Oh, my God.
He was back out on the street again, reeling as though something had struck him in the face. The afterimage of the meeting hall’s contents was burned into his vision, shadows and highlights of utter horror sculpted by the lantern’s light. Bodies that were nailed to the wooden floor and gutted. Intestines wound about a desk leg, their owner still attached. More brutal, malevolent destruction than he had ever seen in one place before. And on every face, in every staring eye, a look of such utter horror that there was no question in Damien’s mind that these people had been alive while they were eviscerated. Perhaps being tortured in a careful progression so that future victims could see their coming fate, writhing terrified in their bonds as body after body was vivisected . . .
It was too much. Too much. He leaned over and vomited in the street, bitter fluids surging from his gut in violent revulsion. Again and again, until his stomach was more than empty. Still it spasmed, and his mouth burned with the fluids of his revulsion.
He didn’t look at Tarrant. He didn’t want to see those eyes—so cool, so utterly inhuman—fixed on his helplessness. He didn’t want to acknowledge what he knew deep inside, which was that even a horror such as this would fail to move the Hunter. Had Gerald Tarrant not done a similar thing to his own wife and children? Would he not gladly do worse in the future, if he felt that survival demanded it?
Instead Damien looked for Hesseth. She was nowhere to be found. He was just about to start worrying when she staggered out of the meeting hall doorway, one hand clenched shut about something. Under the angry red patches of her perpetual sunburn her face was drained of all living color, and her mouth hung slack as if she lacked the strength to shape whatever words she needed.
She walked to him. Slowly. Like him, she refused to meet Tarrant’s eyes. When she was no more than two feet away her hand uncurled, slowly. Flakes of blackened blood clung to her palm, making it hard to see what she held. A thin, curving object with shreds of flesh still adhering to its wider end. As if it had been torn from some living thing so violently that the flesh itself had given way.
It was a claw.
She gave him a moment to study it, flexing her own claws so that he might compare. The curve was the same, the composition, the proportion—everything but the size, which was slightly larger. There was no question what manner of creature it had come from.
“My people did this,” she whispered hoarsely. “Rakh.” Her hand started to tremble so violently that she had to close it again, rather than drop the grisly thing. “Why?” she whispered. “Why?”
He drew her to him because she seemed to need it, and carefully, delicately, folded his arms around her. For a moment he was afraid that she might respond badly, that her natural aversion to humankind might overpower her need for comfort. But she buried herself against his chest and shivered violently, so he held her tightly. No tears came from those amber eyes; the rakhene anatomy did not allow for it. But she trembled with a grief that was every bit as genuine and as passionate as that which a human woman might know, and he did his best to comfort her.
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.
Tarrant stirred. “Let’s collect some weapons and then get out of here.”
Damien looked up at him. The pale eyes contained neither disdain nor impatience, but something that in another life might have been called sympathy. “It may be our only chance,” the Hunter pointed out.
After a minute Damien nodded. He disentangled Hesseth from his embrace, gently. “Come on,” he said softly. “We need supplies. Let’s find them and then we can get out of here.”
“What if they come back?”
He looked up at Tarrant, then back toward the meeting hall. “I don’t think they will,” he said quietly. “There’s nothing here for them. Not anymore.”
And because she could shed no tears, he did so. A few drops squeezed from the corners of his eyes, a monument to her grief. He hated himself for showing such weakness in front of Tarrant—and hated Tarrant for not doing so himself, for being so far removed from the sphere of human emotions that not even this outrageous slaughter could move him.
“Come on,” he muttered. Forcing himself to move again. Forcing himself to function. “Let’s get on with it.”
Hours later. How many? Time and distance were a featureless blur, each minute blending into the one that followed, each step shrouded in a fog of mourning. Perhaps yards. Perhaps miles. Perhaps half a night. Who could say?
At last they dismounted. The chill light of dawn was just stirring in the eastern sky; not enough to make Tarrant take cover yet, but enough to give him warning. They made their camp mechanically, pitching the tent that Hesseth had pieced together from their extra blankets. Not using the camping supplies that they had picked up in the village. Not ready for that yet.
When the small fire was burning and the horses had been tended to and water had been gathered from a nearby stream, then the words came. Slowly. With effort.
“Why?” Hesseth whispered.
“Your people are known for a fierce hatred of humankind,” Tarrant offered. It was the first time he had spoken since they’d left the village. “Is it so incredible that their hatred has found an outlet here?”
She glared at him. “My people aren’t like that.”
Tarrant said nothing.
She turned away. Her furred hands clenched. “My people would happily kill all humans. Just like they wanted to kill you, when you came into our territory. But that’s different. That’s . . .”
“Better?” the Hunter asked dryly. “Cleaner?”
She turned on him; her amber eyes were blazing. “Animals kill for food, or defense. Or to rid themselves of something undesirable. They don’t torture other creatures for the sheer pleasure of seeing them suffer. That’s a human thing.”
“Maybe your people have become more human than they know.”
“Stop it,” Damien snapped. At Tarrant. “Stop it now.”
For a moment there was silence. The crackling of the fire. The soft breathing of the horses.
“We knew we were fighting something with the ability to corrupt men’s souls,” the priest said. “Didn’t we see that in Mercia? Men and women who meant well, who had devoted their lives to a beneficent God . . . yet who would murder their fellow humans without a moment of remorse, and consign helpless children to a ritual of torture.” God, it hurt to remember all that. He fought to keep his voice steady. “I think what we’ve seen tonight is that he—or she, or it—has done the same to your people.” He watched as Hesseth lowered her head, trying to make his voice as gentle as it could become. “He did have something to start with, after all. How much work would it be to twist a rakhene soul, so that the desire to kill one’s enemy became the desire to torture him to death?”
“It isn’t a rakh thing,” she hissed softly. “It isn’t the way we work.”
He waited a moment before he answered. “That may have changed,” he said gently. “I’m sorry, Hesseth. But it’s the truth. God alone knows how long he’s had to operate, but it’s clear that he’s had enough time to influence your people. To influence both our peoples,” he added quickly. “God alone knows why . . .”
“Yes,” Tarrant agreed. “That’s a good question, isn’t it? A demon might feed on that kind of hatred, or on the pain it engendered, or on any other emotion that was a consequence of the system . . . but only with humans, not the rakh. Why corrupt a native species? No demon could gain strength from that.”
“Are you sure?” Damien asked.
“Absolutely. The faeborn draw their strength from man because he creates them; they rely on him for sustenance. What good is a rakhene soul to them? Its nature is as alien to demonkind as we are to Erna. They can’t digest it.”