Page 26 of Hell's Secret Omega

He prods the beast with his foot. It’s large, its long legs trussed up around a pole to make carrying easier. It has a long, elegant neck and a narrow face, with large, milky eyes. Its body is covered in coarse white hair. He’s never seen a beast like it. It’s been bled and butchered, but from the smell that all happened a while ago.

—condition poor, he writes.

The outside chaos briefly grows louder as the door opens to admit General Leuther himself, followed by his ever-presentlackey General Andeolus. On their heels is Quartermaster Magnus. Cyrus steps back from the light, clutching his papers as soldiers and minor demons enter last.

Major Justus salutes. “It’s a miserable haul, sir.”

Leuther surveys the gory results. “It will keep the Generals happy.”

“It’s not enough,” Andeolus laments, ever the doomsayer.

Leuther waves him off. “It’ll have to be enough. We’ll have better hunts when the tunnels are complete.”

“None of these idiots are capable hunters—they don’t know a boulder from a den. It’s a miracle they turned up anything. Talos’s lot are the only half-able ones, and they still swear allegiance to the Grey Company?—”

Justus flinches. Leuther’s hand lashes out and Andeolus yelps as Leuther’s claws catch him across the neck, wounding him. He grabs his neck and lurches backward.

“Enough!” Leuther snarls. “Once I’m crowned, the mountain patrol will bow to me. There will be no more talk of thisGrey Company.”

The guards at the door murmur to each other. Frantically, Cyrus jots down the last of his notes. Beyond stock-taking, he has another, more important task—to steal away some of the haul. But it’s only a matter of time before Magnus notices him.

As soldiers move in to carve up the kill, Cyrus shoves his implements back in his coat. A prickle touches the back of his neck. His stomach sinks. Magnus’s eyes are on him, mean and narrow.

“Take this down to the slop room!” Leuther points at the most miserable pile of meat. The minor demons hurry to obey and Cyrus seizes his chance.

He scoops up a bucket and goes to his knees in the gruesome pile, scraping bits of scrap over the lip. When he gets to his feet, Magnus is striding toward him.

“Not you,” he snarls. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I have to take this to the pot—” Cyrus yelps, ducking as Magnus grabs at him. He’s not fast enough.

A bony hand closes around his arm. “Where have you been, lazy little rat? Shirking your duties again? I should send you back to the tunnels.”

The blow sends bright pain exploding over the back of his skull. Cyrus grunts as the bucket swings and hits him in the shins. He struggles, but Magnus’s grip is stronger.

“I’ve done my work,” Cyrus retorts, unable to stop defiance from spilling off his tongue.

“Ungrateful brat!”

The butt of the whip comes down again, bruisingly hard. He bites his tongue. Magnus hits him a third time, then the whip’s long tongue lashes against the stone floor with a crack and he flinches. He hates the business end of the whip most of all.

“I should teach you a real lesson. The whip and a week in the cages. Then you’d learn to obey,” Magnus sneers in his ear. Cyrus cringes away from him. Everything about him is foul—his scent, his voice. “Loathsome little beast. I’ve never trusted you.”

“Magnus!” General Leuther barks. “Where’s the report?”

The Quartermaster grunts. The whip disappears and he thrusts his hand into Cyrus’s coat. For a second Cyrus’s heart thunders with fear—the ledgers. The real ones, the ones showing what the Grey Company have been skimming off the top, are secreted away in his breast pocket. But Magnus’s hand closes around today’s report and he tosses Cyrus aside.

There’s always someone bigger and meaner.

Cyrus picks himself up and grabs the bucket before Magnus is even halfway across the floor. Smeared in serpent blood, his skull aching, he flees the guardroom through the side door.

The passage deposits him into a corridor below the wall. The chanting and stamping comes through the ceiling, muffled.He hurries after the minor demons ahead of him who also carry buckets, all of them eager to get to the slop room—the giant trench where gruel is constantly boiled—before someone discovers where the meat is.

As the demon ahead of him turns the corner, Cyrus pauses. He quickly shucks his coat and pulls off his topmost shirt, then wraps a hunk of the least offensive-looking meat in it. He tucks the bundle back inside his coat on the opposite side from his papers, hoping against hope the blood doesn’t seep through—though they’re so filthy by now, he can barely read them.

He buttons his coat back up and picks up the bucket. The coppery stench of blood fills his nose. Cyrus ignores his throbbing head and the wave of despair that threatens to overtake him and presses on. Despair is a luxury he has no time for.

If he thought for a single moment that life would change after one mind-altering heat, he was obviously a fool.

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