Page 72 of Red Demon

“I told you not to come out, idiot,” she snapped, rushing to my side.

Standing slumped against a nearby tree, the fight drained from me like water over a broken dam. Or maybe that broken dam was the blood running from my leg, arm, and shoulder.

“Where were you?” I slid down the bark to the ground.

She scowled. “Well, look around.”

All I saw was dog carcasses strewn around me and leaves drifting to the forest floor.

“Even if these ruren-sa aren’t able to get into your mind, it doesn’t mean they can’t get into a wild dog. You’re lucky there’s no people around for them to claim.” She winced as her eyes landed on my leg, bloodied and torn.

I blinked. Ruren-sa. Ghost demons. “Ghosts? In dogs?”

“Just—shut up and take off your pants.”

My mouth stuttered open.

She rolled her eyes. “To wrap your wounds before you bleed out.”

I heaved down my pants to the cold earth, grateful that the lack of leg splints meant I had been able to get a pair of underwear on this morning. She yanked off my shoes and wasn’t gentle about it.

“Tell me how these ruren-sa work, please.”

“Not now,” she growled, taking those oversized linen pants and ripping them into strips.

“Faruhar...” I trailed off, unable to voice the fear. “How do the ghosts do what they do?”

She sighed. “What don’t you know? The bastards are everywhere. Ask them.”

I looked around the forest again. No birds, no chirping insects, which was a little odd. Nothing.

“I can’t see them. I can’t hear them.”

She stared me down, tightening the fabric around my thigh. “Then that’s all the more reason to get you back to the cave.” Her eyes flashed. “Bria, shut up!” she said, turning to empty air.

The breath whooshed out of my lungs. “Your sister is a ghost?”

“Stop bleeding! Maybe if you weren’t talking so much you could concentrate on that!”

I sighed, watching her work.

She swore, looking at my torn leg dripping through the bandage, then stared at me as she ripped more of my pants into strips. “These ruren-sa are riled up, swarming. They each want a human mind to hold their pieces together. When there isn’t much left of them, a wild dog is enough to keep them from fading to dust.” She cursed again under her breath, continuing to wind the bandage.

I thought back to Galen, his final words. “What happens if a ghost gets into someone’s mind? Is their host alive too?” I needed to hear it, even if I thought I knew.

“With these ghosts? No. They claim the mind as soon as they are in, make the host kill until they can’t anymore. If you’re fast, you can destroy the ruren-sa when you kill the body they stole. If the death is slow, they can sometimes wriggle out in time and find someone else. Bria wants me to kill them all, every time.”

My breathing came fast, heart pounding. She looked up from where she’d finished the last of my shredded pants around my wounded leg.

“That’s why you killed Galen.” I felt gutted, trying to shake that feeling off. “He was dead already.”

She didn’t look up.

I felt the ground sway beneath me, and I gripped Faruhar’s arm to steady myself. “You’re trying to help?”

Two dead towns. A destroyed mine. Mal, after he seemed to come to his senses, more or less. I still couldn’t trust her.

She turned her attention to my forearm, still trickling in dark red gushes where the jaws clenched in. “Fuck.”