“Couldn’t agree with you more,” Baird growled. “Well…is there anyone else we can ask around here who might have seen your escapee?”
“I think I saw another structure on the ridge above this one,” Rarev offered. “Why don’t we go ask there?”
“Can’t hurt.” Baird shrugged, his shoulders rolling beneath his dark red uniform shirt. “Come on—let’s go.”
The domicile on the ridge above couldn’t have been more different from the small, snug cabin the human female had been occupying. It was a dirty, rusted, rectangular structure which might once have been white, but now was much closer to a muddy gray.
There was an enormous black vehicle that the humans called a “pick-up truck” parked in the rutted dirt driveway—it was what Olivia would have termed a “gas guzzler,” Baird thought. Chained up outside the domicile were three canines that looked like they needed much more to eat than they were currently getting.
The moment the canines saw Baird and Rarev, they jumped to their feet and ran to the ends of their chains, barking ferociously all the way. Baird wasn’t frightened of them, but it was disturbing to see how savage the creatures were. They were desperately trying to get to him and Rarev, yanking at the choke collars around their throats and rolling their eyes crazily as they bayed their bloodlust.
Baird was just wondering how they could get past the dogs to knock on the pitted aluminum door, when it opened on its own and a medium sized human male came out, squinting in the sunlight. He was dressed in ragged jeans with holes in the knees and had a skinny, bare chest and bare feet with long, dirty, hairy toes. He was also covered in tattoos—none of them done very well, Baird noted. Across his forehead in bleeding red letters it read, “Devil Spawn.”
It wasn’t just his appearance that was off-putting though—an acrid reek hung around him and came out of the open door in waves, making Baird want to gag. Grimly, he held onto his gorge. He didn’t know what was going on in the rusted domicile, but it smelled like someone was brewing a big batch of poison.
“The fuck d’you want?” the human snarled, when his eyes adjusted enough to focus on Baird and Rarev. Before they could answer, he turned to the canines—who were still barking and baying—and snarled, “Shut the fuck up, you fucking bitches!”
At once, the canines stopped their obnoxious noise. They crouched in the dirt, whining uneasily, as though they expected some kind of physical punishment. Baird was glad he could hear himself think again, but the behavior of the dogs still bothered him.
“Hello,” he began, but the human with the tattoos, wasn’t paying him any attention. Instead, he was staring intently at Rarev, seemingly fixated on the Monstrum commander. “Hey, you’re that lion-looking fucker! The one who married that snobby British cunt! I saw the whole thing online—it was everywhere!”
Baird saw his companion stiffen and a low, menacing growl rose in his throat. Slowly, he mounted the rickety aluminum porch steps until he was standing directly over the human male, glaring down at him.
“Be careful how you speak of my female,” he snarled, showing the male his fangs. “Emilia is a lady and my wife.”
“Uh, sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it. I mean, all bitches are the same right?” The human male shrugged his skinny shoulders uneasily. “Look, you don’t have to get up in my face.”
“I certainly do not enjoy it.” Rarev’s nostrils wrinkled in disgust and he took a step back. Baird thought the human male probably smelled of the strange poison fumes leaking from the open doorway.
“What do you want, anyway?” the human with the bad tattoos demanded. “I’m kinda in the middle of something.”
“We are looking for an escaped Monstrum,” Baird told him. “Have you seen a male, about seven feet tall, who looks a bit like the Earth animal called a “tiger?”
“Have I seen a goddamn tiger man runnin’ around the fuckin’ woods? No, I fuckin’ haven’t.” The human shook his head and spat off the side of his small, aluminum porch. “You sure he came around here?”
“Fairly certain,” Rarev said tightly. “If you see him, can you contact us?” He held out a card with his information on it.
“Maybe.” The male took the card carelessly and Baird had the feeling he was going to throw it away the moment they left. “So you’re Kindred, huh? Always wanted to see one in person. Big fuckers, ain’t you?” He grinned at them, exposing a mouthful of brown and broken teeth.
Baird didn’t see any point in answering this question, which seemed to be rhetorical.
“If you see a ‘tiger man’ call us,” he growled. Rarev descended the rickety aluminum stairs—they creaked under his weight—and they started to turn away, but then human called them back.