P
SHAY DID NOT WANT the thing that came out of her.
It did not summon within her even the tiniest breath of maternal instinct. Not like she’d felt in all those years working as a midwife. All those times when newborns would cry and tremble and nestle into their mothers, and make Shay’s ovaries feel like they were tying themselves in knots.
But this was not a baby. This was a…thing.
An it.
She hated it. And had begun to hate it the second she’d felt it moving in her violated womb. And perhaps even before that. Perhaps she’d even begun to hate it when she’d missed her period, only four months ago.
Fourmonths?
How was that even possible? How was this thingeven possible? None of her experience in midwifery had prepared her for this. Not the strange, abbreviated, and agonizing pregnancy. And not the abomination that it had brought out of her.
She had always wanted to have a baby of her own. She’d just never found the right guy to settle down with. As her thirties had crept towards her forties, she’d considered artificial insemination.
But she’d kept holding out for that right guy to come along. Kept putting it off, and putting it off. And then it was too late.
The plague came, and society and all of its medical marvels went away. Nine out of ten people were infected by it and turned into animals. Or at least that’s how they acted.
It burrows through the frontal lobe, they’d said—those few newscasters that’d been holding out for some real scientific information on the plague, instead of the rampant speculation they’d been vomiting for two months straight. And then there was no more news.
The plague burned itself out within a year. But by then, the damage had already been done. There was no going back. And Shay had to concern herself with survival, and let the long-held dream of being a mother die, stillborn in her chest.
Stillborn. Which is what this thingshould have been.
Four months, she thought again, bewildered, sweating, and in shock—a shock both physical and mental. Deliriously, she remembered her own cutesy, sing-song voice, telling expectant mothers that, at four months, their little darling was about the size of an avocado.
But the thing that had grown inside of her had done so with alarming speed. And painfully. Stretching her insides in ways that the human body was not evolved to handle. She’d bled almost constantly as a result. At two months, her distended belly looked like that of a woman six-months pregnant. At three months, she looked full term.
Which was impossible. And yet, it had happened. Impossible that the thing that came out of her should be alive. But it was. And more than that, it was developed far beyond what a newborn human should be. It did not cry—it yipped like a small dog. It did not squirm helplessly about—it was already crawling, the umbilical cord still tethered to Shay. The thing opened fully functioning eyes and took in its environment with a dazed sort of curiosity.
A mutant, Shay thought, gasping with revulsion and jerking her leg violently away from the creature as it laid one of its grossly long-
fingered hands on her skin.
A mutant, just like all the mutants currently huddled around her, barking and growling and muttering. Because the plague had not just burrowedthroughthefrontallobe. It’d also done something to their genetics. Lengthened their arms. Hardened their flimsy human nails into dog-like claws. Widened their jaws. Extended their teeth.
A flash of lightning lit the rain-swept night outside. It strobed across the bestial faces of the mutants huddled around her, illuminating their eyes like spotlighted animals.
And she saw him coming through their midst. The King Mutant himself.
Khan. She thought of him as that, because he reminded her of Shere Khan, the bad-tempered tiger from the JungleBook. Massive, and cruelly muscled. Skin far blacker than Shay’s own brown complexion, so that he was just a huge shadow that loomed large, frightening the other mutants out of his way with little more than a deep growl and a rumbling chuff.
He wanted to see what Shay had produced. Wanted to see the thing that had come out of her. Because he’d been the one that’d forced it into her. And for that, she hated him more than all of the others that had kept her captive these long, nightmarish months. And it made her hate the thing she’d birthed even more.
The body that Shay had been leaning against shifted as Khan moved through the darkness towards her. She tried to brace herself to keep her head from hitting the stone floor, but pain lanced through her abdomen when she activated the stretched and ruined muscles of her core. She cried out and collapsed backward, the impact to the back of her skull setting her ears to ringing.
It was the Queen B that she’d been leaning against. And no, not Bee, as in honeybee. B as in Bitch, for that is what Shay called the creature in her mind: the Queen Bitch. Sometimes even said it to her face, though she didn’t know how much language the Queen Bitch understood. Sometimes she seemed to understand a lot. Other times, not so much.
Queen inserted herself between Khan and the thing still scrambling unsteadily about between Shay’s legs. Khan halted with a
throaty grunt.
Queen scooped up the newly-birthed creature, pulling it away from Khan and forcing it into Shay’s unwilling arms. Then she turned and planted herself in front of Khan, sitting on her haunches, as though to block his path.
Shay drew her head back, horrified as the thing that had come out of her thrust its malformed face into hers, it’s oddly adult-like hands pawing at her. She did not want this thing. Would sooner abandon it than nurse it—not that she could, as her confused body had produced no milk. Then she thought about killing it with her own hands. Felt revolted by her own desire to do so, but couldn’t deny the relief she would feel if it was no longer alive.
A deep, threatening growl snapped Shay’s attention back to Khan.
Seemed it had the same effect on Queen, because she wilted a bit as Khan stood up to his full, towering height, his long, thick arms swaying back and forth, the tips of his clawed fingers raking the stone-tiled floor.
No! Go away! Shay wanted to scream. Don’t let himget close to me!
But she knew better than to get loud when Khan was there. The fact that he hadn’t ripped her apart already was, Shay knew, a miracle. She was nothing to him. Nothing but a womb that had fulfilled its usefulness to him. And now, perhaps, she was just something to eat. She knew that he had only kept her alive this long because he wanted the thing she’d just given birth to.
Or, at least, wanted to see what it was.
Male or female?
Shay hadn’t even noticed. Had no desire to check. For four months, her presence had only barely been tolerated by him, though Queen seemed to have developed a sort of affection for Shay, and would often lay with her and groom her, and mutter soft syllables that had no meaning to Shay’s ears.
But Queen’s apparent affection for her did not mean she would risk Khan’s rage. Khan—and all the other males in the troop—obeyed their matriarch, seemingly out of instinct. But Khan was still the
alpha, and the balance of power between him and Queen B was complex to the point of often feeling fragile.
And at this moment, Khan’s curiosity was insistent. It held the threat of violence.
Perhaps it was Shay’s own birthing screams that had gotten the troop so riled. Perhaps it was the scent of blood and afterbirth in the air. But the tensions were high, and the natural order of the matriarchy seemed a flimsy thing now. If Queen didn’t get out of Khan’s way, he was going to hurt her.
And apparently Queen knew that too. Because she snarled at him, but shuffled to the side.
On he came, lowering back down to all fours. Shay didn’t dare to move. Didn’t even dare to look him in the eye. She had learned a lot over the four months of being held captive by these beasts. Learned a lot about how not to piss them off.
Khan snatched the thing out of Shay’s arms, causing it to squeal like a pig as he held it upside down from its legs. Then he sniffed it. And looked at what was between its legs.
A male, Shay noted, distantly.
Then Khan roared and flung the thing back at Shay. It yelped as it hit her in the chest, legs and arms scrambling, but seeming unhurt. Only frightened.
The huddled mass of mutants erupted into snarls and barks, jumping about and jostling violently into each other. Khan stormed away on all fours, thrashing through their midst, snapping at any other creature that got too close, though they all gave him a wide berth. He shot across the room to where there was something breakable—an old wooden chair—and smashed it to splinters in seconds.
And then he was roaring and charging back at Shay, and she knew this was it, knew this was when Khan was finally going to tear her apart, just like she’d seen him do to the other people she’d been with when they’d made the mistake of coming to this place.
She cried out, shoving the newborn creature away from her, feeling the umbilical cord pull taut, pain lancing through her belly.
She didn’t care. She kicked with her legs, trying to get her shocked and exhausted body moving again.
But then Queen was there again. She stood right in Khan’s path and roared back at him, her teeth bared.
Khan was not impressed. Only more enraged. He slammed into Queen. Smashed her to the ground. Bit her savagely in the shoulder. And Shay knew that she was next. But she couldn’t get her body moving again. Could only kick her legs and flail her arms, but the rest of her felt numb. Paralyzed.
Except her heart. That was thrashing violently. Like another mutant thing that was trying to get out of her.
But the second that Khan bit the troop’s matriarch, something happened.
Every female in the troop came hurtling in, jaws open wide, baring their teeth, snarling and barking. They surrounded Queen, and though they did not attack Khan, he drew back from their sudden ferocity, and their sheer numbers.
Yes, Khan could rage all he wanted. But the troop was still a matriarchy, and the females stuck together.
Queen staggered to her feet, holding her injured shoulder, letting out a nasty hissing noise as she drew herself up. She and the dozen females stood their ground between Khan and Shay, and the thing she had birthed.
Khan’s shock at being challenged dissipated in an instant, and he flew into another rage, but this one was impotent. He roared and thundered and pummeled his fists against his chest, and then against the ground. Caught some unlucky male that had not retreated fast enough and hammered both massive fists down on the thing’s back until it scrambled out of Khan’s reach, yelping plaintively.
Shay didn’t know how it had happened, but she suddenly realized that the thing she’d birthed was cowering in her arms, mewling softly. And she was holding it. Cradling it. Shielding it from Khan’s violence.
She realized this. And she didn’t let it go. Even when its worrying hands dug their little claws into the flesh of her breasts—even then,
she didn’t let it go.
Khan’s fury eventually petered out, and he stood there on the other side of the protective wall of females, huffing and glaring at them.
Gradually the anxious hooting of the others tapered off, and all was silent, save for the distant grumble of thunder, and the sound of the wind and the rain outside.
Queen stood there for a moment longer, staring down the beast across from her. Then, very slowly, and very deliberately, Queen raised her head and issued a long, eerie howl.
Shay was no expert on all their strange vocalizations, even after being trapped with them for four months. But she’d heard this howl before. It meant that they were going places.
The response was immediate from all save Khan and Queen herself. Every other creature that belonged to that troop went to all fours and began loping away, draining through the door on the other side of the room, and out into the stormy night.
Khan and Queen remained there for a moment longer, staring each other down.
Breathlessly, Shay waited to see what Khan would do now that Queen was not protected by her retinue of females.
But the howl had been made, and there was some instinct in all of them that moved them to obey—even Khan.
With one last snort and a giant huff, he spun and dashed after the others and out of the room.
Then it was just Queen, and Shay, and the thing in her arms, which had fallen silent, save for its soft breathing, warm and moist in the crook of Shay’s neck.
The Queen Bitch turned and looked at Shay for a long moment, and Shay did not know how to interpret that look. It was too dark to see much besides the whites of Queen’s eyes, but another pale flash of lightning lit her face, and in that tiny little glimpse, Shay could have sworn she saw something like sadness.
Queen offered one, low hoot. Almost mournful. Almost as though to say, Goodbye,friend.
And then she was gone with the others.
And it was just Shay, and the thing that had come out of her. The thing she didn’t want. The thing now nestled in her arms. The thing which Shay still had not let go of.
C 1
“OH, MOTHERFUCKER,” BRAN WHEEZED, jerking to a stop, one arm around Kat, leaning on her.
Well, let’s just be honest: She was holding up most of his weight.
Kat tried to pull him back into motion, but he hissed and planted his feet.
“Wait-wait-wait,” he begged, the hand not slung over Kat’s shoulders cupping the wound in his side, wincing against the constant ache that had, over the course of the last few miles, begun to stab viciously. “I gotta take a break,” he ground out.
Kat huffed. “Big. Man. Baby,” she growled in that low, raspy voice of hers.
“I liked you better when you weren’t such a chatterbox,” he groaned.
Kat stopped trying to pull him along. Issued a soft grunt, instead of halting words.
Bran, wincing so hard his eyes were squinched shut, now peeled them open to give her a sidelong look. He was worried that he’d hurt her feelings with that comment. Which was a very strange thing to be worrying about at that particular moment, because he was also very much worried that he was on the cusp of passing out and never waking back up.
For all the fact that she was pretty much effortlessly supporting a grown man, Kat was not large. About average for a young woman. She had an athletic build, but that wasn’t enough to explain her preternatural strength and endurance.
But one look at her face and anyone could connect the dots.
Pretty auburn hair, now lank with sweat and speckled with bits of leaves and sticks from sleeping in the Oregon woods the last few nights. Or were they still in Northern California? Bran was pretty sure they’d made it into Oregon by now, but that was beside the point.
Kat’s eyes were pretty too. Large, and nicely shaped, and amber colored.
And that’s where things became…unfortunate. The lower half of her face protruded slightly into something akin to a muzzle, her nose flat, and her mouth wide and thin-lipped, the corners of it reaching too far back to be normal—practically to her jaws.
Breathing a bit heavily through her mouth at the moment, Bran could see her teeth. Spread a little further, and grown a whole lot longer than what would be considered normal—particularly the upper and lower canines.
Kat was a hybrid. Part human, and part mutated apex predator. Some people called those predators infected. Other people called them crazies. Recently, Bran had heard the term primals applied to them, to distinguish them from the other people that had been infected and gone crazy, but hadn’t gone through the strange macroevolution that had changed their appearance into something apelike and vicious.
As a mix—three quarters human, and one quarter primal—Kat was not as malformed as a full-blooded primal would be. For a time, she’d worn a bandana around her nose and mouth to hide the deformity, and, save for her pointed fingertips and hardened, clawlike nails, it was easy enough to pass her off as a regular human.
But she wasn’t a regular human, and that was why she’d been able to pretty much carry Bran’s ass for the last two days, as they’d struggled their way north through a seemingly-endless forest.
She waited patiently for Bran to catch his breath.
He peeled his hand away from the wound in his torso and looked down at it, cringing. The bullet had entered at the back of his hip, and gone out the front. No organ damage, thank God. And Bran had a bottle of amoxycillin tablets that had staved off infection.
But infection wasn’t the only thing that could kill you. Bran hadn’t realized until recently how much he used his torso simply in the act of walking—which they’d been doing a lot of. And with all of that walking and unconscious torso-twisting in the process, the wound had never had a chance to really close, and it wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Just a slow, dark, veinous ooze, which had soaked his left pant leg down to the knee.
He’d pretty much been slowly bleeding to death for five days. Add to that the fact that he hadn’t eaten, and was severely dehydrated, and you can understand why Bran felt his empty grave yawning behind him, seeking to reclaim its escapee.
And he supposed he had Kat to thank for helping him escape the grave. But, much like prison, just because you escaped it, that didn’t mean it wasn’t still looking for you.
Plus, it was fucking hot. And damn humid. And there was something grossly unjust about that—how the air could be so moist, and yet his mouth feel so damn dry.
Bran took a few more breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, trying to quell the prickly, hot-cold feeling of looming unconsciousness. He cracked a single whincing eyelid and peered ahead of them into the dappled shade of the muggy, afternoon woods.
“You’re positive?” he sighed.
“Positive,” Kat husked.
“Well, how much fucking farther?”
“Not far.”
She’d been saying “not far” for the past three miles, and still no sign of the white building she’d claimed to have spotted on a distant hillside. They just needed a place to hole up for a while so Bran could stop moving, and hopefully let the wound in his side seal up.
Oh, and he also had another bullet hole that had gone in the back of his shoulder, and out right where his pectoral muscle connected to his armpit. But that one had been easy enough to immobilize with a sling made out of Bran’s shirt.
Unfortunately, his unclothed upper body was now riddled with a bajillion mosquito bites.
“You sure there’s people there?” Bran asked, wondering, even as he said it, if people being there was a good thing or not. Most folks were not okay with Kat, once they realized what she was, and that happened pretty quick if she wasn’t wearing the bandanna over her nose and mouth. And she’d apparently decided she didn’t care to wear it anymore.
Kat sighed gruffly and gave him a little tug, trying to spur him into motion. “Yes. People.” With the arm she wasn’t using to hold Bran up, she pointed to her nose. “Smell them. Close.”
Well, there was only one way to know if they’d be welcomed or kicked to the curb, and that was to get their asses moving and find out.
So on they went.
And lo and behold and thank the heavens, another half-mile of agonized hiking brought them to the edge of a massive clearing in the middle of the woods, beyond which Bran could see exactly what Kat had said. Except, Kat had said she’d seen “a building.” And this…
What the fuck was this, anyways?
Standing cautiously a handful of yards from the edge of the woods, Bran squinted at what lay before him. Adobe walls. Clay tile rooves. Arched windows. And a prevalence of crosses.
“Is that a…monastery?” Bran wondered.
Kat didn’t respond, and he wondered if she even knew the word.
A monastery? With people in it?
Bran thought the chances of a bunch of monks surviving this long was almost laughable.
But then again, if there were some brown-robed monks, surely they wouldn’t turn him away?
Who knew? Shit had gotten really weird over the past six years since the plague had toppled society.
“Walk?” Kat questioned him.
Bran grimaced, but there wasn’t much of a choice in the matter. He’d have to walk out there himself and meet whoever there was to meet. If he could make contact, he could ease them into the idea of accepting Kat—a hybrid that wasn’t feral. But if they saw Kat right at the outset, one of two things was going to happen: Either they wouldn’t come out to talk at all, or they’d let guns do the talking.
Monkswithguns, Bran thought, tiredly amused. Soundslikeabad movie.
Well. Nothing to it but to do it.
“Alright,” he grumbled, and unlimbered himself from Kat’s support. Not having eaten, and being dehydrated, Bran was pretty sure he’d lost at least ten pounds of body weight over the last five days. Weight he couldn’t afford to lose in the first place. But when he stood on his own two feet, he still felt grossly heavy.
He wobbled a bit, and his calves and quads immediately started cramping.
He forced himself onward before his abused muscles decided on complete mutiny. With his left arm in the sling, he could only raise his right, but that would have to be good enough. He wasn’t armed. Hopefully they’d be able to see that.
He stilted on unwieldy legs, hissing and groaning all the way until he was clear of the woods and back into bright, uncomfortably-hot sunshine. His pace was slow and cautious.
“Hello!” he called out at the silent buildings, eyes flicking from window to window, waiting to see movement. Kat claimed to be able to smell human habitation, but this place sure looked abandoned. No sentries posted, and that was odd as hell.
Pretty much everyone nowadays lived in some sort of settlement, and there were two options for keeping the primals off your backs. The first, and most reliable option, was to splice into some preexisting, sustainable power grid, such as a nearby solar or wind farm, and run high-voltage fencing around the entire perimeter of the settlement.
The second, and much less reliable option, was to have a whole lot of guards with guns keep watch, 24/7.
Bran saw neither.
So how in the hell were there even humans existing in this place?
Maybe there weren’t. Maybe Kat was mistaken. Or perhaps she really hadsmelled humans, but it had been residual scents from the road they’d crossed a few miles back, which had looked well-traveled —a notable oddity for this rural area.
“Hello?” Bran called again, his voice hoarse. “Anybody home? I’m not a threat to anyone. I’m badly injured and I need a place to rest.”
He didn’t resent the lack of response this garnered. Even if there were people there, he could appreciate their lack of compassion. If the shoe was on the other foot, and he was the one hunkered in a defenseless monastery, watching some stranger emerge out of the woods claiming to be wounded, he’d assume it was some sort of trick.
“If there’s anyone here,” Bran continued, loudly. “Come out and talk to me. Otherwise, I’m gonna assume this place is abandoned and—”
Then a few things happened, all in the same instant.
He heard Kat shout from behind him: “Bran!”
And when he spun—electric-hot pain shooting through his twisted torso—he saw a massive, dark-skinned shape coming at him fast.
On all fours.
“Oh shit!” he managed to squeak, and then was hit by the thing.
Primal!His mind screamed at him, panic blanking out the pain as his body flew end over end. When he stopped rolling, he immediately tried to start crawling away, as fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast at all. And he didn’t get far.
Something hit him in the side, right on his wound, forcing him over onto his back.
He grunted, unable to even cry out in pain as the breath left his body.
On his back, he saw the thing towering over him. The first thing he noticed was the teeth. Lips pulled back, exposing every single one of them. Savage eyes glaring down at him. Deeply brownskinned, and heavily muscled. And… Pants?
Odd how, even when you’re pretty sure you’re about to have your throat ripped out, you can take in a detail like that and be genuinely curious about it. Because primals did not wear clothes. They preferred to run about as nature intended.
Then Kat came flying out of nowhere. The creature standing over Bran barely had time to see her coming before she hit it hard in the chest, and, despite the size difference, sent it sprawling backwards. That was right about the time that Bran realized the kick to his wounded side was more than his brain could really handle at that moment, and he saw darkness closing in from the edges of his vision, his skin and scalp getting that feeling like he was about to pass out.
The creature that had tackled Bran skidded through the dirt and came up on all fours, as lithe as a panther, but didn’t lunge back at Kat. Instead, it seemed perplexed, as Kat planted her feet defensively over Bran’s fallen form and roared at his attacker. And looking at the two of them, facing each other down, Bran realized something else. Their faces. They were the same. Not completely human, but not completely primal either.
He’s a hybrid too? Bran wondered, hazily, and then promptly passed out.
C 2
DAYLIGHT.
Diffused, coming in through a window.
Illuminating a…room. Bran was in a room. He was indoors. And it was surprisingly cool. Not air-conditionedcool, but much better than outside. And he was lying on a bed. An actual, real bed. With a frame and a mattress and everything. He craned his head up to look down at himself. He could feel that he was naked, but had a thin, white sheet covering him.
The room was neither spacious nor cramped. Enough space for the bed in which Bran lay, a simple wooden chest of drawers, and a simple wooden chair. A square, maybe fifteen feet on a side. The walls were adobe.
Themonastery.
He was inside the monastery?
That was both highly alarming, and somewhat hopeful. He briefly wondered if it was the same day that he and Kat had happened upon the monastery, but he had a dim sense of time having passed. Cloudy memories came back to him. Waking to find someone working on him. A human—full human. A woman with brown skin and black hair pulled out of her face. She spoke soft words that Bran could barely hear as she labored over his wounds. Then waking to find himself alone, in the dark. Nighttime.
Waking again sometime later to that same lady putting a cup of water to his lips, which he drank greedily and then fell asleep again. Daytime again. Alone.
Nighttime again. Kat standing in the shadows, saying “Bran? Awake?”
And him saying, “Yeah, I’m awake,” just before passing out again. And now…daytime again.
So, unless he’d hallucinated those memories, or dreamed them up, then at least a couple of days had passed.
He leaned up, expecting horrendous pain. And it did hurt, but not near as bad as he’d expected. Pleasantly surprised, and now even more convinced that some time must have passed, Bran pulled the white sheet up and inspected the wound in his side.
It was covered by a clean, white bandage. No blood seeping through. He pulled the bandage up with a finger and found that the wound—or at least the exit wound on the side of his stomach—had been stitched shut. Safe to assume the entry wound had received the same treatment.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Bran murmured.
Gingerly he sat up. Saw that the wound through his shoulder had been treated much the same. And he didn’t feel that cloying heaviness of dehydration. Though, now that he was taking stock of himself…
Oh,God,I’mfuckingstarving.
The need for food hit him hard. Almost made him start sweating, hunger and nausea coiling around each other in his guts. But, as much as he wanted to find some food, there were more important things that needed to be handled first.
Namely, where was Kat? Was she okay?
And also, who the fuck were these people, and why had there been a hybrid here?
Something about it bothered the hell out of him, and for a moment, he couldn’t put his finger on it. But as he swung his legs carefully out of the bed and touched the cool stone floor with his bare feet, the realization dawned on him.
Not just a hybrid. A hybrid male.
Admittedly, the hybridization between humans and primals was something of a new and unexplored concept for Bran. His experience with hybrids was only with Kat herself, and, briefly, a sister of hers.
But where Bran had come from, it was generally accepted as fact that hybrids were always born female. Some trick of genetics and chromosomes that Bran had never really put much thought into. If someone had told him six years ago that a plague would cause ninety percent of the human population to go apeshit, he wouldn’t have believed it.
Would have believed it even less if you tried to tell him that the plague was going to fuck around with people’s genetics, and that some of them were going to go through some pretty sudden and drastic morphological changes, evolving into some hellacious offbranch of homosapiens.
So Bran had long ago accepted that the Universe didn’t really give a shit about what he considered possible. Having accepted that, Bran was much less disbelieving of seemingly-impossible things. And much more curious how the Universe was going to kick him in the balls again.
Sitting now, with his upper half exposed, Bran realized he was shivering a bit. He’d become so used to being hot all the time, that even the simple insulation of the adobe walls had him feeling cold. He pulled the sheet up over his shoulders, huddling beneath it as he slowly stood.
And froze, frowning.
Something like voices hit his ears. But…
No, they were definitely voices. Children’s voices, it almost sounded like. Except there was something off about them. The usual rhythm of the English language was absent. But was that really that weird for kids? They were constantly running around, making weird noises and shit. At least, that’s the impression that Bran got from his few dealings with them.
He padded quietly to the door of the room. Hesitated there, his hand reached out for the brass doorknob, but not touching it yet. Maybe it would be best if he stayed put. Whoever lived in this
monastery, they seemed friendly enough, right? They’d stitched his wounds closed and given him water. More importantly, they hadn’t killed him. And if his feverish dreams were to be believed, they hadn’t killed Kat either.
Also, he hadn’t been restrained.
So…friendly?
Maybe. Probably.
But, as has already been mentioned, the Universe really seemed to enjoy kicking Bran in the balls for his misconceptions. So, perhaps supreme caution was called for. Bran found it best not to trust anyone.
He eased the door open, aware of creaking hinges. But it didn’t creak. He gave himself a gap just big enough to stick his head through and peered out.
A long, straight hallway that disappeared out of sight to the left. Along the hall, there were tall, arched openings at even intervals, beyond which Bran could see a courtyard of sorts. No glass in those openings. You could step right through them and be outside. An open-air corridor, then.
The voices were clearer now, but he couldn’t tell where they were coming from.
He eased the door open a bit more. Leaned out so he could peer down the hall, first to the right—no one there—and then down to the left, where he could see…
An open door.
And a figure standing in it.
That’s where the voices were coming from, Bran was pretty sure. And now, with his head in the hall, they’d become clearer and he realized that they were actually speaking. It was just that they were speaking over one another, so no single word could be clearly heard.
Bran eased himself out of the room, trying to get a better angle on the figure in the doorway down the hall. He couldn’t see much, since the figure had its back to Bran, and was partially obscured by the door. A red and white plaid shirt. Dirty, khaki pants. Whoever it was, they looked pretty big.
Bran took one step further into the hall. And planted his foot on a sharp stone.
He only let out the tiniest hiss as he retracted his foot, but whoever was down that hall must’ve had ears like a bat, because they immediately whirled to look right at Bran.
“Oh, fuck,” Bran gasped, realizing he was staring right at the impossible male hybrid that had attacked him when he’d approached the monastery.
The second they locked eyes, the creature snarled and exploded out of the doorframe.
Bran had a brief fantasy of trying to run back into his room, but there was only about thirty feet between them, and the thing was hauling at him on all fours, inhumanly fast. Bran didn’t have a prayer, and knew that a door wasn’t going to help him anyways if the thing really wanted him.
So, he did the only thing he could think of in the moment, which was incredibly dumb. He knew that. But it was all he had.
He put up his fists.
You’re an idiot, he decided, as the being that clearly desired to separate his head from his shoulders closed within ten feet.
“Elijah!” The voice sharp and commanding and…feminine.
The hybrid male stopped like an onrushing dog reaching the end of its chain.
One pace away from Bran, whose upheld fists were now trembling in the air. His heart—briefly shocked into a pause—now started slamming with such force, Bran was pretty sure his wounds were going to start bleeding again just from the spike in blood pressure.
The hybrid rose from all fours. A big boy. Bran himself was about six feet, and he was looking up at this bastard. Fists still held out in front of him like an old-timey boxer. As though that would do him one damn bit of good.
Movement from down the hall.
A figure erupted out of the room.
A woman. The same woman he remembered nursing his wounds and giving him water.
Bran slowly unclenched his fists. His voice came out a little shaky. “Uh…ma’am? Help?”
The hybrid male’s eyes twitched to Bran’s now-open hands. Craned his neck forward just a bit, nostrils flaring as he scented them.
“Elijah,” the woman’s voice came again, not quite as sharp as before, but still very stern. “Don’t hurt him. I just spent the last three days trying to patch him up, and you’re not going to ruin all my hard work, are you?”
Bran sucked a breath in. Let it out. “Please don’t ruin all her hard work.”
The hybrid—Elijah, apparently—pulled his head back, his lips closing to hide his teeth, but his eyes still narrowed and glaring. He took a miniscule step back from Bran.
Another figure came bursting out of the room down the hall.
“Bran?” Throaty, and rough.
“Kat!” Bran said, feeling relief nearly double him over. “You alright?”
Kat bounded down the hall, then slowed drastically as she neared Elijah. He heard her coming, gave more space between him and Bran, then turned, his back to one wall, while Kat turned her back to the other wall, and the two slowly eased around each other like a pair of gunslingers.
“Elijah,” the woman snapped, now stalking down the hall towards them. “You knock it off right now. This is not how we behave.”
Kat, now having circled around to Bran’s side, put her hands on his shoulders and looked him up and down with a worried expression. “You. Okay?”
Actually, that sudden jolt of adrenaline had him feeling pretty shitty. He found himself blinking rapidly to fight a growing sense of faintness. Guess he wasn’t quite as hale and hearty as he’d thought he was.
“Fine,” he managed, still keeping an eye on Elijah. “You? You okay? Are you hurt?”
“No.”
The woman stopped at Elijah’s side, hands on her hips, looking every bit the pissed-off mom. She was black, as was Elijah, though not nearly as dark skinned. She wore what looked like a man’s clothing—a pair of jeans far too large for her, the cuffs rolled up and the waist folded and cinched with a braided belt. An oversized white t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and bottom cropped up.
She glared at Elijah, and he seemed to wilt to half-size under that look. Then the woman’s face softened and looked sorrowful. “You know better than that,” she practically whispered. “What are we supposed to do when we see red?”
Elijah managed to look a little sullen. “Count,” he said, the word awkward and unwieldy in his misshapen mouth.
The woman’s eyebrows arched. “Well? Do you need to count? Or are you calm now?”
Elijah cast a baleful look at Bran, then lowered his eyes to his own feet. “Calm.”
Bran swayed in place. Kat’s hands took him firmly, steadying him.
The woman looked at him, concerned. “You’re Bran, right?”
“Uh…” Blinking, blinking, blinking. “Yeah. But…”
Down the hall, more figures trickled out of the room. Children. Of varying sizes. All of them with very human eyes. And very inhuman jaws.
“Oh, Christ,” Bran murmured, suddenly feeling sick. “Are they…?”
The woman bustled forward. “I think you need to lie down again.”
