Page 84 of Such a Feral Little Lamb
Now it’s not just the smell of damp earth that hits me. The stench of death is just behind it, and I spot Otto’s corpse a few feet away. I stare at the jagged stump of his neck for a second too long and then jerk back, almost falling in my haste to get away.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter. Bile rises in my throat.
“Don’t give up now, Isaac,” Dane taunts. “I never would have caught him without you.”
He doesn’t mean Otto. He presses the knife more firmly against Mason’s throat. Autumn has squirmed around into a sitting position, but her uninjured eye is too wide, all the white showing, and she’s breathing too fast. No one else will think to come here.
“Why did you kill Blake?”
Mason’s brow furrows like he’s surprised. Dane huffs a laugh.
“You know why. Neither of you was supposed to come back.”
“What’s the point in that? We’re all good hunters.”
“You’re all fucking questioning things, is what you’re doing,” Dane snaps. “Looking for things you shouldn’t.”
“I’ve never—”
“Well, I supposethat’snot your issue. They don’t want a fucking queer climbing the ranks.”
“But you can?” I ask dryly.
“I don’t go around announcing who I’m fucking,” Dane says. His eyes slide to Mason’s throat, and he digs the knife in a little. Mason never moves; never flinches. “I don’t whore myself out for the first survivor I find.”
I swallow down impotent fury. This anger isn’t a surprise, though he’s never before stooped to speaking the way Blake always did. And subtle—he’s not that.
He won’t have long once he goes back. He’ll never make it out of the debrief, if I have to guess.
If he goes back. I don’t intend to let him.
“Fine. Whatever. But Blake wasn’t questioning shit until you mentioned the virus might not be real. He would’ve believed anything you told him.”
“I was bored of him,” Dane says. “And he insisted on joining me onevery fucking job. It was a given, in the end.”
“So you… You had to kill us. You had to get the necromancer, even though everyone’s saying he’s gone. Why?”
Dane eyes me for a moment. He looks as though he’s trying to work out my strategy, but the truth is that I don’t have one except to stall him. If I see an opening, I’ll take it, but beyond that, all I have to do is hope we’re here long enough that Rae gets worried about the train arriving and discovers Blake’s body.
She’ll know I didn’t kill him.
Well, I hope she will.
“Fine, Isaac,” Dane says. He drags Mason back, making him stumble, and this time, the tip of the knife does prick his skin. A thin rivulet of blood trails down to his collarbone, then under his shirt, and I track it with my eyes the entire way.
When I meet Mason’s gaze, his eyes blaze again. They crinkle at the corners like he’s trying to smile.
Dane shoves Mason to one side, then drags Autumn to her feet. She whimpers when he sits her on a chair. They’re a few feet from me now, but when I take a step forward, Dane grabs Mason again and holds the knife to his throat.
“No, no, no,” he says. “We’re having a conversation, Isaac. Stay there.”
I turn my bat slowly in my hand.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know the whole truth,” Dane says. He shoves Mason into another chair, next to Autumn’s. She’s closer to me, and he’skeeping Mason at knifepoint, so I’ll have to find some other way. The gun is in my pocket, but there’s not a chance I’ll reach it in time, and I can’t risk missing. Other than that, I have my bat and a knife at my ankle. Fuck.
“What do you know?”
