Chapter 32 #2
Saint glued himself to her hip, his hands balled into fists and shoved into his pockets to keep himself from reaching out to her. She sent as much reassurance through their bond as she could.
“What about you?” Riven asked Elsie as she walked up. “They got you, too.”
“Like Steve said, it wasn’t real.” She twisted her leg to see the twin punctures in her calf. It was bruised, and the skin around each hole was already softening, beginning to rot. “Ew. I’m not going to get rabies or anything, right, Mar?”
Marley snickered and rolled her eyes. Demons’ temperatures ran way too hot for infections like rabies to survive in their bodies. The healer made Steve take off his shirt, and she wiped the blood off his skin using the back of it, the only part of the fabric that wasn’t already saturated.
“Want me to soak him?” Riven offered with a grin. She stepped in front of Elsie and Saint, blocking everyone’s view long enough for the demon to give the huntress’ hand a quick squeeze.
There weren’t any serious injuries beyond the two bites. Steve had a few bumps and scrapes from running blind through the woods, and Elsie had one minor scrape on her arm that she refused treatment for. It would heal on its own before bed.
She grabbed the feet of one of the yotes and dragged it over to dump it on top of another. Saint, Trenton, and Grady joined in, and soon all seven bodies were stacked in an unruly pile. Branches and sticks were quickly added, and then the demon’s bodies were set on fire.
Grady started a separate fire for dinner, and they all settled around it to dig in.
“Those things were fast,” Trenton complained, “but I still can’t believe you let one bite you.”
“Shut up,” Elsie muttered, taking a big bite of beans.
“You screamed like a girl,” he teased.
“She is a girl,” Marley snorted.
“The Captain’s not a girl,” Grady disagreed, drawing everyone’s eyes. “She’s a legend.”
“Suck up.” Trenton flicked a stick at him.
Elsie burst out laughing, followed by the others. Not Steve, though, she noticed. The warrior was too caught up in his own thoughts to join in their goofing around.
It was morning before the demons were burned to ash, and the sun was coming up by the time it was cool enough to handle. Riven soaked the smoldering ash to prevent lighting the forest on fire, then she, Elsie, and Saint loaded them onto a tarp.
“What are you doing?” Trenton asked, standing next to Marley, both of them with their arms crossed over their chests.
“We’re doing what’s right,” was all Elsie said.
They dragged the ashes back to the remains of the pack’s demolished den and spread them there, returning their souls to their home. They’d have to sort themselves out from there.
Grady had followed out of curiosity, and he’d pulled a disgusted look when he realized what they were up to, but he stayed and observed in silence.
“Was your ritual necessary?” He asked on the way back, a healthy dose of condemnation in his voice. “They were harassing the humans. These demons weren’t even remotely harmless or deserving of your pity.”
“We killed them because we were ordered to, and because they were a danger to the humans,” Elsie said.
“But they were still living beings deserving of a proper burial. Do you ever wonder if any of the demons we’ve killed have come back as vengeful spirits because we failed to treat their remains properly?
What if those spirits killed someone? Are we as responsible for those deaths as the demons themselves? ”
Grady didn’t say anything after that, but he seemed to consider her questions along the way back to camp. Everyone washed up and got ready for bed, but before she made it to her tent, Trenton approached.
“Can we talk for a minute? Without the demon?”
Elsie glanced at Saint, careful not to groan in complaint. They’d slept in separate tents the entire trip, not wanting his scent to linger on her body while hunting the yotes. She was looking forward to curling up in his arms.
“Sure.” She knew her demon would stay close enough to listen in while she had a much-needed talk with her people. They’d been so busy there hadn’t been a chance to catch up on everything she’d missed while she was gone.
Grady joined them, and Elsie gave him a little smile. They’d planned this ahead of time, the sneaks. They sat around the embers of their fire.
“Your seal is still intact.” Trenton set the tone for their conversation. He was intentionally trying to keep Marley and Steve from joining in.
Elsie huffed out an annoyed breath and spared them a wry grin. “Not for lack of trying. It was mostly data gathering with a whole lot of pain sprinkled in for funsies. As it turns out, removing my skin does not nullify the seal. Who’d have guessed?”
Grady’s mouth dropped open and Trenton’s eyes hardened.
“On a positive note, your theory was right, Grady. Dominion is within the area you thought. I didn’t bring the right map to show you, but we were less than six hours from Nest Apothecary.
Unfortunately, I can’t give you an exact location because they were obsessively secretive.
They had us in an enclosed box the whole way there, then blindfolded us until we reached the right floor.
” She rolled her eyes. “It was definitely underground and huge.”
“Ha, I knew it.” Grady’s whisper was animated.
“Did you find what you expected?” Trenton asked. Elsie shot a glance at Grady.
“I told him about our conversation,” he said. “You’d been off on your own for so long, I couldn’t keep it from him.”
“I see how you guys are. This is more of a ‘discover if Elsie’s crazy’ talk than a ‘find out if the boss is okay’ talk. That hurts my feelings, here I’d thought you missed me.”
“A little of all of the above,” Trenton smirked.
“I wish I had better news on the results of our attempted espionage. We only got out once to look for evidence, and we were caught. I got enough to give me more questions and make me more suspicious, but nothing concrete.”
“What did you find?”
“Bits and bobs. A couple of security installation guys on the husbandry floor were putting in stronger doors because of a breakout that, in their opinion, had to have been intentional. Apparently it happened during their briefing, and they’ve got Dominion locked down like a fortress.
You can’t even get in the elevator or walk through doors without a passkey.
They did not pontificate about who or what was released, though. ”
Trenton glanced at Grady quickly.
“While you were gone, there was a third chimera. Second squad was sent after it, and they took some pretty heavy casualties. Everyone survived, but the injuries were extensive,” Trenton told her.
He almost sounded conspiratorial, like he was going along with her crazy theory, but she didn’t dare to hope her second command was coming around. Not until she was sure.
“It sounded like there were three or four that were released,” Elsie said.
“The fourth may be lying low for now, or they may not have survived. While sneaking around the same level, we came across a dead demon marked as ‘fusion unsuccessful.’ Almost all of them had scars or fresh incisions on their heads. They had various scars across their bodies, but each demon had a specific scar in the same spot. They weren’t healing like normal, either. ”
“We also found evidence that they didn’t kill all of Saint’s pack. They were experimenting on at least two in that facility, right up until a week before we arrived. My guess is they didn’t want him to discover their existence and cause problems.”
Grady’s eyes widened. “What did they do with them?”
Trenton gave the big man a mocking look. “Is that a real question? We know what they do with failed experiments. How did the demon react?”
It was Elsie’s turn to mock him. “How do you think he reacted to finding out people he thought were dead for the past year had been tortured instead?”
“Tortured?” Trenton scoffed. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”
Elsie stared at him for a second. He was on board with a little conspiracy talk, but he wasn’t willing to entertain anything deeply negative about the people handing out their orders.
She pulled her shirt back, showing them both the regrowing skin Cornick had poured acid on.
The patch was bigger than her palm; the skin shiny, puckered, and dark pink.
“Want to try that again? It’s been weeks, and I’m not fully healed. If this is what they’re willing to do to me, I can guarantee what they’re doing to those demons is a hundred times worse.”
“Gods Captain, what the hell?!” Grady came to his feet. His huge hands reached out before he clenched them at his sides.
“Why is it healing so slowly?” Trenton’s eyes were narrowed.
“I guess that’s what happens when your body is forced to heal itself every day for over a month. The same thing happened to Saint when Clairemont had him. It took a long time for his injuries to heal, even after I removed his collar.”
Elsie glanced toward the tents where the others were trying to sleep.
“Cornick gets off on other people’s pain.
Sometimes he’d watch the procedure, but most often he’d watch my face, waiting for my reaction.
In the end, he didn’t get what he wanted.
No matter how many times or how many ways he tried, it grows back with the seal mark perfectly intact. ”
“How can he get away with that?” Grady growled.
“In his words? He’s got friends in much higher positions than Mordane. He can get away with murder if he claims necessity.”
“Where did you go after?” Trenton asked. Grady shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “I haven’t told the others that you went AWOL, Marley would freak, and you don’t need another hit to your reputation.”
“What’s that supposed to–”
“I need to know, Captain. For peace of mind, and to keep the trust between us.”
“Mordane told you?”