Keary
A stranger’s life holds no bearing on mine, so why can’t I sit back and watch the show of beast eating man? What the fuck is this?
This human is a big guy—bigger than me—and I’m kind of digging it. It’s not often that I think someone is heavy. I’m not exactly struggling, but I definitely feel his weight. It makes me skip a little when I walk. Kind of exciting to feel his weight.
However, he’s unconscious. That might be why he weighs so much right now. He’s dead weight on my back.
I’m not entirely sure why I saved him. I’d seen him sprint by me when he first ran into the cemetery. He was on a mission to get away from the beast, so he didn’t see me, Notto, or Drystan at all. To be fair, the beast didn’t take much notice of us either as it charged after him.
Humans need better survival training. The only thing you’re going to do by running from a predator is activate their instinct to chase prey. And when you’re as deadly as this thing, it’s not worth the effort.
I suppose the human fascinated me because he knew exactly where he was going. He did have survival instincts, and he employed them pretty well. I think we were all surprised when the beast crossed into the cemetery without being hindered.
It was curious, and that might be why we followed.
Beasts tend to avoid the dead. Maybe that’s why humans were so apt to bury so many bodies in a single area.
No, that doesn’t make sense. It’s been a while since humans ruled the world, but this practice of burying your dead in a single place spans time and civilizations.
Think of the Ancient Egyptians. They dedicated entire desert valleys to the dead by placing their mummified corpses into temple shrines. Weird.
“It’s strange that the beast crossed into the graveyard,” Drystan says. “Right? Or am I making that up?”
I smirk, not only because he’s echoing my thoughts but also because his mind is strange.
While he’s only barely a hundred years old, his memories seem to transcend lifetimes.
It’s not unusual for the teko. In fact, it’s quite common.
But it makes talking to them fascinating because all those memories overlap until they have a difficult time knowing which events are taking place now, what happened in their lifetime, and what memories are lingering from a past they were never a part of.
“Yes,” I agree. “Either the beasts are realizing that the dead can’t hurt them, or…” I don’t finish because I’m not sure what the alternative is. I’m not even sure why they avoid burial grounds. It’s just something we’ve come to observe about them.
“Why did you save the human?” Notto asks.
And there it is. The question they really want to know.
I enjoyed watching this human survive the beast. It shouldn’t have happened for as long as it did. The beasts are stupidly intelligent, so they learn and adapt from every encounter. That’s what makes them so dangerous, especially toward humans.
There’s no real reason that I interfered and saved this man. When I saw that he’d been hit with the quill, I should have walked away. My amusement was over.
But… I had a very strange visceral reaction. A disgusting feeling filled my stomach, and I needed to save him. Even now, I know that my time to get this poison out of him is running out, and it makes my heart pound wildly.
Is that… fear? Am I afraid of him dying?
Impossible. Gods aren’t afraid of shit. What does it matter to me if he dies?
The thought brings the sensation of nails digging into my chest. It matters. It fucking matters, though I don’t know why.
I shake my head at Notto’s question. I don’t have an answer. “For fun,” I say. “What else was I going to do today?”
Neither responds.
The dark corridor extends for ages, branching off in various directions and getting deeper underground. I’m looking for one particular door though. Ah, there it is. This facility has a good first-aid kit, the kind that should have anti-venom.
Hopefully, it works on the poison, though its effectiveness will be hit or miss. This isn’t venom coursing through his body.
Drystan apparently knows where I’m going. He opens the door and flicks the lights on as the quiet hum of the generator begins. I should probably bring him right to one of the rooms, but I opt for the couch instead.
Though now that I’m standing over the couch with this human on my back, I’m not sure how to get him off my back without waking him.
I tap his hand. “Human man, wake up,” I say. He doesn’t flinch. I try a little more insistently, adding a tug on his hair. “Wake up.”
I’m relieved when he does. It’s a little awkward when I slide him off my back. His feet touch the floor, but they don’t hold him upright. I spin around to grab him as he sways. Hmm. Was he always this gray?
I reach for his pants and flick open the first button. His hand comes over my wrist, and I’m surprised by the strength in it. “You can wait until I’m dead,” he growls.
Amused, I tilt my head to look at him. “You think I want to fuck a corpse?”
Notto snorts.
The human narrows his eyes, and his fingernails dig into my wrist. Hm. I like his fight.
“I’m not trying to fuck you, although I think you have relatively little strength to fend me off should I decide to. I’m going to get the poison out of you, and unless you want me to cut these pants off, I thought it would be easier to just take them off.”
We’re in a rather intimate hold. My arm is low around his back, his body pressed to mine. He can’t even stand up, though given what I saw in the cemetery, he sure as shit would fight until his death.
I like that. It’s hot.
He hesitates. Notto sets the first-aid kit on the end of the couch, right in the human’s view. He doesn’t trust us. That’s for sure. Whatever is raging in his head, he decides to extend his trust a little. His hand falls from my wrist.
There’s no use hiding my smug smile at succeeding in this, which only makes him narrow his eyes. His entire body is stiff as I take his pants off then guide him to the couch.
Now that he’s laid out before me, I take a good look at him. His arms and his legs have a fair number of scars on them. Unsurprising. You don’t meet humans without scars anymore. That’s not the world we live in.
His hair is ashy blond. There are glimpses of it being really light, but he’s been running around in the dirt for a while, so it’s made darker with the same mud that’s dried all over his face, neck, and arms.
He’s big, just like I thought he was when I was carrying him. Thick thighs. Big arms. He’s been moving around the world for a long time.
I realize I’m staring when he narrows his eyes at me and starts to sit up.
I kneel beside him and examine the wound.
It’s deep and covered with dried blood and dirt.
The wound itself isn’t much to be concerned about though.
It’s the way his skin swells, bright red, with an unsettling number of black streaks moving away from the puncture wound.
“The best part was when you shot his own quill back at him,” I comment, trailing the path of black up the inside of his thigh.
It’s nearly reached his groin, making quick work of taking over his body.
There’s a line of it on the outside of his leg too.
The thin line stretches up past his hip, nearing his ribs.
“Thanks?” he answers.
I grin.
“You think you can stop it?” he asks.
My eyes meet his, and something fucking ridiculous happens. My breath actually hitches. His eyes are stunning. Such a light blue. There’s something almost familiar about them, a memory tugging at my conscience.
Which is impossible. I’ve never met this man before.
Notto hands me the serum in a thin syringe. Love that he already knew what I was going for. I take it from him and look away. It’s a good enough reason to break eye contact.
“We’ll see,” I say, making my voice as cheery as it can be. “This isn’t exactly an antidote for your particular ailment, but it might have similar enough properties to work.”
He nods. There’s no reaction when I stick the needle into his wound and inject. There’s no wonder he wasn’t able to stand. He can’t feel a fucking thing.
Well, that’s concerning.
I poke at his leg, moving up toward his knee until I get a reaction. He flinches just below his kneecap. Yep, definitely concerning.
When the syringe is empty, Notto hands me a second. I exchange it and inject more of the anti-venom. Maybe it’ll work. Maybe it won’t. At least I’m doing a good deed for the day, right? That counts for something.
If he dies, it won’t be because I didn’t try.
The thought of him dying makes my chest tight, and I frown. Seriously, what does this mean? My fingers pause in poking at his swollen leg while I examine it. It’s very similar to how I feel… My eyes drift toward Notto and Drystan beyond him.
Ew. Nope. Not happening.
I pull the needle out a little too harshly, and the man flinches. He felt that. Hopefully that means the stuff is working and not that I fucked his injury up more.
Ignoring the implications of this entire afternoon when I followed some stupid instinct to save this human, I busy myself with cleaning his wound.
“What’re you doing out in the world alone?” I ask. “Solitary humans are easy victims, especially for beasts.”
“Hunting the monsters that killed my parents,” he answers.
“By yourself?”
“I’ll happily die in the effort.”
“Uh huh. You realize that you’d just be wasting your life, right? That’s not exactly avenging their deaths.”
“In my experience, humans are cowards. No one I’ve met has been willing to join me.”
I look at his face again. I can feel his anger and frustration.
He meets my eyes. “I’ve killed plenty of monsters.”
Ohhh. Look at him threatening me. I grin. “Have you?”
“Yes.”
Notto clucks his tongue and leaves the room. He’s apparently not a fan of my new friend.
“I’ve killed lots of humans,” I tell him since we’re bonding over the blood we’ve spilled. “And monsters.”
He’s not as into this conversation as I am. Maybe it just feels like bonding to me?
We lapse into silence while I continue to work on his wound. It’s pretty clean now, but I don’t dare bandage it in case the poison needs to bleed itself out. I’m not sure how anti-venoms work.
“What is this place?” he asks.
I look up, my eyes trailing over our surroundings.
“An old doomsday shelter. Interestingly enough, the beasts that roam the world don’t show an aptitude for living underground.
They dominate the water, air, and land, but not underground.
Once we realized that, the doomsday shelters were sought out and kept up.
Expanded on.” I shrug. “If you can find one, it’s a safe haven that will offer you the basic necessities of life in relative safety. ”
“Like the libraries.”
I nod, flashing him a smile. Good that he knows monsters keep out of the libraries too. I feel like I should point out that it proves not all monsters are bad.
“There are a lot of these places?” he asks. “Doomsday shelters?”
“More than you might think,” I say as I wrap his ankle.
I’m relatively convinced that the poison isn’t going to travel back down and seep its way out of the wound.
My eyes travel, following the dark lines of poison up his legs, wondering if they’re retreating, halting, or continuing to move upward. “Do you feel any different?”
“Less nauseous,” he answers. “Who are you?”
My eyes meet his. “Keary. Who are you?”
He hesitates, but eventually, he says, “Rainer,” and I wonder if that’s actually his name.
“Well, Rainer, I’m going to be honest and tell you that I’m not sure the anti-venom I injected you with is a sure-fire fix. I’m not sure that antidotes exist for some of the beasts out there.”
Rainer frowns. “Why wouldn’t there be?”
“They fuck like monsters,” I tell him with a grin. He’s not impressed with my analogy since his response is to narrow his eyes. “They’re prolific breeders, and they don’t need to stay within their species, so there are hybrids upon hybrids upon hybrids. New beasts appear readily.”
He scowls. “How is that possible?”
“When you’re created in a lab, boundaries don’t necessarily exist as they would in nature.”
I said something that interests him because his eyebrows rise.
“So, on that note, you should probably rest with your leg elevated.”
And now he’s frowning at me again. I kind of want to bite his lip.
“Isn’t that counterintuitive? Gravity will make the poison travel to my heart quicker if my leg is elevated.”
“I’m not a physician,” I tell him. “I’m only repeating things I’ve gleaned over my long life. Also…” I examine his face. “You should wash first. You’re very dirty. Would you like assistance? A sponge bath, perhaps?”
Rainer glares hard at me. Oh, that’s sexy. I wonder if I can create an enemies-to-lovers environment. Perhaps I can make him hate me yet still convince him to get involved in some orgasms.
I sigh. I miss reading. Back when life was leisurely and boring, I could fill my days with books.
“I’m good,” he says as he struggles to get himself into a sitting position. He looks around. His eyes catch on Drystan, eyeing him warily.
“I bet you’re hungry though,” I say, so his attention comes back to me. “Thirsty?” He doesn’t want to trust me. That’s far more than evident. However, I can see that he’s both those things.
I’m not sure his single nod is him removing the barriers between us. He’s not extending me even a smidgen of trust, but he’s smart. He knows food and drink is the only way he’s going to regain his strength… if the anti-venom works.
My eyes drop to where the thin black line has crept up his leg. Is it less intense? Thinner? Has it diluted or retreated a bit? The way my heart races tells me I’m anxious to know the answer. I’m disturbingly distressed by the idea that it might not work.
I don’t have a backup plan. If it doesn’t work, he’s going to die. There’s a very real chance that I may have just prolonged his life by a few hours. A few days.
That’s unacceptable. If it doesn’t work, I’m going to need to bring him to a nephilim. This human, Rainer, will live.
My determination in that is more unsettling than the fact that I rescued him to begin with.