Page 136 of Demon Defeat: Part One

The way he studied my face indicated he was trying to put what he was thinking into words that would make sense to me. Apparently, he couldn’t because he ended up shrugging.

“It’s okay. I trust you.”

He leaned in to kiss my head.

“Thank you.”

He closed his eyes, and his breathing evened out almost immediately. I knew I should sleep, too, but I tried to puzzle out why his instincts were telling him to let the infected live instead. It didn’t make sense. Why let one of them monitor what we were doing? Unless it was to monitor them?

Them.

I thought back to the blood on the rope and how the infected had watched us at Vance, testing our defenses before striking on a larger scale.

That was what the infected was doing. Watching. Waiting to test. But why would we want to appear oblivious and weaker? Maybe it was a smaller group of infected. By appearing weaker, they might attack altogether versus hiding and lying in wait for a human to get close.

Suddenly, the long grass around us didn’t feel as safe anymore.

Thankfully, the break was truly short. After twenty minutes, the fey on guard started waking everyone.

As soon as I sat up, so did Molev. He didn’t speak; he simply lifted me into his arms and started jogging again. When I rested my head on his shoulder, I pretended to close my eyes and watched behind us. I could see it then, the infected trailing us at a healthy distance.

It wasn’t alone.

Three others trailed it.

As I watched, one of them broke off and ran in another direction and disappeared into another cavern’s dark opening.

I lifted my head and looked at Molev.

“How much longer until we get there?” I asked.

He picked up the pace without answering. That was answer enough, though. No matter how long it was, it wasn’t soon enough.

Infected came and went as we moved through the caves. The group’s tension increased, proving I wasn’t the only one noticing their movements. Exhaustion won at some point, and I slept in Molev’s arms until we stopped again in a lit cave. We took another very short break there before our group was running again.

Molev had said that it would take a day to reach the caverns and a night to reach the city, but it felt like it was taking much longer. I checked my watch and saw it was almost five in the morning.

I glanced at Molev. His jaw tensed with his effort. Running all day beside the vehicles and carrying me all night with only two twenty-minute naps?

I didn’t like it.

The thought had barely formed when he nodded toward something ahead of us. I followed his gaze and saw another cavern opening. This one opened into a vast space that easily stretched for miles. Crystals twinkled like distant stars on the towering ceiling.

In the distance, another larger crystal looked like a full moon on a clear night. The group ran noiselessly across the barren cavern floor, and I was once again struck by the stark beauty of Molev’s world. Cool silence and dim light. Down here, both felt comforting, not like on the surface.

As we drew closer and that orb grew larger, I could see a stone wall ahead. It stretched in both directions in front of us. Carved out of existing stone, or made from magic, the wall seamlessly rose out of the cave’s floor. The soft light from above played on veins of white running through the grey and black stone.

“Our home,” Molev said softly.

Two of the fey sprinted ahead. One slowed as the other neared the wall. I watched as the first one stopped at the base and the other started sprinting again. The first one bent in the knees and caught the other’s foot as he jumped, launching him even higher in the air.

“The base of the wall is smooth so the hounds could find no footholds.”

“Which means you can’t either,” I said, understanding.

The fey landed on top of the wall and ran along the top to a pile of something. He threw it over the side. A rope with loops. Our group started to slow.

“Will you be able to climb?” Molev asked.

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