39. Then we hunt in it's own backyard

Chapter 39: Then we hunt in its own back yard

He crossed the wreckage slow, boots crunching over broken stone, and knelt in front of her.

Nora sat where they'd propped her, blanket loose around thin shoulders, staring at nothing with eyes that didn't track him even as he lowered himself directly into her line of sight. He reached out. Touched two fingers gentle to her cheek, the way he might've checked a child's fever.

Nothing. No flinch, no blink, no sharp word about personal space, nothing at all behind those eyes that had spent yesterday afternoon rolling at Finn with a fondness she clearly hadn't wanted anyone to notice.

Something went cold and still in his chest, spreading slow through him like water finding every low place in the ground.

Back on Earth he'd wanted kids of his own. Wanted it bad enough to go through half the paperwork for adoption before life had found a way to make sure it never happened, one delay after another until the wanting had just become another thing he carried and didn't talk about. He'd never told Mikaela that. Hadn't told anyone here. But it was there in him now, sitting right behind his ribs, every reason he'd let Finn climb him like a jungle gym and swung small bodies through the air until they shrieked with laughter he hadn't heard the like of in longer than he could remember.

These were his kids. Not by blood. Didn't matter. The home was his to protect the second Elara had asked him to look into it, and something had walked in under his watch and hollowed one of them out like scooping the meat from a shell.

He stood.

Closed his eyes. Reached out with everything in him that wasn't sight, the way he'd learned to hunt in a forest that had tried to kill him a hundred different ways before he'd earned the right to walk through it unafraid. He listened for the shape of the thing, sniffed for whatever trail a demon left behind it.

Nothing came back but the city. Too big. Too loud, even at this hour, smoke and sweat and stone and a thousand small human smells layered over each other until there was no thread in any of it worth pulling. The creature was gone, folded into the dark somewhere he couldn't reach, and standing there failing to find it made the cold in his chest curdle into something sharper.

Shouting rose behind him. He turned to find a dozen guards spilling into the street, swords drawn, Alaric at their head with his own blade still bloodless in his hand.

"Stand down," Alaric barked, voice cracking across the wreckage before any of his men could get close enough to swing. "Stand down, he's cleared, I said stand down."

They didn't understand. Mikaela could see it on every face, the confusion of men who'd chased a murderer across half the city only to be told to lower their steel now that they'd caught him, but they obeyed their captain, blades dropping slow and uncertain, eyes still tracking Eto like he might still be something to fear.

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Maybe he was. Mikaela wasn't sure anymore herself, looking at the flat cold thing sitting behind his eyes.

The real work started once the guards had settled, and it wasn't the kind that ended in blood.

"I'll go to the Knight Commander tonight," Freya said, already moving through the wreckage counting heads, tallying children against caretakers. "There's a barracks annex that's stood half empty since the eastern garrison thinned out. It'll hold them. It's not a home, but it's walls and a roof and guards who'll actually notice if something comes through a window."

"I'll speak to the City Lord in the morning," Alaric said. "There'll be coin for rebuilding, or there'd better be, given what happened here on his watch. I'll see the children fed and the caretakers paid in the meantime."

It solved the immediate problem, at least. It didn't solve the rest.

"What about the Feyra," Mikaela said, once the logistics had quieted enough to ask. "It's still out there. It's still got Finn's face, or whatever's left of using Finn's face. What's the actual plan."

Elara, still upright somehow despite everything, leaned harder on her cane and answered before anyone else could. "It considers this city its home now. Fifty years of stories from the south taught me that much, they're territorial once they've claimed a place and fed long enough within it. It won't run. It has no reason to. It's ancient, patient, and it has nowhere else it needs to be."

"Then we hunt in its own back yard." Alaric's jaw had set hard. "I'll put every man I've got on the streets starting tomorrow. Every district, every alley, every building that might hide a boy who isn't a boy. If it's staying, we'll find it."

It wasn't a plan built on much beyond stubbornness and manpower, but it was something, and something was more than they'd had an hour ago.

The walk back to the inn passed in silence, the city gone dark and hollow around them at that hour, every window shuttered, every street empty but for the two of them and the sound of their own footsteps.

Erik answered the door in a dressing gown that had seen better decades, bleary eyed and clearly annoyed at being roused, and the annoyance lasted exactly as long as it took him to register who was standing on his step.

"Well I'll be damned." His whole face shifted, relief plain under the exhaustion. "Knew it. Knew there wasn't a chance in every hell you did what they said you did. Room's exactly how you left it, didn't let anyone near it, told the last fool who asked to piss off and find lodging elsewhere."

He led them in through the dark common room, tables stacked with chairs for the night, and talked easy as he went, unbothered by the hour.

"Got three women waiting on me upstairs, if you're wondering why I look this rough for a man who just got woken at this hour. Don't judge me for it."

Eto's eyebrows went up, something like genuine respect crossing his face.

Mikaela just rolled her eyes, dragging him toward the stairs before Erik could get any further into whatever story was coming next. Erik the Red. Should've guessed the second she'd heard the name, should've put it together the day he'd shrugged off a room full of gossiping patrons like it was nothing. Of course the man behind the bar used to be a legend. Of course he was.

Their room sat waiting exactly as promised, and the door had barely clicked shut behind them before Mikaela turned and threw herself at him, mouth finding his hard and hungry, hands fisting in what was left of his ruined shirt.

"We need you back to your best," she said, breathless, between kisses, walking him backward toward the bed. "And going this long without sleeping is going to kill you before that creature ever gets the chance."

She pulled back just far enough to look him in the eye, and there was nothing hesitant in her now, none of the tears from an hour ago, just certainty, plain and unashamed.

"Are you ready to fuck me?"

His smile wasn't a kind one. It was the smile of something that had found exactly what it wanted, and he moved her toward the bed.