Seamus examined the locking mechanism on the gate after I closed it. “Hmmm, this doesn’t appear to be broken. How did these two get out?”
“Maybe someone forgot to lock it.”
He shook his head thoughtfully. “The locks engage automatically on the cages, and they can only be unlocked from the main control panel or with a coded key. I’ll have to get security to pull up the surveillance for today.”
I looked around until I spotted a number of security cameras fixed at regular intervals high up on the walls. There was one camera for each enclosure and two near the entrance. It made sense that if you were housing dangerous creatures, you kept them under close surveillance.
I left Seamus muttering over the lock and walked toward the other cages, intensely curious about what kinds of creatures they kept there. The first three cages I passed were empty, but my pace picked up when I saw what looked like wisps of smoke drifting out of the fourth one.
“Watch it, lass. Don’t get too close to that one,” Seamus called just before the interior of the cage came into view. Heeding his warning, I moved to the other side of the floor before I turned to see the occupant of the cage. My jaw dropped and my eyes nearly bugged out of my head.
“What the . . . ? You have a freaking dragon in here!”
I gawked at the greenish-brown creature breathing small puffs of smoke as it watched me with large green eyes eerily similar to those of a crocodile. Leathery wings were folded against its scaled body, and it crouched in the back of the cage like a cat about to pounce. It was small for a dragon, roughly the size of a very large bull, so I figured it must be young. Dragons are not native to North America so I wondered what in God’s green earth had brought this one here.
“Not a dragon, a wyvern actually.” An olive-skinned man with short black hair walked up to stand beside me. “And a mean one at that. This one burned five people and killed two in Utah before we managed to catch him.”
I tried to remember what I had read about wyverns. They are smaller and faster than their dragon cousins but not as powerful. They breathe smaller flames, and they have two legs instead of four. Whereas dragons are intelligent, wyverns are closer to animals, kind of like a crocodile with wings and just as deadly.
I shivered. “What will they do with him?”
“We have a place down in Argentina where they actually train them to hunt vampires. We’re holding Alex until they can send someone to get him. Don’t get too close to him. His flame has a good three-foot reach, and he won’t think twice before trying to fry you.”
I couldn’t stop the laugh that burst from me. “Alex? You named a wyvern Alex?”
The man chuckled. “One of the men who caught him gave him that name. He said the beast was as surly as his older brother.”
Shaking my head, I smiled and held out my hand. “Hi, I’m Sara.”
“Sahir.” His dark eyes were warm when he smiled. “I have heard much about you.”
I made a face. “Yeah, you and everyone else, apparently. I think warriors gossip more than the girls at my old high school.”
Sahir’s laugh was deep and rich, and I liked him immediately. He moved toward the hellhounds’ cage, and I followed. The hellhounds growled menacingly, but he ignored them. “I have cared for many creatures, but this is the first pair of fell beasts I’ve ever had in my care. They are extremely rare. When I heard how they were captured, I must admit I thought the story was fabricated – until I saw you walking with them.”
“Damndest thing I ever saw,” said Seamus, who had finally stopped studying the lock on the hellhounds’ cage. “I thought for sure someone was going to die when I saw them coming at us. Sahir, you have any idea how those beasts could’ve gotten loose?”
Sahir shook his head. “No one’s been here since they brought them in last night, and the keys are in my office. Perhaps we should check the security footage.”
Seamus and I followed Sahir to his brightly lit office at the back of the building where Sahir logged into a computer. A few clicks later, he brought up the feeds from the security camera in the building. “All camera feeds are stored in the central security database, but you can view them from any computer if you have clearance,” he explained to me as he clicked on the camera for the hellhounds’ cage. He opened the digital footage and went back an hour. Then he slowly fast-forwarded until we saw the door to the cage click open and the hellhounds leave the cage. Sahir switched to one of the outdoor cameras, and we watched the hellhounds push open the main door and run from the building.