Binding Ties
Page 19

“Are you awake?” she whispered.
“Yeah.” He forced himself to lift his head enough to survey the area.
The cave wasn’t very big. He doubted if he could even stand upright in the space. There were four young with him. When the attack had come down, there had been six.
Two kids were missing.
“Where are the others?” he asked.
Kayla’s dark eyes hardened. “She took them. I tried to stop her, but there were too many of them.”
“Too many what?”
She scowled as she nodded toward a dip in the cave wall. Eric shoved himself upright so he could get a better view. His head spun and his vision wavered, but it was still easy to see what she meant.
The dip in the wall was actually an opening—a hole leading out. Just outside of that lay freedom and more of those odd Synestryn demons that had attacked the settlement. They were far too human-looking for Eric’s peace of mind, wielding steel weapons that gave them an advantage of reach. Their pale skin was covered in mangy patches of fur, but they were heavily muscled and faster than any human could hope to be.
These were the creatures that had attacked his people.
“How long have we been here?” he asked Kayla.
“A long time.”
To a kid, that could be anything from hours to days. Based on the rumbling hunger in his belly, he was guessing it had been at least a day, but he couldn’t be sure. The blow to his head had fucked with his memory enough that he couldn’t remember the exact hits he’d taken. He healed fast, but it burned a shit ton of calories.
The other young were asleep, and he hated to wake them. Kayla was steady in a fight, but the others were more emotional. He didn’t want a bunch of crying to draw attention to the fact that he was awake. “Is anyone hurt?”
“Peter was, but he’s better now.” She eyed the Synestryn with a death stare worthy of any fully grown woman with a bad case of PMS. “When can we kill them?”
“Not now. And not before I say. Got it?”
She nodded. “But we get to kill them soon, right?”
“Give me a minute to figure out what’s going on.” For all he knew, they’d have to fight their way through six levels of demons before they reached the surface. He might have risked it with a group of his brothers, but not with a few scrawny kids who hadn’t even lost all of their baby teeth yet. Hell, at least two of them were far closer to human than Slayer on their best day, and those who could shift even a little had absolutely no control over it.
“I’ve been watching them,” said Kayla. “They all obey her.”
“Her who?”
“The ugly one—the one who brought us here—called her Treszka.”
Ugly one? That rang a bit of a bell, but not enough that Eric could sort it out in his rattled skull. “How long have the other kids been gone?”
“A long time. Like, as long as it takes for Miss Carmen to read us a story.”
Story time was only about an hour long—an eternity to someone like Kayla, who was pathologically incapable of sitting still. The fact that she was doing so now meant she had to be a lot more afraid than she appeared.
“I need you to be brave, Kayla,” said Eric. “I need you to help keep the other kids in line. Don’t let them run off and do something stupid if I’m not around, okay?”
He could smell the surge of fear waft out of the little girl, but none of it showed on her face. “Why wouldn’t you be around?”
“I need to find us a way out. If I get a chance to slip away and do some scouting, I will. But don’t worry. I’ll be back. I’d never leave you down here.”
“You shouldn’t leave,” said Kayla. “Treszka is really mean. I can tell.”
“How can you tell?”
“By the way she smells.”
Eric had no idea how mean smelled, but he was familiar with violent, irrational and crazy. All those scents lingered nearby. And Kayla seemed certain enough about the mean thing that he wasn’t going to argue with her. “Promise me you’ll take care of the others. Make them stick together.”
“I will. But if you don’t come back, we’re fighting our way out of here without you.”
He resisted the urge to grin at her viciousness. She might be a handful to teach, but in a couple of decades, Kayla was going to make one hell of a fighter.
“Deal,” he said.
The sound of shuffling feet and a low hum grew louder and neared the cave entrance. He had no idea what the noise was, but he doubted it was any kind of good.
“She’s coming,” said Kayla. “They always make that noise and bow down when she passes, like she’s some kind of queen.”
Now that he thought about it, the sound did hold a bit of reverence to it. And if the queen bee was headed this way, Eric was going to be ready for her with a little honey.
“Pretend like you’re asleep,” he told Kayla as he rose to his feet. “Don’t let anything I say rattle you. Understand? I may need to lie.”
Kayla let out a growl of defiance but did as she was told, like a good little soldier.
Eric couldn’t quite stand upright where he was, but he found a place nearer the opening where the floor dipped lower, giving him room to reach his full height—and to fight if it came to that.
He rolled his shoulders to work out some of the kinks. All he’d been wearing during practice was a pair of faded jeans, which were now covered in dirt and dried blood—most of it his.
The humming outside grew louder and louder until he could no longer hear the Synestryn soldiers moving to make way for their queen bee to pass. He could see through the opening enough to watch the crowd part, but the reason they were parting was obscured until a woman stepped through the hole in the cave wall.
Treszka ducked through the doorway and straightened once she was inside. She was easily six feet tall, falling only a few inches shorter than Eric. She was dressed in a flowing gown of black and garnet velvet, in a style like some medieval queen would have worn. She had hip-length midnight black hair and eyes to match. Her pupils were stark white, giving her gaze a kind of weight Eric had never experienced before.
She was beautiful. Stunning. And not just for a Synestryn—which she definitely was. There was no mistaking the smell of death and pain seeping from her pale skin.
She smiled at him, displaying a perfect row of sharp white teeth. “You’re awake. I’m so glad you survived.”