But then Brady was calling my name.
“Go ahead,” Jemima said. “I’ll be right with you.”
I nodded and then stepped into the shadowy confines of the pen. My senses latched on to Brady’s scent, and then his hand was wrapped around mine. Part of me reveled in the contact while the other part was rapt by the monstrous creature glaring at me from across the huge pen. It was hunched, eyes fixed on me as if it was deciding whether I was something to maim or devour. Neither option sounded appealing.
“Athos,” Brady said. “This is Indigo. She’s my … friend.”
Jemima exhaled softly behind me. Probably relieved that I wasn’t anything more.
Athos made a grunting noise and then stepped forward. Brady’s grip on my hand tightened.
“Friend, Athos,” Brady reminded the hound.
The hound’s gaze flicked from Brady to me, then down to our joined hands, and then he bared his teeth in a low growl. The air moved, wafting over my skin in soft abrasion, but instead of fear, a strange calm came over me.
I locked gazes with the beast as it padded closer. The air crackled with tension.
“Um, Brady?” Jemima sounded nervous.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Brady said. He tugged me, intent on pulling me out of the pen.
But there was no malice in the hound’s eyes. Just curiosity.
“No. Wait.” I released Brady’s hand.
“Dammit, Indigo,” Brady said.
And then the beast bridged the distance between us with one bound.
Jemima let out a shriek.
Brady a bellow.
But I was frozen in place. Trapped in the red-rimmed, azure gaze pinning me to the spot. Athos had landed right in front of me, grazing me with air but nothing more.
“Indigo, do not move,” Jemima said softly. “Brady, intercept and get him to back off. Now.”
But the world was melting away, and it was just me and the beast and the need to make contact. My hand came up to rest on his snout.
“Hey.” My voice was soft. “I’m Indigo. Nice to meet you.”
Athos closed his eyes and let out a low, chesty rumble. My forearm tingled strangely where the fomorian mark was etched.
“Motherfucker,” Brady said softly.
I stroked Athos’s rough snout as a strange warmth filled me. “You are beautiful.”
He chuffed as if in agreement and then opened his eyes. He studied me for a long beat and then backed away and lowered himself onto the hay set out for him.
Brady grabbed my hand and pulled me from the pen. He shut the door and then slowly turned to face me.
“Well. That was … unexpected.” Jemima crossed her arms under her breasts. “It seems Athos likes you. You got lucky. He could have taken your hand off.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I knew he wouldn’t.”
“You knew?” She snorted derisively. “And how long have you worked with hounds?” She sighed in exasperation. “I think you should take your friend back to the fortress, Brady, and explain to her that this is not a game. She’ll be paired with a hound of her own soon enough, and she needs to learn to follow my orders.”
Brady looked grim, but he nodded and then steered me away from the pens and out onto the moonlit path that led to the fortress.
He was silent as we walked, and unease pricked at my scalp. “Look, I’m sorry. I should have listened to Jemima.”
He stopped and looked down on me with a frown. “No. You followed your instincts. They were right. Athos likes you.” His smile was small, almost sad. “Another beast tamed by your touch.”
His attention was on my mouth, and I took an involuntary step toward him. He cupped the back of my neck, drew me closer, and pressed his lips softly to my forehead.
My skin tingled, and a shiver ran down the back of my neck. My hands fisted his shirt, tugging him closer, and reveling in the scent of him.
Shit, what was this? What was this swirling, topsy-turvy feeling?
He released me. “Come on, we best get back. It’ll be suppertime soon.” His tone was gruff, and there was that edge of sadness again.
“What about the troop meeting?”
He shrugged. “There isn’t one.”
He continued up the rise, and I followed. He’d lied to get me away from Hyde. Looked like Brady wasn’t afraid of taking what he wanted. And it seemed, right now, that something was me.
Ten
The mist in sector two was thicker. Visibility lower, and yeah, stamina was tested. Right now, my legs burned and my chest ached as I ran, rolled, and ducked to avoid a strike from the barbed tail of the skitter. It was a cross between a worm and a beetle. Four feet in height and fast. The fact it was the same color as the earth didn’t help, and with the mist … Well, things were hairy.
Five solid minutes we’d been trying to take it down, and it had avoided any mortal wounds. At least my blade was getting some use.
Carlo and I worked as a team, taking it in turns playing bait while the other one tried to get in a strike, but the beastie was wily.
“Fucking hell,” Carlo said. “It’s a super skitter.”
I slashed and missed. Again.
The ground trembled.
“What was that?” I leaped out of the way of the skitter’s stinger.
“It means we have company and not the kind you’d invite over for tea and cake.” Carlo rolled out of range and grabbed for his radio. “Lloyd, horde incoming. Backup required.”
He sounded calm enough, but the word horde didn’t conjure images of glitter and rainbows.
My blade finally connected with the skitter, and it went down. “Yes!”
“Good,” Carlo said. “Real good. Now, we need to run.”
“What?”
The ground shook.
Carlo grabbed my hand. “Now.”
We broke into a full-on sprint away from the skitter but not toward base.
“Carlo?”
“Trust me,” he huffed.
His legs were longer, but I kept up easily, resisting the urge to hit blur mode. The mist took it out of you, the composition of the air making it harder to recover after a blur sprint. I’d learned that the hard way.
The radio crackled. “Carlo. What direction are you leading them?” Lloyd said.
“Sector three, east line.”
I’d never been this close to sector three. My eyes stung as the mist thickened. My lungs screamed for clean air, and my face tingled.
Shit, the concentration of whatever they put in the air to ward off the fomorians had to be high there. But why was it affecting me so acutely?
Carlo skidded to a halt, bringing me to a stop with him.
“What were we running from, by the way?” I gasped for breath. “And are we safe now?”
“Horde of skitters. There are mounds, like anthills, to the west. They send out scouts to find prey.”
“That thing we killed was a scout?”
“Yeah, scouts are bigger than the regular skitters, but the regular ones have deathly venom.”
Great. “So, we’re safe here?”
“They don’t like it this close to sector three. It’s like each sector has its own unique ecosystem. The gradient of whatever they put in the mist affects the evolution of the creatures in that area differently.”
It made sense. I rubbed my arms and thighs through the feytech skin that covered them.
He swept a hand through his epic mohawk. He’d grown out the middle and shaved the back and sides down even more since the last time I’d seen him, and the style suited him to a T.
He winked at me. “You like it?”
“Meh.” I made a seesaw motion with one hand.
The radio crackled. “Horde spotted.” Lloyd’s voice came down the line. “Firing now.”
“Firing?”
There was a whoosh down the radio.
“What just happened?”
Carlo’s slender face broke out in a grin. “Just a little bonfire.
Skitters don’t like flames.”
“We have flame throwers?” My voice went up an octave.
“Has Brady not shown you the armory yet?” He looked surprised.
No. Brady had been keeping his distance the last couple of days. We’d shared a room for a week at the fortress, and I’d become accustomed to the rise and fall of his breathing as he slept. But since we’d been allocated to barracks four, he’d kept away.
“We can head back now,” Carlo said, his gaze sweeping the landscape. “It’s pretty quiet.”
Yeah, we’d been lucky on this patrol. Harmon and Devon, not so much yesterday. They’d run into a pack of wild hounds, taken down two, but barely escaped with their hides when more had arrived. The knights had been alerted to the coordinates of the sighting and would be chasing it up.
Harmon had been shaken when he got back. His eyes wild. He’d told me that the hounds in the catacombs had nothing on the real thing.
I was glad Carlo and I had managed to avoid the pack.
We set off toward the barracks at a steady pace.
“He’s just giving you space, you know,” Carlo said.
Huh? “What?”
“Brady.”
My neck heated. “How much do you know?”
“Ooh, there’s stuff to know?”
I sighed. “Carlo, just answer the damn question.”
“We know that he’s taken a shine to you. Lloyd told me he offered to share his room with you?”
“Yeah, at the fortress.”
“And that he fed you from his plate at the fortress.”
“Yes, I know what it means now. I didn’t at the time.”
“So, would you have rejected his offers if you’d known?”
The question threw me. If I’d known what the little things meant would I have pulled away?
The thought of not sharing cocoa with Brady, not lying above him and listening to him sleep, not being close to him opened an empty place inside me.
But this was Carlo feeling me out to find out what I thought about Brady, and I wasn’t ready to go there … yet. Things were still raw after Hyde. Too raw for not much having happened.
“I don’t know.” I smiled wanly. “But I don’t regret it if that makes sense.”
Carlo shot me a sideways glance. “Yeah, it does.” He frowned as his gaze slid past me. “Hold up. Lookie here. What is this?”
I followed his gaze to see a solid wooden post sticking out of some gray shrubbery. Weird. We got closer, and Carlo moved the shrubs out of the way to reveal a hole in the ground. A hole that had steps.
“What the fuck?” Carlo muttered.
Critters didn’t need steps.
We exchanged glances.
“What do you want to do?” Carlo asked.
Maybe this was a test, or maybe he was genuinely asking my opinion. It didn’t matter because I knew what I wanted to do. “Radio it in and then investigate.”
He pouted in consideration. “Yeah. I’ll go down a little way. Make sure it’s clear. You stay up here.”
Urgh. “Really?”
He clicked the radio. “Lloyd, we found a hole in the ground with some steps.” He unclipped the tiny holotab attached to his belt and then rattled off coordinates.
It never failed to impress me how feytech and the old ways combined to make our jobs easier.
“On our way.” It was Brady’s voice, and my ears perked up. “Justice okay?” he asked.
“She’s doing good,” Carlo said. “Wanna speak to her?”
“No. We’re on our way. Over and out.”
Ouch.
Carlo winced. “I think that’s Brady giving you space.”
Space I wasn’t sure I wanted.
Carlo gave me a nod. “Stay sharp.”
He descended into the hole.
Long seconds passed in silence.
“Carlo? You okay?”
Nothing.
Okay, just give him a minute …
“Carlo?”
Shit. He’d told me to stay put, but what if he was in danger? What if a critter had him? I mean, the fact there were steps there didn’t mean there were no critters.
Fuck it. I pulled my blade from its holster and climbed down. The earth closed in around me, and a musty smell tickled my nostrils. It was dark, but my nightblood vision kicked into gear.
“Carlo?” I whisper-hissed.
Nothing.
How far had he gone? The steps went down a little more, and then I hit level ground. A tunnel. Wide enough for a critter. A shudder ran through me. I didn’t have any protection spray on, so if there were critters down there, I was fucked. The tunnel widened as I went on, and it got harder to see even with my night vision. But then a light flared up ahead.
“Dammit, Justice,” Carlo snapped. He was holding up a penlight and waved it at me. “Stay up top. Not hard instructions to follow.”
“I was worried about you.”
“Aw, I knew you were sweet on me. Come and give me some sugar.”
I ignored him about the sugar, because it was standard Carlo speech, but joined him by the weird aperture in the wall.
“See this,” Carlo said, running the light over the hole in the wall. There was a weird blue tinge to everything. “Some kind of spray coating.”
“Yeah, like spray paint.” I reached out to touch it, but Carlo grabbed my wrist.
“Tut, tut, gorgeous. Got to be wary of the possible toxins in the paint.” He shone the torch downward to what looked like a nest. “Something was sleeping here.”
The hole was big enough for a critter or two, and there were more holes farther down with the same blue spray shit.
“We need to get a sample of this stuff.”
“Good thinking, twinkle toes.”
“How much coffee have you had today?”
“Not enough, babe, not enough.” He pulled a vial from the silver pouch at his waist—feytech material to withstand the mist. Carlo was the science guy of the troop. He even had a portable lab in a suitcase. He used a slender silver scraper thing to coax some blue shit off the wall and into the vial.
“What do you think it is?”
“I have no idea. But those steps are manmade.” He frowned. “I have a hypothesis, but I’ll need to do some tests first.”
He stoppered the vial and popped it into the silver pouch.
The radio crackled. “Carlo, where are you? Where’s Justice? Over.”
Was it bad that the hint of panic in his voice gave me a thrill of satisfaction? Carlo arched a brow at me.
“We’re coming up,” he said. “Stay put. Over and out.”
“Come on,” Carlo said. “Let’s get the heck out of here before Brady goes caveman and forgets he’s supposed to be playing it cool and giving you space.”
* * *
Barracks four was a huge two-story affair with a watchtower. Apparently, the tower was a standard feature of sector two and three barracks. There was a telescope up there and access to the control room. The place was fitted with intercom radio communication to the other sector two and three barracks and had its own generator. The dorm was wider, and the beds slightly larger. There was even an armory, but I’d yet to be given a tour of that.
Right now, my attention was on Carlo as he worked at his portable lab. He’d set up on the dining table and was hard at work doing science stuff. Thomas and Aidan were out on patrol. Lloyd was on control room duty, and Devon and Harmon were sleeping.
Brady stood by the coffee pot, mug in hand, watching Carlo work on the sample while I hovered at the nightblood’s side.
“Get some rest, Justice,” Brady said.
“I’m fine. I need to know what that stuff is.”
“You have weaver class in four hours. Go get some rest,” he insisted.
He was right. I’d been on patrol all day, and weaver class was at sunset, but still. I had to know.
“Venerick will be swinging by in an hour,” Brady said in Carlo’s direction. “Do you
think we’ll have answers?”
Carlo didn’t respond. Instead, he peered into his microscope, staring at the slide he’d prepared. “Shit.”
“What?” Okay, so I was crowding him, but this was exciting stuff.
“Neurotransmitters.” He sat back and ran a hand over his face. “I can’t be certain without further tests, but … I think this chemical was used to keep whatever was in the holes asleep.”
“You mean to keep the critters asleep?” Brady said.
Carlo nodded.
My mind was whirring. “Critter tunnels go deep, and they spread wide.”
Carlo’s eyes lit up, and he nodded. “Uh-huh, go with it, Justice.”
Oh, fuck. “You don’t think the fomorians did this? Sprayed the tunnels and … and used them to get around the mist … To move beneath us.”
Brady cursed. “It explains why the critters were silent for so many months and coincides with the increase in raiding activity. It’s why we can never fucking catch the bastards.”
“And why they’ve been able to get so far in and withstand the mist.”
“But we’ve had a shit-ton of critter activity the last few weeks,” Carlo pointed out. And then he slapped a hand on his forehead. “The cave-in at the catacombs … It woke them up. It disrupted the sleep cycle.”
Brady drained his mug and pushed off the counter. “I’m calling this in. Justice, get some rest. Now.”
“Wait!” I took a step after him. “What’ll happen now?”
He stared levelly at me. “I don’t know. We call it in, and we wait for orders.”
“They’re going to go in, aren’t they? The knights?”
His nostrils flared. “It stands to reason.”
This could be it. This could be how we stopped the raids. “Dammit, I wish I didn’t have weaver class.”
Brady cracked a smile. “Yeah, me too, Justice. Me too.”
“Go,” Carlo said. “Get trained up so you can use that awesome shadow casting power to kick some fomorian ass.”
He was right. It was a weapon, a tool, and I needed to master it.
Eleven
Shadow Weaver: The Nightwatch Academy book 2 Page 7
