Page 4 of Flames and Blood

This place is like a morgue.

My skin prickles all the way down my arms.

They stop me at the last set of bars. The ward-work reaches me two steps out—pressure behind my teeth, a bitter taste, raw and new. I stop before it touches me. It hums.

Not yet.

Nobody’s tried this ward against a dragon, I’m certain of it. When somebody does, it’ll be on a night I choose.

The cell has a cot and a drain. On the wall beside the bars, there’s a board. A schedule, already filled in. Draws, twice a week, the way they always were. My cell number’s written at the top. Like before.

Not so different then.

The escorts hand a folder to someone new. Young. No lines in his face. Jaw shaved clean this morning, one missed spot under his ear.

“Careful with that one,” the outgoing man tells him. Not me. Him.

“I’m right here,” I say.

Nobody answers. The bars close, and the young one sits at the desk outside them and opens the folder, pen already in hand. He initials something.

Then the pen stops.

He reads. Keeps reading. When his head comes up, he’s not looking at the folder anymore. He’s looking at me, and he’s on his feet and a step back before he knows he’s moved.

There it is.

I haven’t stirred. Hands loose at my sides, exactly where they were.

“You can keep going if you want some space,” I tell him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I need to—” He stops. Stands there holding the folder flat against his chest.

“It’s okay, I haven’t eaten anyone. Recently.” I grin at him.

The door swings open, and an older man walks in with a clipboard against his hip. He’s been on shift since before this building had a roof, by the look of him.

“What’s going on here?”

The younger man’s mouth opens and closes.

“Oh, we were just getting acquainted.” I aim my grin at the newcomer.

He doesn’t look at me. He looks at the desk. “Did you initial the top sheet or the second one?”

“The top.”

“Both. Every time.” He sets the clipboard down and reaches past the kid for the folder. “You initial one, the night man misses something else, and somebody up the chain comes to me asking why it’s not done right.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Goddammit.” He mutters it as he fixes the sheet himself, pen moving briskly. “They keep hiring out of the valley, and you all keep arriving with clean boots.”

“Sir.” The kid doesn’t respond to the insult. “The file says two men on the floor for every blood draw.”

“It does.”

“It doesn’t say why.”