Page 14 of Tortured Soul (Soulless #1)

Lola

K ai let me go after our talk, satisfied by my confirmation that I wasn’t leaving the camp anytime soon and that I would try to hang out with Arc sometime this week.

In my free afternoon, I spent my time walking around the town and visiting the shops. Aymeric’s bakery was also serving coffee—not made by him but by his barista, a ridiculously short witch with a black bob and thick glasses. The coffee was delicious. The pastries were damning .

I cackled as I turned the key into the apartment door and froze on the spot when my eyes met a frowning Marcus, leaving his room in front of the entrance at this exact moment.

“What has you chuckling like an idiot on the doorstep?”

I closed the door behind me with a roll of my eyes. “Don’t ruin my brain fun.”

I looked around, fumbling with my keys. Was I supposed to take my shoes off? I looked down to see he was only wearing socks. Did he put his shoes in a special closet? In his room?

He stepped to the side slowly, showing a console behind him against the wall next to his room door.

“Key bowl right here. Shoes inside. Unused coat rack over there.”

“Thanks.” I nodded, clearing my throat .

Marcus grunted, walking away toward the kitchen where I could hear Aymeric humming and cooking.

I dropped my keys with the other sets and removed my shoes to put them away.

“Good evening, Lola! I hope you had a nice time visiting after you left the shop.”

I smiled, stopping next to the chair I’d been sitting in the night before and that morning.

“I did. This place is big, I was expecting some kind of camp with tents and stuff.”

He laughed. “The Guardians created this sanctuary during the middle of the war, when the state had already been mostly deserted. They used the already existing buildings and built up progressively.”

So I was right. “Really?”

“Yes. The Hall and most of the stone buildings and fortifications were already there. They believe it was some sort of temple in the middle of some secluded town created by humans before their religion system crumbled with the war and they abandoned the place.”

“How many people live here?” I asked. There were a lot of boxes on the resident files shelves.

“There’s about seven or eight thousand of us, I believe?”

“That much?” My eyes widened in surprise.

“It’s been stagnant for a few years,” Marcus drawled from the couch. “Some people join us, some people vanish …”

My head snapped toward him. He was scrolling on his phone, checking some sort of article from the human news, it seemed.

“What do you mean, some vanish?” I asked as I finally sat down.

“Exactly what I say,” he answered, standing up lazily to join us. “One day they’re here, and the next, poof . Nowhere in sight. We have a few houses that are only filled with the stuff they left behind.”

Confusion pulled at my face. People didn’t simply vanish . They left, or they were taken. Especially for Immortals…

“You never thought that maybe—”

“Of course we know what happened,” he snapped in annoyance. He grabbed his glass, filled it with water before he sat. “No matter where and how long we search, we never find anything. Now, we’re just happy when we don’t find dead Earthwalkers around the camp.”

“So you just stopped looking for the missing ones?” I asked dryly.

“Lola dearest,” Aymeric said softly, placing his hand on my forearm and interrupting whatever Marcus was about to spit in my face.

“It’s a difficult topic for the people around here.

Let’s just have that dinner, hm? If you have concerns about yours or anyone else’s safety, you can always go and talk to the commander.

She’ll be happy to answer your questions. ”

From what I’d seen earlier, Carrie didn’t seem like the happy to do anything type. That woman looked scary.

Marcus didn’t say anything and I didn’t insist as Aymeric started filling our plates.

But if people were somehow taken away or disappeared from here, it might have to do with the humans Kai mentioned earlier.

Bad humans. Humans that I wouldn’t feel guilty to feed from.

Humans who were weak enough so I wouldn’t feel forced or threatened.

Humans that I could weaken and condemn to an afterlife of damnation.

Seemed only fair in that particular case.

“Oh, here they are!” Aymeric leaned back with a smile. Marcus only tilted his head in acknowledgment.

They were taking seats on my right before I could even turn to greet them.

Two identical girls. Long straight black hair reaching their hips, naturally tanned skin, coal eyes with golden flecks. They were wearing a thinner and tighter version of the guards uniform, reminding me of the one Carrie wore when I saw her at the Archives.

“Lola, meet Francesca and Savi,” Aymeric said. “Don’t be surprised if they don’t speak, they’re mute.”

“I know, Kai told me.”

“They understand just fine,” Marcus added. “Even though they like to pretend they don’t.”

One of them stuck her tongue out at him. The other did nothing apart from staring. At me.

Awkwardly.

Like maybe she wished I was her takeaway special.

Was it weird that I was hoping she was lusting after my blood and not slowly driven crazy by my pheromones?

The one staring took a careful step toward me and stopped a few inches away.

My throat bobbed, my body getting ready to fight or flight. The muscles in my legs were tense in case I needed to jump out of my seat and escape.

My heart was hammering in my chest when she slowly lifted her hand and held it for me to shake, her head tilted to the side in wonder.

Not everyone is out to get you.

I cleared my throat and accepted the handshake. The corner of her lips stretched in a smile. A toothy smile. I refrained from ripping my hand away and forced my face to relax.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, my voice too wobbly for my liking.

“That’s Savi.” Aymeric smiled. “If you ever have a doubt about which is who, Savi has a small scar on her cheekbone.”

She did. It was a very faint line, barely lighter than the rest of her skin.

“How did you get it?” I asked.

She chuckled silently and pointed to her sister, just a few steps behind her.

After a pause, I let go of her hand. She blinked, confused.

“ Did you fight? ” I signed.

Both their coal eyes widened. Marcus groaned. “Great. Now they can form an alliance against us.”

“ We were feisty as kids,” Francesca said, stepping closer.

“ She scratched me. ” Savi rolled her eyes.

“ She deserved it, ” Francesca replied.

I chuckled.

I had lots of siblings too, back when I was still… myself . A twin, and dozens of half brothers and sisters. An eternity ago…We fought a lot, too.

I missed it, sometimes. Missed them.

“ We have to go ,” Savi signed with a sad smile. “ It was nice meeting you. ”

They both waved at us and walked toward the door.

“ If Marcus annoys you, tell us. We’ll switch his toothpaste again,” she added, stopping briefly. “ Or change his chips from regular to salted vinegar. He hates it. ”

She winked and left after her sister, closing the door behind her.

“I didn’t know you could sign,” Aymeric said .

I shrugged. “I’ve lived a long time. I know how to speak many languages.”

“A lot of people don’t bother,” he answered. “I know a few words, just enough so we can understand each other.”

“I just know when they are insulting me. Don’t pretend that they didn’t talk about me just now.”

I held back a grin. “Get over yourself,” I repeated his words from last night, then, to Aymeric, “What do they do, by the way? Being vampires must reduce their job opportunities.”

It was Marcus who answered, his mouth full of something that looked drastically different from what Aymeric prepared for the both of us.

“They’re night scouts.”

I arched a brow, waiting for him to explain further. Reluctantly, he did.

“Scouts patrol outside the walls and barriers. There are day teams and night teams. They search for missing Immortals, hunt careless humans…They’re our first line of defense and attack.”

So there were Immortals outside the safety of the camp.

“Are there many humans outside?” I asked innocently, stabbing at a piece of carrot.

“So far, we’ve registered about twenty cabins scattered around the barrier and at the edge of the stone forest. We think humans use them to monitor us.”

“Why not attack them?” I wondered.

“It’s not that simple.” Aymeric sighed. “They obviously hold a lot of us, and we don’t know where. We can’t go and search in their cabin without risking capture or war.”

“Which we would obviously win,” I countered.

“Arc isn’t willing to risk it,” Marcus drawled. “They could capture more of us, and we’ve recently established that they won’t betray the location of the place they hold them in, even under torture.”

I reared back. “Torture?”

Aymeric’s eyes fell on his plate. Marcus grinded his teeth, his hand tightening around his fork.

“Things have been full of surprises these days.”

My heart stuttered. “ So far, he met you a little over twelve hours ago. During this time, Carter got his ass handed to him twice, and the human that was caught last night and admitted to murdering one of our own three weeks ago did not get out with a warning and memory wipe like the ones before. ”

Was Marcus referring to the same thing Kai did earlier? Was that human somehow tortured because of me? Not that I minded, if he was indeed murdering Earthwalkers and abducting other Immortals, he deserved to suffer for it.

But if they weren’t talking even under torture, maybe it was time for them to try a different approach.

And I was willing to get my hands dirty for this.