Page 40 of Huntress

“Thoughts? They’re clearly intelligent, and they dug deeper here to hide their presence, but how deep would they have needed to go in order to get under the barrier?” Elsie questioned.

“The only way to find out is to get inside it,” Morgan said, confirming Elsie’s thought. She’d hoped they’d have another idea. Nobody had brought a shovel, and the demon wouldn’t dig for them.

The problem with rat demon tunnels was that they might have half a dozen openings for a single tunnel. Or they might have one opening for an entire underground network. It was easy to get turned around, as the rats relied on scent for navigation. Randomly trying whatever opening they found might result in her squad exiting the tunnels miles away, never finding the answer they needed.

Two things would decide the difference. First, how long the rats had been working on the tunnels. Second, what was their population? A few rats wouldn’t have carved out too many routes, just enough to provide them with a sense of security. But packs easily reached hundreds of members, and their underground systems would be extensive. This would have been an amazing opportunity for study if Roz had sent a qualified research team instead.

“We’ll have to come back to it,” Elsie sighed, squinting at the ground fruitlessly. Her ability to see magical trails helped, but she didn’t have X-ray vision to penetrate the dirt. “Mark its position on the map, we’ll need to find it again.”

“Okay!” Perrie chirped, taking the large topographic map out of her bag. She wasn’t as experienced as their geographer, Grady, but Perrie had a spell for this type of situation. She laid the map on the ground, spoke a few words in the ancient language, and poof, the map was accurately marked.

It took seven hours to complete their circuit of the barrier. This nest was bigger than most, encompassing the town and an oil field. By the time they finished, they’d marked eighteen areas of interest on the map.

All but one were obvious tunnels that went deep before reaching the barrier’s dead zone. When they got closer, Elsie slowed to a crawl, taking every precaution on the approach, in case the demons were still inside. It appeared to be a feeding ground. Or at least a place they were dumping the remains of their meals.

The pile of bones from all manner of creatures was extensive. Elsie raised the loop of fabric around her neck to cover her face as she explored. The stench was overpowering. The flesh had been picked free of the bones, which had been cracked open for the marrow. This wasn’t the putrid smell of rotting corpses. It was the defecation of the creatures who’d eaten them.

The dog demon’s nose wrinkled in disgust, and his eyes narrowed as he peered through the bones. Rats weren’t particularly picky eaters. Underneath the remains of a river serpent were the tiny bones of gnomes. Harmless, fun-seeking little creatures who loved their gardens and tending the earth.

“Shit,” Perrie muttered, drawing Elsie’s attention.

She bent over the cracked-open skull of a human, or a witch. Either way, the corpse had obviously come from the nest. Humans couldn’t defend themselves against demons. Even with weapons, they didn’t have the strength, speed, or temerity to succeed. And the witches presiding in the nests were only taught one spell.

“Confirmation that they’ve breached the barrier. It’s the only way they’d have gotten to the humans,” Morgan pointed out what they were all thinking.

“They were helpless.” Perrie crossed her arms around herself and leaned into Morgan for emotional support. He gripped her shoulder tightly, refusing to look away from what they’d found. Elsie’s heart panged for them. Why couldn’t the ancient magic give them to each other, when it’s clearly what they wanted?

She glanced at Mutt. He’d changed back to his human form, and wasn’t even trying to hide his curiosity or his shock. He stooped down and picked up the oblong skull of a kodama. It was the same size as the last digit of his thumb.

Kodama were tiny little spirits, born from the power of a matriarch tree. Harming them was considered taboo among magical creatures, and causing their death could bring the forest spirit’s wrath down upon you. He peered through the edge of the trees, as if he expected the creature to come bearing down on them at any moment.

“We’ll meet up with the others and combine our maps.” Elsie made sure the site had been added to their own. “We’ll eat and get back out here to make another sweep, we’ve gotta be certain we caught everything.”

The demon looked at her, his eyes narrowed with irritation, and she gave him a nod. “After we’ve finished what we came here to do, we’ll come back here and build a funeral pyre. We’ll give them a respectful send-off, and hopefully put their spirits to rest.”

It wasn’t a perfect solution. Purification by flames may not assuage the bitterness of these creatures, but Elsie still remembered how to calm a tormented soul. She’d watched her mother and Stolas do it hundreds of times in her youth, and was fairly certain she’d be able to reproduce the ceremony.

Morgan looked at her with questions all over his face, but he said nothing. Hunters concerned themselves with living demons. Elsie was willingly taking on one of the roles of a reaper for the first time, though she couldn’t access her ethereal magic and had no proper training. In his opinion, they weren’t the right people for the job.

But one glance at the gratefulness on Perrie’s face proved that Elsie had chosen the right path. Demons, humans, spirits, and sprites. Together in death, together they would rise from the ashes to greet their new lives.

Walking shoulder to shoulder with her demon back to the trucks, Elsie stole a look up at him. He looked troubled, but when he finally spoke, it was another complaint.

“How much longer will this take?” he asked.

“Did you think we’d finished for the day?” she questioned smugly. The demon grunted in response, and she snickered. He was definitely going to end up sleeping on the cot.

Chapter ten

Chapter 10

“Ididn’t realize their invasion was this advanced.” Jeshua leaned over the map her squad had created. His face paled as he studied it. Through further investigation, Elsie’s team had found a total of 38 tunnels from the outside, seventeen of which opened into the nest. The demons were ready for a full-scale invasion.

“What are they waiting for?” Franklin questioned wearily. He and his squad had spent the day tending to their regular duties, expecting Elsie and her team to take full responsibility for eradicating their little rat problem.

“Who knows?” Elsie sighed, chewing on a hard piece of rye bread, softened by the lumpy vegetable gravy that came with it.

Mutt sat next to her, his nose creased in disgust. He hadn’t touched anything on his plate, not that she could blame him. This was even worse than the food back home, which sucked on its best day. It was always hit or miss with the nests. Some of them ate like freaking royalty.