“So, then…” Boris begins, skeptically. “We keep searching?”
“Mhmm. If we can get on the rooftops, we’ll have a better view.”
The air suddenly feels like acid in my lungs.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Time is running out, and so are my options.
Whether out of desperation or instinct, my hands find their way to my belt and rummage over its contents. A knife could prove useful in close combat, but I’ve never been very good with one other than to clean game. The twine beside it that I use for tying snares? Even less effectual.
Next to it, my fingers glide over the soft feathers of the dead, bloodless pigeon. It wouldn’t be a good enough distraction for a ghoul, let alone the two hungry noctis below. But the blood in my vial…
The blood might be enough.
Hastily, I tear the only vial from my belt with anything inside it and pour the contents over my fingers. With the tips stained a horrendous shade of crimson, I drag them down my chin.
My attention flits back below, to the plotting noctis, and the words that leave Gregor’s mouth next fill my chest like cement.
“I go high. You go low.”
Of course it would be the big one.
My hands are shaking. I try cramming the vial back into the belt, but my fingers and the leather won’t cooperate. The notches feel like they’ve shrunk to the size of toothpicks, the jar suddenly too big to fit. And my blood pumps furiously through my veins, giving me far more strength than I need for the task, and thus, I make my seventh mistake.
My thumb slips from where it’s gripping the vial, and the container springs out of my grasp.
I watch it fall in slow motion. It shatters with a crystalline chime that rings in my ears with deafening harshness.
The noctis fall silent.
They know I’m here.
The way I calculate it, I have three seconds until they’re upon me.
Being silent is no longer useful, so instead I fling myself forward onto all fours, not bothering to hide the top of my head from their eyesight.
Two seconds.
I rip the dead pigeon from my belt.
One second.
And I sink my teeth into the raw breast and savagely tear at the meat.
I’ve seen the way monsters eat. The way they tear at flesh like they’re pirates savagely digging for gold. They don’t care about the mess they create, or how much destruction they cause. They only care about their rubies, about letting the blood flow into their mouth, no matter how many feathers they swallow in the process.
And so, I pretend I’m the same. I forget about the necessity of being quiet and instead take on a new survival characteristic, one that makes me as loud and insatiable as I’ve seen them become. I hunch over the pathetic meal as if it’s a decadent feast and I bite and chew and swallow every piece of cold, plumy flesh I can muster. A flash of a memory tries to infiltrate my resolve, one of me trapped beneath floorboards while a torrential downpour of blood showers me, but I shove the unwanted thing aside. I’m not under those floorboards now. It’s not the blood of my family and neighbors oozing down my throat, and that is the only reason I can keep chewing. I can keep swallowing, as long as I’m able if it means survival. Until—
Feet land forcefully somewhere beside me, behind me, as if they’ve just jumped all the way up the side of the building. Despite every instinct in my body telling me to look or flinch or run, I stay where I am. I keep eating the bird and tell myself that the churning in my stomach is just part of the fear. The adrenaline of being so close to monsters.
It’s not until one of their feet steps into view where I’m knelt that I finally acknowledge them.
Dark hair frames my face in velvety curtains as I peer up, hunger alit in my deadly eyes.
Gregor’s robust frame casts me in shadow. For a noctis, someone who is seemingly hunting for scraps for a king who can no longer promise them nightly feasts, he sure doesn’t look as if he’s starving. Maybe there are enough ghouls to keep them fed. For now.
After the briefest assessment, I growl, clutching my pigeon closer. “Oh. What a pity. You’re no human, are you?”
