Page 28 of Katya and the Young God

Like a sudden tug of wind, a pull behind her navel, tendrils of darkness twine around her feet, kicking up the leaves and detritus of the forest floor, and she stops, looking at him.

His eyes are shut, his jaw clenched, like he’s holding onto every little bit of control he has within him.

Katya freezes, holding her muscles still, and Stepan pushes at her hand to resume anyways, but she can’t, can’t force herself to move, can’t make herself resume, and —

Pieter exhales, eyes still squeezed shut, and the tendrils of darkness fade away, leaving the leaves and dust where they were, settling back against the ground.

There’s a space of time, between a heartbeat and a minute, before he opens his eyes again and regards her, wary. “Don’t talk to me about him,” he says, his voice quiet. Strained.

Without prompting, Stepan leans against Katya, and she gives him a slow pat, not trusting herself to speak yet.

“The half demon must be paying those human tour guides more than they make in a year,” he says, instead of addressing what just happened, and it’s like he’s putting in effort, actual effort, to talk to her, and she can’t figure out why. “Or they’re very stupid for humans.”

Lines of stress crease around his face, and he’s not looking at her directly as they walk.

“Well you said JD was funding this, maybe most went into that,” she finally manages, and he nods, as if acknowledging the strange tension.

There’s no reason he couldn’t have just killed her then, and yet, once more, he chose not to. It would have been easy.

He shrugs, fake casual, and Stepan bounds back to him, falling back into step with him, happy as can be. As if that small display of power, how he could rip her to shreds, meant nothing to the dog. Like the dog’s used to it.

“It gets worse the further into the cave we go.” His voice is slowly returning to a calmer normal, to a more even tone, as he visibly regains his composure. “We’ve gone up to the first seal, it’s...unfriendly.”

Immediately, there are two warring impulses inside of Katya. One, to get more information on the seals and the cave, information she’s been sorely lacking, and two, to get as far away from this clearly unstable Demigod as possible.

But she’s been in dangerous situations before, and she’d take danger in the moment over a lack of information any day, so she steels herself.

“The seal that needs blood?” She prompts, and the look he shoots her says he knows exactly what she’s doing and doesn’t find it terribly funny. “I have perilously little information and no one’s interested in filling me in,” she says, gesturing towards the group that’s just far enough away to make overhearing difficult.

His lips thin, and he clams up, unwilling to be a participant in whatever query for information she may have.

Her hands almost trembling, still soaked in sweat, she pushes onwards, towards the larger group, her legs protesting the extra effort after such a day of hiking, but if she’s not going to get anything actually actionable out of the Demigod, she sure doesn’t want to spend time with him.

* * *

They reachthe mouth of the cave just when the setting sun makes it difficult to see between the trees, and Katya hasn’t been this physically tired since basic training.

The cave tour guides, a cheery group of five normal humans who seem slightly awed by the eclectic group, set up an impressive camp at the base, with cots inside of large, interconnected tents all gathered around a campfire.

The food they already have cooking sizzles over the fire, filling the entire area with the sound of something promising to be great.

The moment she drops her bag on the cot closest to the tent wall, she tucks herself into one of the camp chairs helpfully set up around the campfire, rolling her shoulder back, something, anything to stretch out the abused muscles.

She only gets two breaths in before JD sits, still full of bountiful energy, on the chair immediately next to her, still bouncing his feet despite the near ten-hour hike.

“You seemed to hold your own there,” he says, his voice conspiratorially low. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone hold that much conversation with Pieter ever.”

She doesn’t pause rolling her shoulder back, the sweat of the day cooling under the darkening sky. “Shared experiences,” she says, as sarcastic as she can make it.

He doesn’t seem to notice. “Still, you weren’t what I was anticipating,” he says, like it’s a compliment.

Katya looks towards the human tour guides, who are actively chatting with Rory the Vampire, as if they have zero sense of self preservation. “Do they know what they’re going into?” She asks, pressing the palm of her hand into the knot in her shoulder, something to try to work it loose.

“They know we’re going exploring in a supernatural cave that’s full of dangers,” he says, like it’s a sales pitch. “They signed up for that. Eagerly.”

Katya’s long-ago duty of keeping things secret from the general population balks at that, but she’s not the one in control of infosec in this region, so she lets it roll off her back. “So kind of you to give them warning.”

He seems unfazed, and it’s truly irritating. “I’m sure they’ve been through worse, but, how are you just...talking to Pieter?”

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