Page 169 of Huntress

“Sure.” She knew her demon would stay close enough to listen in while she had a much-needed talk with her people. They’d been so busy there hadn’t been a chance to catch up on everything she’d missed while she was gone.

Grady joined them, and Elsie gave him a little smile. They’d planned this ahead of time, the sneaks. They sat around the embers of their fire.

“Your seal is still intact.” Trenton set the tone for their conversation. He was intentionally trying to keep Marley and Steve from joining in.

Elsie huffed out an annoyed breath and spared them a wry grin. “Not for lack of trying. It was mostly data gathering with a whole lot of pain sprinkled in for funsies. As it turns out, removing my skin does not nullify the seal. Who’d have guessed?”

Grady’s mouth dropped open and Trenton’s eyes hardened.

“On a positive note, your theory was right, Grady. Dominion is within the area you thought. I didn’t bring the right map to show you, but we were less than six hours from Nest Apothecary. Unfortunately, I can’t give you an exact location because they were obsessively secretive. They had us in an enclosed box the whole way there, then blindfolded us until we reached the right floor.” She rolled her eyes. “It was definitely underground and huge.”

“Ha, I knew it.” Grady’s whisper was animated.

“Did you find what you expected?” Trenton asked. Elsie shot a glance at Grady.

“I told him about our conversation,” he said. “You’d been off on your own for so long, I couldn’t keep it from him.”

“I see how you guys are. This is more of a ‘discover if Elsie’s crazy’ talk than a ‘find out if the boss is okay’ talk. That hurts my feelings, here I’d thought you missed me.”

“A little of all of the above,” Trenton smirked.

“I wish I had better news on the results of our attempted espionage. We only got out once to look for evidence, and we were caught. I got enough to give me more questions and make me more suspicious, but nothing concrete.”

“What did you find?”

“Bits and bobs. A couple of security installation guys on the husbandry floor were putting in stronger doors because of a breakout that, in their opinion, had to have been intentional. Apparently it happened during their briefing, and they’ve got Dominion locked down like a fortress. You can’t even get in the elevator or walk through doors without a passkey. They did not pontificate about who or what was released, though.”

Trenton glanced at Grady quickly.

“While you were gone, there was a third chimera. Second squad was sent after it, and they took some pretty heavy casualties. Everyone survived, but the injuries were extensive,” Trenton told her.

He almost sounded conspiratorial, like he was going along with her crazy theory, but she didn’t dare to hope her second command was coming around. Not until she was sure.

“It sounded like there were three or four that were released,” Elsie said. “The fourth may be lying low for now, or they may not have survived. While sneaking around the same level, we came across a dead demon marked as ‘fusion unsuccessful.’ Almost all of them had scars or fresh incisions on their heads. They had various scars across their bodies, but each demon had a specific scar in the same spot. They weren’t healing like normal, either.”

“We also found evidence that they didn’t kill all of Saint’s pack. They were experimenting on at least two in that facility, right up until a week before we arrived. My guess is they didn’t want him to discover their existence and cause problems.”

Grady’s eyes widened. “What did they do with them?”

Trenton gave the big man a mocking look. “Is that a real question? We know what they do with failed experiments. How did the demon react?”

It was Elsie’s turn to mock him. “How do you think he reacted to finding out people he thought were dead for the past year had been tortured instead?”

“Tortured?” Trenton scoffed. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

Elsie stared at him for a second. He was on board with a little conspiracy talk, but he wasn’t willing to entertain anything deeply negative about the people handing out their orders. She pulled her shirt back, showing them both the regrowing skin Cornick had poured acid on. The patch was bigger than her palm; the skin shiny, puckered, and dark pink.

“Want to try that again? It’s been weeks, and I’m not fully healed. If this is what they’re willing to do to me, I can guarantee what they’re doing to those demons is a hundred times worse.”

“Gods Captain, what the hell?!” Grady came to his feet. His huge hands reached out before he clenched them at his sides.

“Why is it healing so slowly?” Trenton’s eyes were narrowed.

“I guess that’s what happens when your body is forced to heal itself every day for over a month. The same thing happened to Saint when Clairemont had him. It took a long time for his injuries to heal, even after I removed his collar.”

Elsie glanced toward the tents where the others were trying to sleep. “Cornick gets off on other people’s pain. Sometimes he’d watch the procedure, but most often he’d watch my face, waiting for my reaction. In the end, he didn’t get what he wanted. No matter how many times or how many ways he tried, it grows back with the seal mark perfectly intact.”

“How can he get away with that?” Grady growled.