooperate with a gentler hand than some of his relatives used.

“Cadi, who killed Marni? You’re not in trouble, okay? I just want to know who or what I’m dealing with.”

The nickname made her flinch before she shook her head rapidly. The people she was with now were definitely stronger than a pack of human hunters, but she wasn’t about to sell them out after they had rescued her and removed that damn poison collar from her neck.

“She deserved what she got,” was all Arcadia was willing to say as she took another step away from him. She had personally watched Marni hurt children to goad their parents into attacking before killing them all. But worse even was when Marni had started making her kill young children. There was no sorrow over that being over with.