Chapter 66
Sixty-Six
Tobias
Thankfully, I wasn't the last man to make it back to the rally point. I also wasn't the least injured this time. Gideon was. There were plenty of men who didn't have any wounds, but most of them were at least filthy from hitting the ground or blood splatter, like Elijah.
Gideon wasn't.
I saw him standing with his arms crossed, his gun hanging loose around his chest, and his dark uniform perfectly clean.
He was scribbling something on a little notebook - which immediately made me paranoid.
He couldn't know what I was doing, could he?
But just as I started thinking up excuses to explain everything, another pair of men stumbled into the clearing we'd made our meeting point.
"No kills?" he snapped.
The boys - no, they were men now - shook their heads. The braver tried to explain, "We heard the call to retreat. We ran, but they chased, so we had to get away. You said not to lead them back here!"
"And I said we needed to worry more about killing them than meat!" Gideon growled, spinning to look at me next. "And what about you, squad leader?"
"Five kills," I said, making up the number on the spot. "One was a dog."
Gideon's head snapped up. "A what?"
Oh no. No, I wasn't supposed to use that word! Heaven help me, but I had to come up with an explanation, and fast. That, or I could use a little bravado to give me time to think!
"Dog," I said, enunciating the word as if he simply hadn't heard me - or wasn't smart enough to know it. "That's what the beasts are called."
And his eyes narrowed. "How do you know that?"
"My mother told me stories about them. Long ago, people kept them as pets, I guess?
I don't know what else to call those things, and there are a lot of 'beasts' up here, so that's what I've been calling them.
They aren't the beasts with trees coming from their heads.
They aren't the ones wild men use to move the boxes on wheels. So, dogs."
"Dogs," Gideon said, nodding. "I can go with that. And you killed one?"
"It tried to bite me. That hurts." I shrugged. "So I crushed its neck. A big red-and-white thing."
"I think I saw that one!" Jeshiah said, shifting closer in the cluster of people. "It got Abiel."
I growled under my breath. "Then I'm glad it's dead."
In truth, I wasn't. It wasn't. I'd made the story up like Ayla's Rose had told me, but Abiel was dead? How many more of my team had been lost? Turning toward Jeshiah, I headed that way, no longer caring about Gideon, what he thought about me, or any plans the man might have.
"Who else was lost?" I asked. "I saw Elijah."
The man's name was barely out of my mouth before he moved to my side. "Timon's wounded. I got him back, though." He gestured to the young man only a few feet away.
And that was when Uriah joined us. "I got separated. One of those beasts - "
"Dogs," I corrected, deciding we were all going to use this word now.
He nodded. "Dogs. One took my gun!"
"They do that," Jeshiah agreed. "And they had more this time."
"I don't know why we're not hunting the animals!" Elijah snapped. "They don't fight back!"
"The dogs do," Jeshiah grumbled.
"We have meat," a man said on his other side. "Lots of it. God delivered it to us."
Elijah turned to look right at me. "God."
"Yeah..." I said, wondering what he thought about that.
Considering he'd seen his sister out there already and knew she was the Phoenix? He also knew she was with the Wyvern, and that Dragon had saved his life. Knowing those two even the little I did, I was sure they'd talked to him - and in a language he understood - but he said nothing else.
Sadly, we couldn't wait forever. The world was quickly growing brighter, and we were still almost a day's walk from the compound. As the sky lightened, men began to murmur, and the sound was growing more worried and frustrated.
"Okay!" Gideon called out. "It is not safe for us to camp out here tonight. Those demons are still out there! We need to head back, and that means walking under the fires of Hell."
"It's not Hell," Jeshiah grumbled.
I hissed at him, silencing him. Timon's head whipped around, but the young man was smart enough not to say anything.
But Jeshiah's comment wasn't the only one.
A wave of whispers spread through the surviving hunters, and too many of these men were looking around as if hoping someone else would speak up. No one did.
So Gideon kept going. "Stick with your squad. My group will lead. Flank out, watch the edges, and stay under the trees so the skies won't burn your skin away." Then he turned, finding me amongst everyone else. "Tobias, your squad can guard the back, since you killed a beast with your bare hands."
"And my squad is brave enough to stand their ground," I agreed.
"Then let's go!" Gideon pushed through the people, walking forward like he knew exactly where he was going.
I didn't know how he did that. I knew general directions for things, but all these trees looked the same to me.
Somewhere, there was a path. If we found that, I'd have a better idea, but not much of one.
As much as we'd turned, run, and altered our course, I'd be lucky to pick which way held the compound and which held Dragons.
Group by group, men headed out. Some aimed to the left, others to the right, but my men stood our ground, waiting until everyone was on the move. Only then did we finally start walking, trailing well behind all the rest.
Eventually, Timon broke the silence. "How many men died, do you think?" He wasn't talking to anyone in particular.
"Fewer than normal," I said.
"I saw the Wyvern," Jeshiah admitted. "His tail..."
"Blue," Elijah agreed. "So blue. Usually, the feathers on his arrows are too, and when one hits you, you're as good as dead."
"The Phoenix is the same way," I said, watching Elijah closely.
One corner of his mouth curled. "Yeah. She is."
"Wild woman?" Jeshiah asked.
I simply looked at Elijah and lifted a brow, making it clear he could answer that however he wanted.
The man simply nodded. "She is now."
"Now?" Uriah asked. "What was she before?"
"My sister," Elijah said, keeping his eyes forward but halfway closed against the growing glare. "Her name was Ayla Ross before. She's six years younger than me and was sacrificed to the Dragons for trying to kill a man."
"Oh..." Timon breathed. "I remember that. Mr. Cassidy preached about her often."
"And the other," Jeshiah said. "Gideon's wife. Is she a wild woman too?"
"Haven't seen her," Elijah admitted. "What about you, Tobias?"
"Merienne?" I shook my head. "My own wife roomed with them as a girl. That's the reason no one else wanted to marry her."
"Lucky you," Elijah said, then left it at that.
We walked. No one looked at each other, but I got the impression Elijah had just dropped some heavy knowledge on the younger members of my squad. Now it felt like no one was sure what to say. I knew I wasn't. I certainly didn't trust any of these men.
None of them were like Sylis. Elijah may have changed his mind about hunting after Ayla saved him - or maybe not - but that didn't change the fact that he'd been fine with it before then.
Jeshiah asked too many questions. For all I knew, Gideon had offered him a promotion if he got something incriminating out of me.
Timon wasn't any better. He watched everything, those pale eyes of his lingering like he was trying to memorize every detail he saw.
Then there was Uriah. That young man was quiet.
He wasn't straight out of sermon, but only barely.
Twenty-one? Maybe? I didn't know, but when I'd asked about his duties before being assigned to us, he'd told me he'd been a gatherer - like me.
So after a while, I decided to bring it up, hoping to get a little information of my own.
"Hey, Uriah? When did you join the gatherers?"
He hummed, thinking. "September? Not that long ago. Why?"
"What did you do before that?" I pressed.
He looked down, kicking at the leaves as he passed. "I was being trained for rendering."
"Ugh, really?" Jeshiah asked. "You had to cut them up?"
"It," I corrected. "That's meat."
And Jeshiah spun, shoving into my face. "That's more than meat, Tobias. Maybe you can ignore it, but those people have hands and wear clothes!"
"They are the Devil's beasts," I reminded him. "That is what the elders say, so that must be the truth."
"And," Elijah added, "if you think otherwise, there's a good chance you'll be left with Abiel."
"What?" Timon asked. "Why? We need all the hunters we can get."
Elijah looked over at me, then pushed out a heavy sigh.
"Look..." And he gave me his full attention.
"Turn me in if you want, Tobias. We all know you've excelled as a hunter, but I didn't. Haven't.
The only reason I'm still here is because my sister recognized me.
The Wyvern decided that was a good enough reason to give me a chance.
They killed others. They didn't care, and I'm not foolish enough to think it was God who saved me. "
"A Dragon did," Jeshiah breathed.
Elijah nodded. "One who speaks English when he wants to."
"But," Timon tried, "they say demons can do that. They tempt and lure. They manipulate us. The Devil will use all tricks to confuse us."
I listened. I also said nothing, letting these men work it out on their own. Back and forth, they discussed the lessons we'd all been given, but Elijah eventually asked the question that shocked me the most.
"Does it matter?" he asked.
That was enough to make me speak up. "What? Which part?"
"Any of it," he said. "Everyone spends all their time saying what evil, horrible things Dragons and wild men can do.
They warn us of how easy it is to be corrupted by them.
You know what no one talks about?" He looked at the rest of the guys.
"The Bible has a very clear list of what we're supposed to do.
Killing demons before they kill us isn't in there. "
"It's not," I agreed. "But the elders say - "
"Damn the elders!" he snapped. "Damn them straight to the Hell they're so worried about! We are out here, blinded by the daylight, and for what? We're hunters who aren't hunting. We've been told to bring women back when we're throwing ours away."
"What?" Uriah asked. "How are we throwing women away?"
"Ayla Ross," I said, "Merienne Kobrick."
Elijah gestured at me, showing that was who he'd meant.
"We eject the women who cause a problem, bring in ones who are locked away forever, and why?
" He grunted in annoyance. "My mother was in quarantine!
She wasn't possessed. She wasn't confused.
She told stories of a better place, and that place?
" He stabbed a finger down at the ground.
"It's up here. It's where we were headed.
It's a town with a gate and houses. I know all those words, and I'd told myself the similarities were just coincidence - until the Wyvern spoke. "
"What did he say?" I asked.
Elijah looked at me. "When?"
"Before he dropped you in our camp and said to eat deer."
Elijah chuckled once. "He said my mother was a Dragon. She wasn't, though. She looked like the rest of us. Like all the women I know."
"Mine had hair as black as the night sky." And I lifted a brow. "Her eyes were as brown as the dirt under our feet. Maybe darker. She didn't look like us, but some of those wild women looked a lot like her, and they went to quarantine."
"Wait?" Jeshiah begged. "You mean we came here... Abiel died because we need more wives?"
"Bloodlines," Uriah guessed. "I don't know if you boys have checked the list of women you can consider, but mine isn't a long one."
"Mine either," Jeshiah agreed.
Timon kicked at the ground. "My mother was in quarantine too.
She was brown. Her skin, her hair, and her eyes.
Not like the trees, though. Just..." He grunted.
"Like the dust on a shelf. Tan, maybe? Close enough to everyone else that I always wondered what happened to her.
My father said it was a sign of the Devil's influence on her. "
Three men from quarantine, and two who weren't. I was doing the math in my head, and that wasn't the breakdown of this group I'd expected. I also wasn't sure how the other squads compared. Had I been assigned all the men like myself as a test? As a reward? Did they even realize what they'd done?
"There's more of us than I expected," I said when things fell into a lull again. "I always thought having a mother in quarantine was pretty rare."
"Was for us," Elijah said. "Not the same for them." And he tipped his head at the younger men.
"And yet they put us all together," I said. "Makes me wonder if this is some kind of loyalty test or something."
"Are you loyal, Tobias?" Elijah asked.
I gave him a long, cold look. "About as loyal as you are, Elijah. I'm here to do as I'm bid."
Ayla and Callah were the ones doing the bidding, but they didn't need to know that.
It was also just vague enough they could take it however they wanted.
If someone tried to turn me in, I'd make it clear they'd been the ones talking and expose them.
I simply hadn't had enough to bring a complaint.
I'd say I was the squad leader, so I would handle it on the next hunt.
I had a million reasons to cover myself all lined up and ready to use.
But if they said nothing? That meant there were more people upset about the way things were in the compound than I'd realized - and that gave me hope.