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“Hellhound or not, let’s hurry up,” Ryan said. “Grab what you can.”
He looked at me. “We’ll need to leave the fish. I don’t know any way of moving them. But I promise the fey will come back and try to save them.”
I turned off the monitors and reduced what energy consumption I could so the tank would be fine for a few days. Then, I watched the fey load up their arms with the supplies Adam’s family had gathered. When the grey men had what they could carry, one of them carefully picked up Adam from one of the bunks he’d been moved to.
On some level, I was terrified I was making the wrong choice. But mostly, everything felt surreal. The infected laying a trap and killing our cattle…the grey men and how they killed the infected.
When we reached the main barn, I glanced at the opening to the silo. There were no infected or a hellhound there. Just a lot of blood.
Surrounded by the fey, I stepped out into the yard. One of them was spraying off at the milk house. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Nearby, a blonde stood next to a dead infected, but she wasn’t looking at it. She was watching the bathing fey.
The truck Ryan mentioned waited in the driveway. There was another human man behind the wheel and a woman standing, with bow ready, on top of the cab. The young girl, her dark, curly hair pulled back into a poof at the top of her head, watched us with a serious expression.
Four humans in a sea of grey men. Each of those four looked free, but were they really?
I wished Adam was awake. His insight had saved us so many times.
“Did someone yell hellhound?” Ryan asked, pausing to look at the washing fey.
“Yes,”the blonde said angrily. “And not enough fey came running. If not for Brenna, I’d be dead.”
She glared at all the grey men.
“You guys are shit for protection. I understand finding new people is amazing, but don’t sacrifice the ones you already have.”
I realizedshe was talking about me when Ryan apologized and said, “We were under a lot of concrete and couldn’t hear.”
“The feyby the trucks heard. Am I that useless? That much of a bitch that I’m not worth saving?”
The grey men—fey, I reminded myself—shifted restlessly around me. I wasn’t sure if that was because of the packages they carried or the guilt the woman was piling on.
“They were told not to leave the trucks under any circumstances,” Ryan said. “We’ve been tricked before. Infected bait them away from the trucks then try to disable our only means of escape. I’m truly sorry, Hannah. It was my order. Usually, there are fey assigned to each human. We weren’t prepared for how hard it would be to load the animals, let alone hear a yell for help.”
“I’m so sorry,”I said when she looked at me.
“It’s not your fault. It’s theirs. If they want to keep us alive, they need to plan better.”
The feywho’d been washing by the milk house tossed the hose aside and pulled the girl against his chest.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Because I will never forgive myself for what almost happened.”
She hugged him in return,and it looked far from a platonic embrace.
“As you can see,” Ryan said to me, “we get along with the fey, which is a good thing. They have the speed and strength necessary to kill the infected quickly.”
“And the dog things?Can they kill those?” I asked.
“Yes.It’s not as easy, but the fey are the only ones who can kill the hellhounds.”
“Fine. We’ll go with you.”
“I don’t think you’ll regret it. But, if you change your mind after a few days, we can always come back here with the fey to see if I’m right about the infected returning.”
I had no doubt he was right. I’d seen the way the infected had acted. The farm was no longer a safe haven.
Whether or not Tolerance was remained to be seen.
