A Beast Among Gods (The Mac Tire Chronicles) by Garnet Davenport (big screen ebook reader txt) 📗

turned to walk away. He acted as if I was nothing. I wasn’t a threat. I wasn’t an ally. I wasn’t a stranger. I wasn’t his son. I didn’t matter to him. The one man that I had beaten pulled himself from the ground and looked at me. You could tell both eyes were going to be black and swollen. His lip and brow were split open. Then there was the bright red spot on his jaw that would probably swell and bruise before the day was up. But none of that mattered either. All that mattered were the words he spat at me and the look in his eyes.

“I’m going to enjoy ripping you to pieces,” he said with a sadistic chuckle and then walked away, rubbing at the blood coming from his split lip.

I curled my upper lip and growled.

He just scoffed and walked away. I gave one last growl before turning around and taking a quick sniff in the air. Extending my senses, I could see my own scent from walking through the hall from the room I had woken up in like a magical pathway. The gold color floated in the air and swirled around me as I made my way back. In the room, my golden scent was mixed in with other colors. That’s one thing I learned, everyone has their own fingerprint and scent. So that’s what gets left when someone moves around. There was a feathery pink scent that had been all through the room. It was nice and pleasant. I followed it to the other door in the room and opened it to find a closet with a handful of clothes.

I moved my way to the bathroom to clean up and then get changed. I didn’t know where I was supposed to go when I was done. After I changed, I walked back down the hall, but as I went this time, I looked briefly into the other rooms. They were all alike. Just like mine. Minimal with a bed and bathroom. There was nothing else.

I checked the door at the end of the hallway. Locked. The handle wouldn’t move. I waited there until there was a clicking sound that came from the door and then it opened.

“Time to go,” the man said. He motioned for me to walk in front of him.

I walked ahead of him. “Where am I going?”

“Just walk.” He pushed me forward.

I growled back at him.

We came into a large room with bench tables, several young boys already sitting at them eating. As we entered the room, it went silent as I was pushed along the side where he nudged me into a seat away from others at the end of one table. He stood over me as a woman that had the same pleasant scent that had been in my room set down a plate that was full of meats and another one that had a tan slop looking soup. I had never eaten anything that looked like this before.

I looked around at the plates and bowls sitting in front of the other boys in the room. They all had the slop-like soup. I was the only one who had the plate full of meats.

The woman left and walked back into an area I’m assuming was a kitchen. I lowered my head and watched from under my brow as the other boys continued to eat their meals. Every once in a while, someone would look over toward me and whisper out of the corner of their mouth at their table mates.

I sniffed over the meat to see if it had been cooked with anything poisonous or dangerous. As I picked up the first rib, I sniffed it from end to end before I took my first bite. I dug into the meat and pushed the slop to the side.

“Are you going to eat that?” A small voice came from the other side of the table.

I lifted my brow and pushed the bowl of sludge toward him. He looked like he could eat more anyways. He seemed thinner and smaller than a lot of the other boys that had been looking around at us.

“Thanks,” he said quietly and then rushed off.

I watched the room of boys as they watched this one littler boy walk back to his seat to eat the gross slop I had given him. He sat and ate with a speed I couldn’t even understand.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” another boy whispered in my direction.

I turned to him and snapped, “Why not?”

“Because he’s weak and won’t survive the trials.” The other boy snarled at the smaller boy I had given my slop to.

As I noticed the boys in the room, I found we had several things in common. First and foremost, all boys, all between the ages of nine and probably thirteen, and we all were large for our age—that is except for the boy that was eating the slop I had given to him.

“What trials?” I asked.

“The Trials,” he said, “we all have to go through four years of trials before we get placed in our clan formations.”

“What are the trials?” I asked, feeling annoyed this boy didn’t really answer my question.

“The trials are what all of us go through to prove our loyalty and our strength through achievements and other tasks,” another boy said.

“Why don’t you know about them?” the first boy said. “Who are you?”

“No one,” I replied.

“You’re obviously someone; otherwise, you wouldn’t be here, so who are you?”

As the noise started up, more boys turned to join in to figure out who I was. The commotion got so loud that it seemed overwhelming. My ears started to buzz from the sound. As I started to stand to get them to stop, the door opened with a bang, and six men entered before the man I knew as my father followed them in with a menacing look to his already hateful expression. The noise instantly hushed as they watched him walk toward