Chapter Twelve #2
But when he got back to the administrative building, he became the apprehensive one.
He couldn’t say why the hair stood up on the back of his neck, didn’t know what his body had noticed, but he’d learned to pay attention to it at times like this.
He slowed his pace and let his senses absorb clues from the surroundings, and when his heart rate picked up a little, he stepped out of the moonlight and into the shadows by the front of the building.
He eased the door open, moving slow and quiet, and wished he had at least a knife with him. But no one brought weapons to a festival. He could only hope that anyone else in the building had been dressed for the same occasion he had been.
And there was someone else in the building. Someone hiding in the shadows, waiting for him. He might not understand the rest of it, but fighting? This was in his blood, and he trusted his feelings even when he couldn’t trust his thoughts. It was a relief to be back to something familiar.
Still, he was too disciplined to charge forward.
Did they know he was in the building? Any warrior worth the name would have noticed the front door opening, even as quiet as Theos had been.
He’d let in a bit of a breeze, cold evening air washing in, and probably the shadows had changed a little as the solid door had opened and admitted the moonlight.
Even without Theos’s sixth sense, any Torian—
And that was where he caught himself. Any Torian.
The people inside the building now, the people he was so eager to fight and kill .
. . they were Torians. His fellows. His brothers in arms. There was no one else in the valley, besides the prisoners, and they were all locked up.
Whoever was hiding in the darkness ahead was a Torian.
Whoever was waiting for him was Torian. What were their plans? Did they want to kill him? Did they have the same hesitations he did? Did they know him?
He stopped in the middle of the corridor. “I’m coming in,” he announced, his voice ringing down the almost-empty halls. “If you’d like to discuss this peacefully, speak up now. If you stay hidden, I’ll assume you’re hostile.”
There was motion behind him. Smooth but fast. An attack.
Theos’s body took over and moved as it had been bred and trained to do.
There was no room for doubts; one of his hands found the enemy’s wrist and twisted, the other grabbed the knife from the man’s weakened fingers.
Everything happened quickly, instinctively, and before Theos’s drew his next breath, the attacker had taken his last, the blade in his throat ending him forever.
It was too dark to see his face, and Theos didn’t drag the body into the light.
Instead, he pulled the blade free and stepped away.
He was trained to kill, but he wished he’d taken this man captive.
Still, there was no time for second thoughts.
“One down,” he called, “and now I’m armed.
If you have a full patrol in there, stand and fight, and we’ll see who wins.
But if there’s less of you than that . . .”
Theos could almost smell his opponent’s fear, and when he heard movement, he knew the intruder was heading out the back door, trying to escape.
Theos didn’t want to kill anyone else, but he’d be damned if he’d let the man go free.
So he sprinted, arriving at the back door just as it was opening, and wrapped his arm around the man’s neck—quick and tight, at just the right angle.
The enemy struggled, of course, bringing his arm up to stab ineffectively over his shoulder.
Theos lowered his head, felt the knife puncture his scalp and bounce off his skull, and then the struggling body collapsed, so suddenly heavy it almost dragged Theos to the floor.
He held the choke hold for an extra couple of seconds to ensure the man was out, then released him. Moonlight shone through the open door on to the man’s unconscious face.
Familiar, but not intimate. Torian, but not Sacrati. Theos had probably seen the man around, maybe even trained with him, but they’d never gotten drunk together. Never fucked, he was pretty sure. So that was something.
He heaved the man onto his back and carried him to the room where he’d left the Elkati.
His stomach sank when he saw the empty space, but before it had even hit bottom he noticed a darker shadow in a gap between the large desk and the wall.
The boy must have gotten partly loose somehow and worked his way into a hiding spot.
He was still in the building though, and still alive: Theos knew what death smelled like, and there was none of its stench in the room.
“Elkati,” he barked. “Worm your way out of there. I have someone to share your bonds.”
The boy didn’t move.
“If I have to drag you, I’m going to drive my knife into your thigh and use it as a handle.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the dark shape began squirming from its cave. An obedient Elkati and a live Torian prisoner. Theos’s luck was improving.