“Okay, that’s like a five-minute walk from here. So if we calculate for 20 minutes of driving time, give or take another ten, that gives us a maximum of maybe 15 miles they could have traveled if they sped like crazy getting here. Someone find me some string and a ruler,” she snaps, entirely in investigation mode.
Eamon reaches out his hand, red smoke surrounding it as he reaches into theAetherand grabs hold of her requested items before handing them to her, deliberately stepping into her space to do so. She gives him a strange look, inching away while muttering her thanks, still adjusting to the presence of such magic and probably such a colossal beast.
Even I’m having a hard time with this one. Eamon is probably six inches taller than evenmytrue form, practically hunching over to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling. His antlers look like they would weigh anyone smaller down, and his red swirling eyes are… unsettling, to say the least. Biberé are easily the most terrifying of us, though I’m unsure why. In all honesty, it should be my kind, but the bloodsuckers are just hauntingly monstrous, even for us.
Isla returns to her work, doing some kind of math equation on the top of the map, converting miles to inches as quickly as possible. After finding the correct number, she lays the string against the ruler.
“Are you gonna change?” Fritz asks Eamon as Isla starts making marks on her string to create… something.
“I hadn’t planned on it,” Eamon replies, watching Isla intently.
“Maybe you should, so you don’t take the fucking ceiling out,” she tells him, no doubt feeling his eyes glued to her. Now that we know why she feels no fear, her attitude towards him is downright hilarious. Grown men would cower at the being standing in this room, yet she just seems annoyed.
His amusement at her matches my own as he relents. “Fine, gimme a minute,” and he walks down the hall as she proceeds to use scissors to cut the string.
“I need a finger,” she announces with a shaky voice, ignoring Eamon’s exit completely.
“I have ten of them. Which one you want?” Fritz asks, repeatedly annoying her to keep her from falling apart in her frantic search for Bel. Her narrowed eyes soften for a moment, threatening laughter.
“Just get over here,” she tells him. He follows her command, using a finger to hold the string over the spot where I killed those hunters. Using the makeshift measuring apparatus, she draws a perfect circle around it, indicating how far they could have traveled. She stands back and looks over her work, happy to have at least some knowledge of Bel’s proximity.
“Have you had any more pain or dizzy spells since the ominous message they left?” she asks me, looking over the city map.
“No, they’ve given her some peace for the moment,” I run a hand through my hair, praying to whatever Gods are listening that she’s alright.
“What isthe pain leadsanyway?” she thinks aloud.
Re-entering the room while buttoning up his jeans, drawing Isla’s rapt attention, Eamon announces, “It means that a sacrifices extreme pain and suffering will lead you to wherever they are. It’ll feel like an instinct to run, chase, destroy. We need to have you ready to go, because once she’s recovered from the last session, they’ll start up again. Over and over until you stumble into their trap.”
Now I remember why Biberé are the most daunting of us all. They’re all so fucking massive in human form, while also somehow looking the most harmless. Fritz and I put people on edge, instantly knowing there’s somethingoffabout us, but this guy looks downright cuddly. Handsome, certainly, but sweet.
He may have the biggest arms and shoulders I’ve ever seen, nearly bulging out of his shirt, but he also has a little more meat on his bones, a softness to him that those of my kind do not have. His hair sits somewhere between blonde and brown, and he rubs the back of his head, probably adjusting to having hair there again, the short strands making an almost scratch-like sound against his palm. The hair on top is all messy and disheveled as if he just rolled out of bed.Like a teddy bear in human form.
“You gonna stare all day, or are we gonna get to work?” For a moment, I think he’s speaking to me, and I want to throttle him. But then Isla’s head snaps back down, and she grips the pen so hard that it threatens to snap. Based on his self-satisfied grin, that’s exactly the reaction he was looking for. She mumbles that he’ssuch a fucking assholeunder her breath, and he just chuckles.
He might be teasing her for staring, but he’s no better. His first red, and now gray-green eyes haven’t left her since he’s arrived. Perhaps it’s simply a matter of his concern that she’s a hunter— though I doubt it— but he’s staring nonetheless.
Isla kneels before her map, staring at it. Knowing Bel is somewhere within the circle she’s drawn doesn’t help. If anything, I fear it makes me feel more lost. She’s so close, yet she may as well be a thousand miles away.
“Now what?” she looks up at me, looking as hopeless as I feel, eyes starting to tear up again.
Eamon plops onto the couch, looking over the map, “How many of those places can you cross off? Any places you visit regularly, anywhere heavily populated. These guys operate out of incredibly large compounds that are off-grid. Converted prisons, empty malls, deserted warehouses, the like.”
Isla draws X’s on places she’s familiar with, stating that most of the stuff around here is multi-unit housing and a few shopping complexes. But once she’s done that, the empty spaces left behind still far outnumber those marked. She throws the pen down hard enough that it bounces off the table onto the floor.
“There’s no fucking point,” she stands, hands shaking as she covers her face with them, “we are just sitting here, twiddling our thumbs, until they decide to start slicing Bel up again.”
“No, this is ahugestart Isla,” Fritz retrieves and hands her the pen, “You alone have narrowed it down from a possible 13 hour drive to this small area of, what did you say, 15 miles?”
She sobs, “That’s theradius. The area would be more like 700 miles.”
“I- okay,” he pats her shoulder, “In any case,youdid this. When we find her and return her safely, it’ll be because of you. Let’s start typing the addresses left into our phones, find what’s there, yeah?”
At Isla’s nod and sad smile, all of us take out our little screens to open up the map application. She starts listing off addresses, and we search and search for hours until the entire area has been marked off, leaving us with no more than six places that could be used as a compound.
“Look at that,” Fritz tells her, “You narrowed it down from the entire western states to six possible locations. We could all split up and have her found by the end of the day.”
“That’s not the best idea,” Eamon tells him, “Since we know it’s a trap and they’re expecting the two of you, we need to play this a little smarter. The three of us,” he gestures between himself, Fritz, and I, “will go to each location and-”
