Leap of the Lion (The Wild Hunt Legacy #4)(3)
The guard grabbed Alice’s shoulder and gave her a brutal shake. “You don’t talk with other dirty beasts. Shut your mouth.”
The girl’s eyes went glassy with tears.
Darcy clasped her hands in front of her waist in an appearance of servitude…and to keep from belting the guard. Once, only once, had she hit a guard, trying to save a friend from a caning. Both she and Margery had been beaten into the ground with fists and boots and canes, thrown in separate cells, and left for days. Darcy’s intervention had turned a common caning into an unspeakable nightmare.
No hitting. No shouting. Humbly, she looked at the guard and bowed her head to keep him from seeing the hatred in her eyes. “I could look at the motor if you wish. Sir.”
After a second, the guard snorted. “Fix it, freak, or I’ll take it out on your hide.”
She kept her gaze lowered until he’d stalked away. Her mum would have called him a stupid, sprite-brained boggart. Being imprisoned had taught Darcy other terms—the fucking, dickhead asshole.
A sigh escaped her.
“You can fix anything,” Alice whispered, trust glowing in her big blue eyes.
“Most mechanical things, yes.” Not the important things, like illness, heartbreak, and imprisonment. She couldn’t fix the slow wearing away of her life force. All the older captives from their village were weakening. Barbara had collapsed yesterday and been taken away.
Had she been taken to the ghastly research labs in Z Hall’s basement? Despair filled Darcy. The Mother keep you, my friend. Because there was nothing anyone could do.
Do what you can, tinker, for the little one here, instead. Pulling her gaze away, she reached in her pocket and pulled out a wrapped piece of cake she’d snitched when fixing the dishwasher.
A quick look around showed no one was watching. “Here, munch on this while I work.”
The girl’s eyes grew wide, and she turned so no one would see her stuff the treat in her mouth. Shifters received only enough food to stay healthy—never sweets. The cake had been baked for the staff.
Alice’s eyes filled with tears. A treat. And kindness. Both were unknown in this place.
After patting the cub’s shoulder, Darcy knelt beside the mower. It had gas, and the gas wasn’t old. The air filter was clean enough. The spark plug—ah-hah—was wet. During the summer season, Darcy’d learned to keep extras in her toolbox. After replacing the plug, she gave the pull rope a firm yank.
The mower sputtered, and she adjusted the throttle for a healthy roar.
Alice hooted in glee and threw her arms around Darcy. The hug was bittersweet. The child should have been preparing for her first shift, should have been running in the mountains with her littermates. Should have been home. But their Daonain village was blackened rubble.
Although the Scythe’s human hostages might eventually be freed, the shifter females would never be released. They’d slowly weaken and die in this grim institution, surrounded by stone walls, far from the forest.
Across the grounds on the west, the human hostages worked in their garden. Shifter females were restricted to the east side, human hostages to the west. Darcy, however, was allowed everywhere. She’d worked hard to become an indispensable handyman. She was always polite. Always obedient.
They thought her thoroughly cowed. Of course, it helped that the Scythe avoided bringing in outside repairmen.
There were other visitors though. Even now, a car pulled up to the closed wrought-iron gate. Darcy watched as a uniformed guard walked out of the discreetly placed guardhouse and spoke to the driver.
At Z Hall, Director hurried down the manor steps to greet the arrival.
So the guest was important and obviously approved since the car hadn’t been shot into little pieces.
With a little smile for Alice, Darcy continued on her way. In front of the manor, she neared the first of the three semi-sunken guard posts that created hillocks in the front lawn. Anyone at the entrance would see only a dark slit behind which was a camouflaged machine gun “pillbox”.
During her brothers’ visit last week, Patrin had eyed the gun embrasures and said the interlocking fields of fire created a killing field. Anyone coming in the front gate to free the hostages would be easily slaughtered.
A narrow stairwell led down to the concrete box’s rear door, and Darcy hurried past, then turned left between the two manor houses toward the rear of the property. The equipment building and generator shed stood near the back orchard. The last of the apples lay rotting, since no one could get to them. The orchard trees circled the inside perimeter of the stone wall, and a thirty-foot mass of blackberries and huckleberries had been allowed to grow wild around them. The thorny tangle created an effective barrier to escape or rescue. The only way in and out of the property was through the front gate.
Maybe.
She glanced to the west at a walnut tree near the side wall. The fruit trees were shorter, their top branches skinny, but the full-sized walnut had wide, strong limbs. If a super-coordinated male came in over the wall, he could possibly jump to the walnut. Over the years, she’d visually picked the sturdiest tree branches above the ocean of thorny brambles. So this imaginary male could…maybe…leap from branch to branch, around the perimeter of the wall, and eventually reach the apple tree that grew closest to the lawn. Even she could make the leap from the grass into that tree.
Next time she saw Fell and Patrin, she’d point out the zigzag route.