That’s too terrifying of a thought to even consider. Some unknown source working alongside the Shadow Crusade? It almost makes too much sense for it not to be true though, especially given my conversation with Fox earlier. Someone had to have been communicating with her. Or maybesomeones. What if all the time we spent collecting prisoners for the Hunt, they were actually willing participants? What if some of them had been members of the Shadow Crusade who planned their imprisonment just so they could be released in the Hunt where they’d ambush the noctis?
We could be even more doomed than we realize.
"We need our strength for whoever we're chasing," Caz concludes.
With a begrudging sigh, Renee steps beside him. "Cazimir's right. This is uncharted territory. We can't afford anything less than our best right now. If the body still has any blood in its veins, we should use it to fortify our strength."
Without another word, she bends down, retrieves one of the man's arms, and bites into the flesh. She shivers as the cooling blood pools into her mouth, but she drinks all the same.
"They could be watching," I say, shooting a cautionary glance over my shoulder. "If the Shadow Crusade are here to trick us, this is exactly the kind of—"
"Just drink, Malachi!" Renee whirls on me, the blood on her lips too thick to dribble. "You are who you are. You need blood for sustenance, and I didn't see you at the dining hall this morning, nor were there any of your weird human blood-bags wandering the halls near your bed chamber, which means you haven't eaten all day. He's already dead. You don't have to feel guilty about it. It’s not like you’re killing him. You just have to drink."
I can tell from her savage tone that this is not up for debate. Not this time. She has turned a blind eye to my lifestyle on numerous occasions, but one of those occasions will not be right now.
She gestures for me to take the man's arm from her grasp, and I oblige. I lift the dead weight of it to my mouth.
Blood isn't meant to be cold and congealed. It's meant to have a life of its own as its silken smoothness slides onto the tongue, sweet as chocolate with the tangy allure of one's forbidden desires.
I gag against the acrid taste and before I can pull away, Renee presses my head down harder, urging me to pull deeper. I can barely stand another gulp, but I take it in, thinking only of Ursulette and the strength I may need to protect her.
Only when Caz calls to us does Renee finally release me. "You guys? I think I found a trail of blood."
"Where does it lead?" I ask, wiping my mouth on the back of my sleeve and standing to join him.
Together, the three of us follow the trail of blood that's really more like a geyser in some spots.
"It's how you can tell they were struck," Caz answers when I ask why the sporadic changes in splatter. "Likely from a sword or some other big blade. Once back there, now here. They covered a lot of ground in their fight, and someone got quite a few good blows in."
Other than his periodic teachings, we're silent otherwise, our hearts in our throats as we anticipate stumbling upon Ursulette's dead body next.
We step between two trees, the bloody imprint of a body slammed into one of them, and we stop before a puddle of red damn near large enough to swim in.
"Something died here." Caz sounds amazed the way he says it.
"Was it...was it her?" Renee asks.
He's slow to respond, that sharp sight of his taking in every detail of the scene that neither of us are privy to. "I don't think so," he says at long last. "Look at the size of the footprints around here. None of them are as small as hers. And where the body crashed into that tree back there, and then down to the ground here? Ursulette might be a curvy woman, but she's not this big. Whatever died here was huge."
Renee plants one hand on her hip. "You keep saying died, but I don't see a body."
"Better yet," I interject. "And correct me if I'm wrong here, but it doesn't look like one was dragged away either. It's like whoever died—"
"Shrugged it off, jumped back up to their feet, and walked away?" Caz flashes me a bewildered grin. "Yeah, that's exactly what happened. There's his tracks."
We follow his extended finger, and I can just barely make out the slightly more disturbed ground compared to the rest of the uneven mess.
Renee scowls. "So, he's not dead then."
In disbelief, Caz shakes his head. "He should be. This is a lot of blood. A whole body's worth. We should know. We survive off draining people of the stuff."
Great. As if worrying about Ursulette and the Shadow Crusade wasn't enough, now we have to worry about the dead coming back to life and going for strolls.
We're focusing on the wrong thing though.
"Dead or alive, it doesn't matter. We still need to find Ursulette."
Caz angles an eyebrow at me. "Who's to say this fellow isn't looking for her too?"
