Gabrina's service announcement for the day: What you are about to read may be disturbing. It's something which is a real problem addressed by the ASPCA which is why I used it.

Please read and review. Sorry it's a shorter chapter!

Ch 19

Erik shuddered at the sound of gunfire and lumbered across the street, crossing from the shady trees to the middle of the sun-drenched street. He could hear the three men talking to one another behind a wall soundproofing the courtyard from the sounds that pierced the air.

With a sigh he rounded the corner and came to a sliding stop in time to see one of the men take aim at a wounded tiger. Erik closed his eyes in anticipation and heard the gunfire followed by a soft groan of death.

Erik opened his eyes to see all three men laughing and shaking hands. The animal lay dead within an iron cage, one shot to the chest which had wounded it, and another to the throat which had put it down.

Erik couldn't move. His feet became leaden, his mind reeling from what he had seen. He stared blankly at the dead cat's white underbelly. Its mouth was slightly open and the head tilted back as a result of the shot to the throat. The clean white fur was slowly turning bright red. It sickened him that something of such great beauty had been so easily destroyed.

There was nothing brave or honorable about the manner of killing. It was a beast within a cage that had no chance of escape. This was not hunting or sport. It was killing; mindless and ignorant slaughter. It was what Erik had spent the last three years doing to men and women.

"Which one do you want?" Joseph asked as he walked up beside Erik. "There are two left. Theodore's giving his kill to you."

Erik looked at the two tigers sharing the same cage. They had both backed up into the corner where a man was prodding them with a steel rod. The larger of the two, the male, bared its teeth at the man and swatted in vain at the pole as it protected the smaller female.

Erik took the gun from Joseph's hands. "What did you pay for them?"

"Fifteen thousand francs for the three of them."

"Where did you get them?"

"A man raised them from cubs. He brought them upriver just this morning for us. It's quite the honor."

"Pets?"

"Not really. They're wild animals raised by a human hand," Joseph answered as he crossed his arms. He turned to the man culling the two cats and nodded. "That's enough. He's ready to claim his prize."

Erik held the rifle up and took aim. "What purpose does this serve, Joseph?"

"What—what do you mean?" Joseph asked. He scratched his chin and shifted his weight.

"Does this make you feel brave?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Does this make you stronger, more virile at night when you take your wife to bed, perhaps? What does it do for your masculinity to shoot a damned animal in a cage?"

"Levesque—"

Erik lowered the rifle. Rage like he had never known roared through him as he stared at Joseph DeChantel. Everything he hated about himself was locked within a cage.

"You listen to me when I speak," he said as he poked Joseph in the chest with the rifle. "For as long as I have known you all I have done is listen to you and your damned family until I was blue in the face. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of all of you, every damned one of you," he said as he turned the firearm around and pointed the butt of the rifle at the three men gawking at him.

"If you don't want to hunt—"

"This isn't a hunt, it's a caged kill," Erik replied. He pointed the muzzle at Joseph. "We could make this a hunt if that's what you want. How fast can you run, Joseph? Or shall I lock you in a cage as well?"

"What in the hell are you doing. Levesque—"

"How about the two of you? Who wants to die first?"

Both men surrendered at once and held their hands over their heads.

Erik shifted his aim back to the cage and fired a single shot. Both cats jumped and squirmed against one another. The man standing by the cage dropped the bar from his hands and ran to safety on the other side of the stone wall. He was terrified of the young man who had walked up to the hunt but had instead become a red-faced madman carrying a rifle.

"I'll draft you a check for ten thousand francs," Erik said as he pulled at the broken lock and watched it fall to the ground. He threw the cage door open and snatched the pole from the ground. With the rifle still in hand, he gestured for the two men to drop their weapons, which they did without question.

Erik turned back to the frightened animals. The male crouched low and bared its teeth in a defiant hiss at the weapons in Erik's hands. Within its eyes Erik saw something familiar: fear. It was something he had seen in the eyes of every man and woman facing execution. It was a feeling he was acutely aware of within his own soul.

For a moment he wondered who hated mankind more, the tigers or himself. He smiled wryly at the two frightened beasts snarling at him. At least they had a chance to escape. They could disappear into the wild, into the darkest reaches of the forest and seek solitude. There was no such escape for Erik.

"I suggest you find a place to hide," Erik said through his teeth as he turned back to the three men. He ran the steel rod along the bars, sending all three scrambling to safety. The shrill sound agitated both cats into scurrying about until the female darted for the exit with the male directly behind her.

Within seconds they disappeared into the tall grass and the shelter of the trees. Erik threw down the pole and the rifle and watched until the brush ceased to move and covered their paths.

His eyes turned back to the dead cat and its blood-matted neck. There was nothing to be done. The hide would turn into a rug on a rich European's floor. Audacious tales of a magnificent hunt would be told around a fire as men with snuffs of brandy stood around and boasted about how they crouched in the jungle for hours and made the big kill.

Listening to them made Erik want to crawl into a hole and escape the whole human race. Every day that passed he hated the people around him a little more. There was no place for him. There had never been a place for him.

Erik knew what would transpire. Joseph DeChantel would most likely cancel plans for dinner and the operetta. He would write home and tell his parents what a mongrel the Levesque boy had become over the years. They would shake their heads and shrug their shoulders. None of it mattered. He couldn't return to France. Once his parents heard of him pointing guns and threatening three men they would never have him again. He would be branded a madman. There would be no place for him.

Once again Erik had alienated himself from his peers.

For the first time, he no longer cared.