Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
“Fuck, man—are you crazy or what?” one of the human males asked Solon.
“I am not insane—I took vengeance for my female,” he growled in return. “That male forced himself on her back when you all attended school together.” He jerked his chin contemptuously at Brander, who still lay mewling on the floor. “Now he’ll never force himself on a female again.” He glared at the human males. “Tell me, did any of you hurt my bride, Abbey? Do I need to punish anyone else tonight?”
“No—huh-uh!”
“No way, man!”
They all backed away, holding up their hands in a “don’t shoot” gesture. Solon let them go. He had punished the one responsible for the attack. Abbey hadn’t mentioned anyone else hurting her while she was in school, so he felt fairly certain he had served justice to the one who needed it.
He just hoped that Abbey would understand what he had done and why he had done it.
36
ABBEY
“Oh my God, get out of the way—I’m going to be sick!”
Someone rushed into the ladies room and pushed past Maria and Abbey to get to one of the stalls. She began gagging and choking but Abbey could barely pay attention to her—she was still so shaken by the fact that Chris Brander was here at the reunion after all.
“I’m so sorry!” Maria said for the hundredth time, rubbing between her shoulder blades. “So sorry, Abbey! I didn’t know he was going to be here. I swear I heard he was in the UK.”
“It’s all right. It’s not your fault,” Abbey reassured her friend.
On her shoulder, Spex could obviously sense her discomfort because the little Eye-pet was rubbing against her cheek and making his soothing chrrrring sound.
“It’s okay, Spex—I’m all right,” she murmured, reaching up to stroke his furry little body.
“Pretty Abbey is not all right. Spex can feel her sad-mad-scaredness!” he protested.
Just then the woman who had been throwing up came out of the stall.
“Oh my God, Denise—are you okay?” Maria asked her, sounding concerned. “Your eyes are all wild and you’re shaking.”
“Yeah? Well you’d be shaking too if you just saw what I saw,” the woman returned. Abbey vaguely recognized her voice—she must be Denise Fetherfew who had been in her Algebra class. But her identity wasn’t important. Abbey couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad had just happened.
“What did you see?” she asked apprehensively.
“That huge lion guy—that Monstrum. He…he just…” Denise stopped and took some noisy breaths through her mouth—possibly she was trying not to puke again.
“He what? He what?” Abbey demanded.
“He ripped Chris Brander’s nuts off and threw them on the floor!” Denise gulped. “I think he might have ripped off his dick too. Oh, God!”
And then she was banging back into the bathroom stall to be noisily sick once more.
“Oh, no!” Maria’s hand on Abbey’s arm tightened. “Did you tell Solon about what Chris did to you?”
“No—never!” Abbey shook her head, feeling numb. “I mean, I told him I was, uh, attacked in high school but I never said by who.”
“Well it sounds like he figured it out,” Maria said grimly. “Come on, Abbey—I think we’d better get out there.”
“Yes, we should.” Abbey cocked her head to one side as her heart sank. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Maria asked her.
Abbey took a deep breath to try and calm herself but her heart was racing and her palms were sweaty.
“Police sirens. I think the reunion is over.”
37
ABBEY
“I’m telling you, Captain Hogan, you can’t charge him. You can’t even hold him.” Councilor Lizabeth Paige, the head of the Kindred Mother Ship’s Legal Department, shook her head, her long dark hair swishing over her shoulders.
Abbey knew this because she could see the blurry motion and hear the swishing sound. They hadn’t had to call the lawyer to represent Solon. The minute the news of what had happened at the reunion had gone wide—which hadn’t taken long since a lot of people had apparently recorded the incident on their cell phones—she had been dispatched from the Mother Ship to come and represent Solon.
“Tell me everything,” she had demanded and Abbey had listened numbly while Solon described getting a confession from her attacker and then severing his genitals and throwing them on the floor in front of a crowd of her old classmates.
Then she had called the police captain back into the interrogation room and coolly informed them that they had a “Rage Mauling” on their hands and that Solon’s actions were protected under the rulings of the World Court which held that no Kindred or Monstrum warrior could be prosecuted for protecting or avenging his human bride.
“Bullshit!” Captain Hogan growled. (Spex had described him to Abbey as having broad shoulders, short gray hair, and “angry-mad eyes.”) “We can too hold him—hell, he’s going to jail for what he did tonight! Do you know what kind of connections Chris Brander has? His father’s a goddamn state senator!”