~What Waits in the Dark
I left that cabin with too many words unsaid. My hands balled tightly as I walked back to the clearing. I was tired, but I had far too much on my mind to give in to sleep just yet.
Looking far across the camp, I could see Lyla’s covered cage and felt my jaw tick at the thought of maiming the bitch. There was no reason for her to be alive other than to torment Dahlia, but if Dahlia wanted her to stay that way, I couldn’t deliver a finishing blow. I couldn’t. It wasn’t my place.
Disappointment in her small betrayal made me grind my teeth, though. In her position, I would have likely done the same thing in a foolish attempt to spare her the trouble and keep her out of danger, but it still did not make it sit any easier.
“James,” I said as I passed him and his sister at one of the campfires. “Mind taking the first shift?”
“First shift for what?”
I pointed at the cage near the tree. “Make sure she doesn’t fall asleep. I don’t want her and Dahlia resting at the same time.”
He glanced at the cage and then at me with renewed focus. “You got it, cap’n.”
I lightly slapped his shoulder as he stood to take on his new duties.
“I’ll go with,” Addison said, glaring at the prisoner. “Might as well keep busy.”
I nodded and continued on to one of the fires where Nazario, Aeris, Cathal, Mullins, and Meridan were sitting around, all deep in slow conversation. When I slumped on a barrel to relax, all eyes were on me. I wasn’t exactly subtle about being vexed.
“Hard night, my friend?” Nazario said.
“Sounded fun from out here,” Cathal shrugged.
Nazario hit him on the shoulder with the back of his hand.
“Is she sleeping?” Meridan asked.
“For a bit,” I answered.
“What about you?”
“We can’t sleep together. That’s what she said. She’ll only be asleep for a couple hours.”
“Why can’t ye sleep together?” Cathal asked, chewing on a dried strip of meat.
“Because that bitch in the cage there,” I said, pointing with a stick. “Bit her back in Dornwich.”
“Kroans can do this thing,” Mullins explained, gesturing with his hands. “They can take a chunk of you and if you don’t die, they can get in your head.”
Cathal stopped chewing, his eyes going wide. “And control ye?”
“No, not like that,” I said. “We share dreams now and then, but neither of us remembers most of them.”
“Most sirens can do it,” Meridan corrected. “In their own way. Kroans are a bit more… extreme.”
Nazario nodded. “Aeris has a certain sense as well. After she tasted my blood, that is.”
“It only enhances what I already have,” she said humbly.
“And what is it you have?” I asked.
She shrugged a shoulder. “I feel what others feel if they’re near enough. Now, I can feel him from afar.”
“She ate some of ye, then?” Cathal asked me. “Yer siren, I mean.”
I slid my leather glove and bracer off my hand, taking the two wooden fingers with it.
