Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79603 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79603 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
“You can’t be serious!” Imani exclaimed, jumping up. “Is this because he killed some other inmates? He was probably just protecting himself!”
“All the same.” Judge Thoughtgood frowned. “I’m afraid he can’t be allowed back into our society—or any society for that matter. He is simply too dangerous.”
“But why?” Imani demanded. “I demand to see my client, your Honor! This instant!”
“Very well, Councilor.” The judge looked like she didn’t much care one way or another. “Bailiff,” she said and made a motion. “Please have the guards bring in Councilor Williams’ client so that she can see why death is the only option for him.”
Eight
Imani waited, her heart in her mouth, as the female bailiff left the courtroom. What in the world was she about to see? How could the judge decide to execute her client after the evidence she’d presented clearly exonerated him? What—?
Her thoughts were cut off when the heavy wooden doors of the courtroom banged open and four Horvath guards entered. The lizard-like humanoids had green, scaly skin and long forked tongues. They were often used by the Yonnites as prison guards or for other dirty, menial jobs the wealthy Mistresses who ruled the planet wanted nothing to do with.
Between the four of them was a huge figure but he was struggling so hard Imani couldn’t get a good look at him. Each of the Horvaths—all pretty big themselves—had a chain in his hands and all four of the chains were hooked to the slave in some way. Yet still he fought so hard they could barely contain him.
“Guards!” Judge Thoughtgood said sharply. “Control that prisoner!”
“We are trying, your honor!” hissed one of the Horvaths. “But he isss very ssstrong.”
At last the four guards and their prisoner reached the front of the courtroom. They hooked the ends of their long chains to bolts in the floor Imani hadn’t noticed earlier and then stood back.
What she saw when the prisoner finally held still, took her breath away.
He was huge and muscular of course—what Kindred wasn’t? But his size and apparent strength weren’t what made Imani catch her breath.
His long hair had been shorn to stubble atop his head and his skin was covered in some kind of shiny black substance. Was it tar? Paint? Imani couldn’t tell, but it covered every inch of his face, arms, chest, back and torso.
And out of the shiny black paint stared his eyes. Pale green eyes—the eyes of a cornered beast, trapped and ready to kill or die to get free.
Eyes Imani had seen in her dreams.
Nine
“Well, Councilor—I trust you can see why your client must be executed.”
Judge Thoughtgood’s voice broke through the spell that had fallen over Imani when she looked into the pale green eyes of her client.
“What?” she asked, looking away from J’are, who had stopped struggling, at least, and was simply crouching on the floor, growling menacingly like a cornered dog.
“I said, I trust you can see why this Kindred must die,” the judge repeated impatiently. “He is a menace to our society—the moment he got loose, he would not hesitate to rip out any number of innocent throats.”
Imani thought that there probably weren’t many of those, considering how the Yonnites lived. But she kept that thought to herself. Right now, she had to find a way to keep her client alive despite himself.
“I must respectfully disagree, your honor,” she said, lifting her chin. “I believe my client is simply, er, upset but that he can be calmed down and taken safely out in public.”
“Is that right?” Judge Thoughtgood’s blue eyebrows were almost up to her blue hairline. “And would you care to make the attempt of ‘calming him down’ yourself, Councilor?”
Imani felt a quiver of fear in her stomach. She remembered Commander Sylvan telling her that Nightwalker Kindred were prone to going into a “feral state” and how he had warned her she must not allow her client to go into that state.
But here he was, growling like an animal and clearly out of his mind. What had been done to him in the Yonnite correctional facility to force this reaction from him? And how in the world could she reverse it?
Please, she thought. Oh please, I have to find a way to fix this—a way to bring him back and save him. What can I do?
She took another look at the snarling, feral Kindred and a memory suddenly surfaced in her mind.
Her best friend in high school, Kara, had been raised on a farm. When her mom and dad split up, Kara had moved to the city to live with her mom. But she spent holidays and breaks at her dad’s farm, riding horses and helping him with his favorite hobby—training and rehabilitating abused wolfdogs.
A wolfdog was a crossbreed—a dog bred with a wolf in an attempt to marry the physical characteristics, strength, and stamina of the wolf with the tractable nature of a dog.