Page 101 of The Stone Initiation
“The poultice isn’t working,” Janna says.
Willowman crosses to her and begins to examine the wounds. “Hold still,” he orders the injured male who growls at him but obliges. They know what Willowman is capable of. He sniffs the wound and rears back. “This isn’t the same venom.”
“What?”
“It’s stronger. We’ll need a new poultice.”
“Can you make one?” Janna asks.
A muscle in his cheek jumps. “I can, but not in time.”
Janna’s chest heaved. “You’re saying…”
He nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’ll head back to the lab and get to work right away.” He grabs bandages off the side table and swipes them over one of the gargoyle’s wounds before folding it and tucking it into his pocket. “It’ll be agonizing if you let the venom run its course.”
As if to illustrate his point, the unconscious gargoyle wakes up screaming.
Gargolyes roar and bellow regularly, but hearing one scream is gut-wrenchingly unnatural.
“I’m assuming your tranq supply is out,” Willowman says.
“HQ haven’t sent us a fresh supply,” Jana replies. “I checked with the closest outposts, and no one has any.”
Tranqs that worked on goyles were expensive and we rarely needed them, and HQ rarely provided.
“Then you know what you have to do,” Willowman says. “I’m sorry.”
Janna’s shoulders slump, defeat etched into her posture. “Give me a moment. Please.”
Willowman and I exit the barracks.
“A new venom means a new breed of graynite,” Willowman says.
“We don’t know that for sure. They may have simply evolved.”
“After what happened on our last mission? What you saw. You don’t believe that.”
Silence falls. The screams are gone.
Janna walks out to meet us a moment later. Her eyes are bloodshot, and her hands are fists. “The tower has the co-ordinates of the attack, but you shouldn’t go out there.”
“Orders are—”
“Fuck the orders,” she snarls. “They know what’s out there. We saw it and we told them. So why send you back out?”
I can’t tell her the truth because the truth is classified. “Secondary confirmation of graynite activity.”
“Those things that attacked us weren’t Graynites,” she says. “At least not the kind we know of.” Her eyes darken. “They looked human, Serath. Theysmelledhuman. We thought they were in trouble, that they’d somehow wandered past our defenses into the hot zone. We thought we were helping them, and then…they were no longer human.”
Just like the male who’d killed the werewolves. Human but not human. HQ knows about this because we reported it to the council last week and they know about what outpost ten just dealt with, but nowhere is it mentioned in the orders sent to us at the academy.
What the fuck are they playing at?
I’m torn between keeping the peace and revealing all, but there is a hierarchy for a reason. A structure that has kept our world safe for decades. I must trust that the council has its reasons.
“We’ll be fine.” I give her a nod. “We’ll speak when I return. Willowman, how long will the poultice take to make?”
“At least twenty-four hours.”
