Series of Death, Draft 02, CH 57 (Patreon)

Marlot rested his head over his arms on the steering wheel, pad to his ear. “Are you sure?” Someone honked, and he looked up. Traffic had moved forward another foot. “There has to be something about who took him.”

These had not been a few good days, Marlot thought, as he drove forward another foot. He hadn’t expected his promise to go to Trembor’s place to take this long. He’d envision handing Nikal over to the Revenue bureau and walking away with a slate for his report. Instead, there had been questions, because of the stack of files at the house Marlot mentioned when he handed the hare over.

At least, Nikal had handed him the perfect excuse to be involved when he’d killed Gorrek in his territory. The ID cards had come up, but he’d played it as not being aware they had been the hare’s doing. His multiple calls to the department supported that. Still, those had only taken a few hours.

Then had come the other RIs, with Laidan Swiftkill at the lead. Convincing them he hadn’t been withholding information was harder. They didn’t only care about the hunter being caught, but the fact their productivity had been affected by the cases they hadn’t been able to close. Sleekcoat had been particularly nasty for some reason.

Still, again, there was nothing they could prove. Yes, he’d talked with some of the victims, but that was in line with returning the IDs, even the subsequent calls he could still explain as part of that, with the clear inability of the department to solve the issue.

“Sorry,” Afirna said, sounding as tired as he felt, even if she’d only been involved since this morning. “Everything within the system is in order. The name on the transfer file exists within the legal system framework, and I can even find six other prisoner transfers this person supervised. The problem occurs when I try to match that person to someone real. The identity only exists within the system.”

Marlot closed his eyes. “There has to be something at the caging complex itself then.”

“I went into that as deep as I’m comfortable, within the rules I need to play in. I have security vids of Nikal Swiftfall being escorted out of his cage by an officer. They walk through the complex, following a path that would take them to the transfer processing block, but they walk through a dead zone, and a few minutes later the officer walks out of it alone.”

Marlot looked up. “Dead zone, as in the cameras were turned off?” He moved the car forward the other foot just as someone honked and he looked over his shoulder, baring his teeth.

“Dead zone as in, there are no cameras there,” she replied. “I pulled the original blueprints as well as the official security layout, and they don’t match what I’m seeing here. I can’t tell you if it was done when everything was installed, but a handful of cameras on the security layout aren’t there. My guess is that if you were able to get in and do an independent check, you’d find passages going from each of the dead zones to somewhere else, maybe to one another, maybe to outside the complex, since your hunter never left by one of the official exits.”

Marlot chuckled, letting his head fall back on his arm. “Me, go in? Like they’d let an RI into a caging complex.”

“Hey, you’re a hero again. Have you looked at the newsies sites? Marlot Blackclaw, Hunter Stopper. Only RI to ever stop two of them.”

Marlot groaned. He didn’t need to check them. The newsies had hounded him almost as soon as the RIs had been done with him. Maybe one of them had thought they were a proper punishment for the perceived slight of Marlot acting alone. He didn’t want to think what they’d do if they could prove he had shut them out.

“Why do they keep insisting on making it sound like I was the only one involved in stopping Ruxul? We were all involved in the stalking and there were six or seven of us there when he was finally killed. I wasn’t even the one to kill him.” He’d told the newsies then, he told them again this time, because of course, they brought that hunter up once they’d cornered him and forced him to answer their questions.

“It’s not as dramatic as if it’s the shy RI who traveled to the city to bring the hunter to justice for the crimes he committed in his hometown. If it ain’t drama, it ain’t…. I can’t come up with something to rhyme with drama.”

Marlot looked up, paranoid some of them were following him. He did not want them there for this meeting. They’d all run off this morning, some scandal at the city control board or something they considered more dramatic than him hiding from them in his house, but maybe there were a few still desperate of a piece of Marlot’s story.

“How much for you to go in there and remove every mention of me?” He heard the construction ahead. The reason for traffic barely moving. Pavement repair, his pad told him when he checked, which had been after he’d been stuck. He knew the area, and Trembor was the one who navigated when he drove. He wondered if this was the kind of work detail Nikal would have ended upon. Or, as one of the rare hunters caught alive, he’d be headed to a research lab, to be questioned about the why and how of what he did.

“There isn’t enough money in the world for me to want to piss off the newsies. There’s a reason I work in the dark, Marlot.”

“But you can get a warrant and such. You can actually do this legally.”

“And then my name’s attached to it,” she replied. “You of all people know what it’s possible to do with a name attached to a report. They would find me and devour me. I’m not a predator outside of the information system, Marlot. Anyway, they’re on the financial advisor’s story now, seems she might have been using the city’s funds to pay to have a rival removed. By the time that’s over, they’ll have forgotten about you. Unless you go and uncover a third hunter.”

Marlot groaned. “Thanks for that thought.”

“What do you want to do about the dead zones?” she asked. “I have documentation, so I can send that to you. I’d rather not file the report myself. I’m not comfortable with the kind of financial and political powers needed to pull something like this off, and how it could be used against me. I am a recorded felon.”

“It wouldn’t matter, anyway. Like you said, it takes a lot to do something like this and I’m just an RI. Even if anyone listened to me, what could they do? I wouldn’t be surprised if, by the time anyone looked, everything would be in order one way or the other. Just… lose the information, erase any trace you were close to it, and thanks for checking.”

“Already done and you’re welcome.”

He disconnected the call and dropped the pad in the cupholder. So Nikal hadn’t made that up. Marlot had been certain the hare had been delusional, but what was the saying? It’s not because you’d crazy, there there isn’t an entire secret organization after you? That probably wasn’t it.

Still, unless Nikal resurfaced in his territory, he was someone else’s problem now. And if the rest of what Nikal had said and implied was also true, the hare wasn’t going to be seen anything soon. Maybe he should have killed him as Nikal had wanted.

* * * * *

The lion stepped out of his house as Marlot started up the path leading to it. He had to restrain himself from running. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that smile, to just look at him and not have to be afraid he’d be yelled at. For Trembor to be happy to see him.

He reached the lion at the bottom of the stairs and opened his mouth to say… something. He didn’t know what he’d say, and the need to decide was removed when Trembor wrapped his arms around him and held him tightly.

“I missed you so much,” Trembor whispered, burying his muzzle in Marlot’s neck and breathing in deeply.

Marlot hugged his lion and took in his scent. “I missed you too.” There was joy and desire in it, but also worry, some fear. “I’m so sorry, Trem. For never listening to you. For always having to get my way. For being so self-absorbed I didn’t see how it hurt you.”

Tremor took Marlot by the shoulders and held him at arm’s length, looking him in the eyes. “Stop. I’m to blame too. That Nikal was right about one thing he said. We both have trauma. I was so busy trying to help you get over yours I never even thought to tell you about Gorrek and what he did to me.”

“I couldn’t even tell,” Marlot said, and again he tried to recall one instance when his lion might have flinched at a touch, or at the way Marlot ignored his advice. He didn’t want to think he’d missed all of them.

“I buried him deep once I got out. Worked through a lot of it. I thought I’d put all of it behind me.” He stopped and Marlot searched his face and sent for a clue as to what he was thinking. “If I’d been free of him, I would have told you instead of running off.”

“Walking off,” Marlot corrected, smiling. And the lion rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry it took so long to come to see you; it was not how I planned things.”

Trembor smiled. “I did catch that interview where you regaled in taking credit for stopping both of the hunters.”

“They did what?” Marlot was going to go in there and kill whoever had—

His lion was laughing. “I’m joking. You didn’t leave them a lot to work with. Knowing you, they had to remove a lot of cursing anytime they tried to credit you with Ruxul.”

“I’m surprised there was enough left for even one interview. Maybe I should tell them Nikal’s vanished and let them freak out over that.” He realized that could be a way to shed light on what had happened at the caging complex. There was no way whoever was behind it could cover it up if—the scent of fear stopped him.

Trembor stared at him. “He escaped?”

Marlot shook his head. “I think it’s more his previous employer forcefully rehiring him.”

“Employer?”

Marlot shrugged. “Nikal mentioned some ‘them’ as part of his past a few times, so I’m guessing it was who he worked for.”

Trembor thought, and Marlot let him since he was also calming down. “Could it be the Protectors? That body armor seemed to be the real thing, and the way he fought, how good he was. I’ve never come across prey that fierce.”

“I asked Ba about it. She said she’d look into it, but that I shouldn’t hope for much. The Protectors are tight lips about anything they do even with ex-protectors, and if one of them has gone bad, the way Nikal did, she isn’t sure they’d even want to acknowledge he was one of them.”

“But he isn’t coming back?”

“I don’t think so. I certainly hope to never see him again.” He smiled and nodded toward the house. “But enough about him. I want to talk about us. How about we go in?”

“I have Herelex and Isenson while my moms have a talk with Bo at his place.”

Marlot nodded. “How is he? How are they?”

“Herelex’s tough, he’ll be fine. Isenson… He’s at that age we start to notice our parents aren’t perfect. This isn’t how I’d want any cub to find out their father’s flawed, like the rest of us. He’s shaken, withdrawn. Hopefully, once he’s back with his dad, he’ll get over it.”

Marlot looked around. It was only the two of them, other than the goat couple trimming the bushes at the house on the other side of the street. No newsies anywhere in sight.

“Then we do this here.”

Trembor chuckled, his scent growing nervous. “This?”

Marlot took the lion’s hand in his. “I screwed up, Trem, and I’m sorry. I have an appointment with a counselor to go through my problems. This ordering you around I seem to have a nasty habit of doing.”

“Marlot, you don’t—”

“Let me finish, okay?”

“Alright.”

“I love you, Trembor. I know that, on a purely technical level, I don’t have to do any of this, since we’re already mated.”

“Lifetime, if I remember correctly,” Trembor said, nodding.

Marlot smirked. “And aren’t you regretting it now?”

“Not at all.”

Marlot almost kissed his lion for saying that, but Dohrma had given him some advice when they spoke. “I don’t want us to jump right back into being mates, not with what happened between us. I want us to date for a while. Figure out of we can work, now that we know all this about each other.” He fully intended on using the time to make things worked, but he wouldn’t decide for both of them.

Trembor nodded. “I’d like that.”

A car stopped close-by and Trembor looked in that direction. Marlot looked over his shoulder as a hyena and lynx in enforcer uniform exited it. He cursed at the same time as Trembor.

They couldn’t have figured out he’d withheld information on Nikal, not about his involvement in the game they’d played, or how he’d lied about working out where the hare was hiding to explain how he’d caught him. But what else could it be?

Why was his timing so bad? The one good scent in this rotting mess was that there were no newsies to document the fall of their ‘hero’. At least he’d told Trembor his piece. Hopefully, he’d come to visit him—

“Derimak,” Trembor said, “Arkal. I thought I’d have longer.”

“So you knew we’d find out,” the lynx said. “You could have made it easier by turning yourself in, Trembor.”

“I know.”

Marlot looked from his lion to the two officers, trying to understand why they were addressing Trembor as if he was the criminal here.

“Trembor Goldenmane,” the hyena said, sounding pained. “You are under arrest for interfering with an enforcer investigation, for hacking into enforcer servers. Further charges will be laid at your feet as they come to light. Turn around, lace your fingers together. Know that if you resist or run, you will be chased and stopped. This is your only chance to ensure you are taken in alive.”

“Stop!” Marlot yelled, stepping between the enforcer and his lion, as he did as instructed. “What’s going on? Hacking? You have the wrong male. Trembor couldn’t break the law if someone had their feet on his neck.”

The hyena shook her head. “Are you two getting back together now? Trem, are you really doing that?”

The lion chuckled sadly, “I did say I thought I had longer.”

“No. Trem. What’s going on?” Marlot demanded, and this time he saw the wince, but his lion couldn’t expect him to stay calm.

“Evidence was given to the enforcers, showing how the cub Bo Goldenmane was accused of killing was actually killed, and the evidence planted,” the lynx said.
“Which meant we had to look into evidence that had been previously discovered that shifted the culpability to a different party. We traced that to a hacker, and they gave Trembor up for a reduced sentence.”

“You said you’d see Jasber in a cage,” The hyena said, “I didn’t think you’d do it this way. Wolf, you need to move out of the way.”

“No. You aren’t taking him away from me.”

The lynx stepped forward, but the hyena stopped him.

“Believe me, I want this as much as you do, but if you try to interfere, you’re just going to make things worse for him and you.”

“Marl,” Trembor said, “let them do their jobs.” His lion still stood, their back to them, waiting to be restrained.

“Fuck this.” Marlot turned the lion. Fuck taking it slow, fuck the law, and fuck his lion for being so damned good he’ll do the right thing even if it forced them apart again. He kissed him hard. Held him. Didn’t let go even once Trembor kissed him back.

He would never let his lion go again. The rest of the world can go just go and fuck itself.

Trembor pushed him away gently, ended the kiss. “We’ll get through this. This isn’t me giving up on us. It’s just…”

“The fucking right thing to do,” Marlot snarled.

The lion nodded. “I need you to call Cerek to come to pick up the cubs. No one knows about us yet, and he’s about the only one who won’t claw you on sight.”

“Trem,” the hyena said. “We have to restrain you and take you in.”

“Don’t,” Marlot begged of his lion. They could run. They’d be together. What else mattered?

“Look after the cubs until my brother’s here, okay?” He put his hands behind his back as he turned to present them to the officers.

“He’s going to be safe,” the hyena said as the lynx wrapped a plastic band around the lion’s wrists and cinched it tight.

“This is bullshit,” Marlot snarled but stayed where he was, as they took his lion away. He had his pad in hand, numbers in his head. He just had to figure out who the best ones were to call because there was no way he was staying on the side while the fucking justice system had its way with Trembor.

“I’m going to save, Trem, and you can fucking hate me for it afterward.”

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