Underworld 114_Goddess Of The Underworld

Chapter 114

 By the time we step back into the evening air, the sky has slipped toward indigo. The scent of sap and sawdust still hangs over the orphanage fence, clean and ordinary against the old metallic bite of blood. I check the windows, tiny faces pressed to the ss, caretakers counting heads again just to be sure. Elliot spots me from the nket and lifts his hand. I lift mine back. We’re okay. For now.

 “East line first,” Tommy says, already jogging. Noah falls in beside him, and I match their

 pace. Haiden and Levi peel off toward the service road to reset thest of the rm sigils. Xavier hangs back to finish assigning rotations, then shadows us a beatter, quiet as a

 phantom. The forest swallows the vige hum in a handful of strides. Trunks rise like pirs, the understory dense with bracken and fern. The air is cooler here, sharper. Hawk paces at the edge of my consciousness through Noah, head low, ears forward, that deep, steady rumble threading through the bond.

 Something’s wrong, Noah murmurs across our link. He doesn’t have to say it. I feel it too. Not a scent, exactly, more like a hollow in the air where a scent should be. Levi’s ward pings softly as we cross the east perimeter–no rm now, just a slow pulse, acknowledging us. Tommy crouches at the ditch line, where the bone totems were found earlier. The ditch’s damp edges glint faintly in the fading light.

 “Fresh tracks,” he mutters, pointing. “Heavier paws here, lighter here. They split and reconverged.” He looks up at me. “It’s messy on purpose.”

 “Smudged…” Noah kneels beside him, frowning. “Scent dragged. They’re dragging their

 own trails with ash sacks.” 

 I scan the treeline. Thest light slips through like spilled milk, blurring shadows. Layah materializes at my side, low and silent, hackles lifted.

 “We’re not alone,” Levi says. He raises a palm; sigils spill from his skin, thin as cobweb, and drift outward until they kiss bark and rock and disappear. A secondter, they hum back to him in tiny pulses. His eyes narrow. “Movement. Small. Fast. Stopping and

 starting. Not wolves.” 

 “Runners?” Tommy asks.

 Levi shakes his head. “No heart–thump. No heat signature.” He nces at me, and

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 something unspoken clicks between us. The hollowness again, closer.

 Noah stands, tilting his head. Hawk’s growl deepens. “I’ve got five distinct gait patterns within a hundred meters,” he says. “But I only smell three.” 

 A branch snaps to our left. Tommy is moving before the sound finishes, but the figure that stumbles from the underbrush isn’t charging. It’s a rogue male, gaunt, patchy fur, eyes clouded. He drags a forepaw like it’s caught on a trip line we can’t see. He stops six feet from us, head jerking as if holding himself back from lunging takes all his strength.

 I raise a hand. “Easy.”

 His gaze flicks to me, then past me, searching. His nose lifts, but he doesn’t sniff. It’s a strange, abortive movement, as if the function is there but the instinct is not.

 “Who sent you?” Tommy asks, voice low.

 The rogue shifts and his throat works. A rasp squeezes out, sand–dry. “Hun…ger.” His jaw trembles. A shiver ripples through him from spine to muzzle.

 “Who?” I press, softer. “Give me a name.”

 He sways. When he speaks again, it’s not a name. It scrapes the air, brittle as bone. “Kin.”

 My stomach drops, sudden and hard. The rogue jerks once, twice, and then his eyes widen like he’s seeing something behind us. Levi reaches for him on instinct, a stabilizing spell on his lips, toote. A thin thread of nothing peels free from the base of the wolf’s skull, fine as hair and darker than shadow. It retracts into the treeline before any of us can move. The rogue copses, a puppet with the strings cut. Silence ms down. Even the insects hold their breath. Tommy rolls the body gently, checking for breath he already knows isn’t there. He looks up at me, jaw set. “He didn’t die. He was… released.”

 “Something rode him,” Levi says quietly. He’s pale in the blueing light. “Something that doesn’t leave heat or sound. Just hunger.” 

 Hawk huffs once through Noah. The sound isn’t fear. It’s distaste, deep as bedrock. Not prey. Not predator. Hollow. Xavier’s boots whisper over the leaves as he steps beside me. He studies the corpse, then the treeline where the thread vanished. His voice is soft. “These weren’t attacks to kill. They were tests. How fast we gather. Where we reinforce. Who we send first.” He nces at the orphanage through the trees as if he can see Elliot

 through walls and distance. “What we’re protecting.”

 Not what, something in me corrects. Who. We double the circuit, slow and methodical. We find two more totems, both tucked low and wrapped tight with wire. Levi doesn’t touch the smears this time. He whispers, and the residue lifts in tiny motes and curls into a ss vial that fogs on the inside like breath on winter ss. Back at the ditch, Tommy nts a new post, iron–capped, rune–etched and sets the base deep. “We should the whole east line in iron before the week’s out,” he says. “If they’re sending puppets, I want

 a fence that cuts strings.” 

 “And a patrol that refuses to dance,” Haiden adds as he joins us, wiping sawdust from his palms. “South posts are done. Service road wards are keyed to Levi only.”

 “Good,” I say. But there’s a pit opening in my stomach that has nothing to do with fences.

 We head back as the first stars pull through the sky. The orphanage glows warm at the edge of the vige. Inside, the movie is still ying and half the room has surrendered to sleep. Elliot’s head is tipped against Macey’s shoulder, both of them dead to the world, Layah’s nose resting on Elliot’s knee like she’s cataloging every breath. I kneel beside him. and watch hisshes tremble in dreams. My throat tightens. He doesn’t stir when I brush a curl from his forehead. Good. Let him rest. Let him have this.

 Tommy leans against the doorframe, arms folded, eyes still on the dark beyond the panes. “You hear the word he used?” he asks, pitched for me alone.

 “Kin,” I say.

 He nods. Doesn’t say the rest. Doesn’t have to.

 Levi holds up the little ss vial. The fog inside presses to the sides, then pulls back, restless as tidewater. “This isn’t wolf magic,” he says. “It isn’t witchwork, either.”

 Noah shifts closer, the red flicker of Hawk banked but ready. “Then what is it?”

 I look at the nket where Elliot sleeps, at the way Macey’s hand is tangled in his shirt.

 like she knows better than to let him drift.

 “Something that doesn’t want us,” I say, and feel the truth of itnd like iron. “It wants

 one of ours.”

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 Xavier’s reflection catches in the window, dark eyes steady. “Then we make sure it never

 finds him.”

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Underworld 114