Page 12 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

Next time, she would scream from it. And beg for more.

A shape in the painstakingly familiar uniform materialized a few yards from her in the tree line. The moon cast enough illumination to discern the skintight, long-sleeved, dark green shirt, black cargo pants, and a diagonal leather strap on their chest with two sheaths for standard-issue combat knives.

A soldier from Ilasall.

They must have extended their patrolled range.

He tracked her disappearing ten feet from him and slipped back into the forest himself.

I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck, relishing the prospect of a chase. Because once it ended, I was going to break each of his toes, inscribe my name in their bones, and feed them to him for so much as thinking he could touch her.

I pushedthe blueprint of one of the city’s districts toward all the other scraps and pieces of my useless notes scattered across the desk in my study. It held no value if we could not enter Ilasall.

The plan to break into the school and scope out our surroundings before the auction took place had fallen through. The guards had shot two of our people who sought to pass the city’s wall. We had missed the change in their security.

The auction, officially known as the Matching, was set to take place today and we could not stop it. Another line of unlucky girls with green bands had been assigned to their partners. A bunch of lives ruined for nothing more than the wish to sustain the human population.

Erasing humankind entirely would be a better option. Vileness would not taint the world anymore.

And now I had to tell the families of my team that not everyone had come back. Though I delighted in mutilating the morally corrupt soldiers from Ilasall, them acting identically with us made my head hurt.

Elbows on the desk, I buried my head in my hands. A headache was closing in, right when I required my brain to be in a functional enough condition to discover a loophole, a solution.

Ilasall had been changing too much these last few weeks: increased protection measures, guards switching rotations, expanded patrol areas outside their borders, new orders to shoot anyone moving on the spot, and now an updated security system.

Andherburying herself in my dreams. She was mine. And not a single sick worm from Ilasall was allowed to take her away from me. If I had not gotten to the forest in time, I might have lost her to that soldier, that brainless puppet of Ilasall’s military.

The hour I had spent snapping his bones had not relieved the need to hear more cracks from his skeleton fracturing.

Knuckles rained on my study’s door, and a dainty head popped in. “Zion says he should crack soon.” Eislyn crinkled her pert nose. “You look like you need a break. Why don’t you go down there and play a bit yourself?”

She was tiny, but strength did not require a large body to reside in. Two years she had been with us, yet I remembered the day Zion had gotten her out of the city as clear as if it’d happened today.

He had painted a visual of a petite woman walking down the road with a glinting green marker band on her bony wrist, nearly hidden by the long sleeves. But her purple sweater could not conceal the thick blue line circling her neck. Yet she had held her chin up high, displaying not a drop of weakness.

Despite two years with us, Eislyn’s smiles often remained vacant. As hollow as a void. She used that vacantness to assist Zion in his activities in our underground, and it terrified the hell out of half of us. Her mornings and days consisted of working in the infirmary, aligning broken bones, and stitching up cuts and gashes, but the evenings and nights? Those were spent raining damage on Zion’s playthings.

So he and I had agreed to follow one rule: avoid getting on her bad side at all costs.

“Thank you, Eislyn.” I rubbed my forehead, wishing the ache away, but its talons lunged at me, prodding and jabbing in an endless game of pain.

“Stop thinking so hard. You need a release from…all that.” She waved her short arms at me and sighed at my glare. “Fine,I’ll leave you alone. But you should know that Zion looked way too happy down there. I already feel sorry for whoever gets in his way when he’s done,” she said and retreated, closing the door behind her.

The barely audible click tightened my migraine’s claws. Nevertheless, I had to get the answers from that wretched assistant to Ilasall’s Head of Military. Rumor had it he was the one who had designed and installed the new security system and not his boss. Not surprising. The higher-ups were the most horrid but generally obtuse brutes.

I pushed off the desk and made my way out of my study and down the hallway to the stairwell leading to the space underneath the central building. The cloying scent of iron assaulted me with each heavy step down the recently scrubbed concrete stairs into Zion’s playground.

At least no one was yelling this time.

“It has been days. He’s still not talking?” I asked.

Zion lazily nodded, mesmerized by the crimson streaks swirling on his favorite combat knife. A standard issue weapon of Ilasall’s military, like half our arsenal. Surprisingly easy to make. And training with the weapons your enemy used could give you an advantage in battle.

But not if it belonged to Zion. I had made the mistake of borrowing his knife once. His freak-out had deterred me from attempting it again. My head pounded as acid spilled behind my retinas at the recollection. Zion was a sadistic piece of ass, haunting me even in my memory.

“You good?” He scanned me with concern, and I realized that I was leaning against the damp concrete wall, the world spinning, the ceiling and floor switching places, the walls blurring, the light and shadows blending.

Maybe I should pay our training rings a visit. Or nag Eislyn to give me a strong painkiller despite our slowly dwindling supply of meds.