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Sam raised his head. “I’ve seen places where good things happen that had dream creatures in high numbers. Churches. Hospital wards where people are healing well. Rallies for peace.”
“Yes, we have seen that, Mistress.” Rose looked to her brother. “We still had to eliminate them. Angels, faeries, others. It’s our mandate. We have to.”
“I see. Does that bother you?”
“Yes.” An absolute answer from Rose.
So they kept some of their free thought if not free will. Thinking but not following through and doing what they wanted. They were both terribly thin.
“Sam, you asked me if there was something else you could do? There’s this. Eat. Wash yourselves. Take a few days off. You need to heal.”
“Not so.” Rose held up her bruised and cut arm. “We heal faster than normal. Every fight we bleed, but every fight heals us too. If we cut ourselves outside of a fight with creatures, we heal close to normal. Do this though...” She gestured at the house. “And you can see the change afterward.”
“We get a boost of sorts.” Samuel rubbed a scar on his chin where I’d seen a thin laceration half an hour ago.
Val pushed himself upright. “I’ve got a few granola bars in my Dodge.”
On the back of his shirt was a hand-sized patch of blood. If anyone needed healing it had to be him.
Granola bars. I wanted to feed them both steak with a crap load of everything to go with it.
They were staring at me, wide-eyed.
“You can do this? I’ve instructed you so...yes?”
They nodded and rose to their feet. Both came to me and asked for my blessing. Oh so weird, but I gave it while wishing I could stop them self-destructing.
This was cruel.
They turned to follow Val.
“Wait. Tell me this. Do you have family looking for you?”
“Our parents are dead.”
“No one else,” Sam added.
“I see. Thank you.”
That was why then. Val had said he was a loner. His last girlfriend had left him and only told him he was a father shortly before she was killed in France.
Life sucked. It seemed the C went after and stitched only those who had no one left to love them.
I bit my lip while watching them get food from Val. The duo walked past me and down the side of the house toward their SUV.
After I’d seen Rose do her awe-inspiring kill routine in the living room—all lithe limbs bouncing off furniture while she dispatched creatures to the left and right...I’d wanted to be like her. Girl with the best kill-skills ever.
Not now.
How long did the Stitched live? If the creatures didn’t get them, maybe starvation did? They were addicts.
I scrambled to my feet as Val approached and mounted the steps. “How about I check your wounds?”
He paused. “My hand?”
Which was when I noticed his bandage was gone. “You too?”
“Seems so. Like they said, the fight healed me.” He halted before me then stepped in.
