— Kaden —

We were on the clearing where I married Elaeya.

There were no fairy lights, no flowers, no decorations. All the trees were bare except for the evergreens. There were a few early snowflakes falling around us. Pyres had been erected before me. Araeya was singing one of the most mournful songs I ever heard, it shattered everyone’s heart.

Families were carrying shroud wrapped bodies to the pyres, one after the other.

“Anders Johanson, thirty-nine,” said Jayson beside me, reading from a few sheets of papers in his hands. His throat was tight and he had difficulty talking. I just stared at the bodies of some of my best men being laid to rest.

“Dick Dodson, forty-five, Hugo Smith, twenty-eight, Finn Hansen, nineteen,” he said. “Marika Da Silva, thirty,” he continued as more bodies were brought. “Kayla Da Silva, five, Thomas Da Silva, two, Mitchell Da Silva twenty-nine.”

An entire family.

“Maria Rossi, seven,” he continued. “Patricia Rossi, twenty-four, Mathias Müller, five, Mika Müller, five, Mia Müller,” he paused. “Eight months,” he choked. He took a long inspiration to steady his voice. I watch as they brought a tiny little bundle to place in on one of the gigantic piles of wood. The disparity in size, ridiculous and horrendous at the same time.

I barely listened as Jayson drone on more names.

“Peter Müller, forty, Abella Novak, twenty-one, Lola Novak, one, Ingrid Ivanov, thirty, Emmet Murphy, six, Samantha Murphy, thirty-two, Martin Kennedy, fifty-eight, Alice Williamson, one, Frank Williamson, seventy-three, Margaret Williamson, seventy-four, Eleanor Williamson, nineteen.”

We paused for an instant, looking as the last bodies were placed.

“We found one more body,” he told me in a dead voice.

“Who?” I asked, equally numb.

“Patricia Rossi was three months pregnant.”

I grinded my teeth. “They hurt my people Jay.”

“I know,” he said. “They will pay.”

“They will.”

One relative of every family came in with a torch. A few men set ablaze pyres for their entire family with tear-streaked faces.

Araeya continued to sing.

“How’s Ylva?” I asked Jayson. “Is she—?”

“She’s still alive,” he said. “But it’s not good. She’s been shot twenty-seven times. It’s a miracle she was still alive when we came. She lost a lot of blood. It’s always harder to find matching blood donors for hybrids. The doctors are not very optimistic. She has shattered bones, damaged intestines, liver, there’s a bullet lodged pretty close to her heart.”

“They got to her heart?” I swallowed. I wanted to kill them a hundred times and piss on their graves.

“The worst is the one in her skull. They don’t know yet if it connected with her brain. She’s getting an MRI today. Even if she makes it, her cracked spine could mean paralysis, brain damage could mean vegetative state.”

We watched the flame rise higher.

“The doctors said they’ll do what they can, but to prepare for the worst.”

“I loved this place. Good things happened here.”

“It did.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about it anymore.”

There wasn’t many placed on Blakemore who could contain the crowd that was here today. There was a constant music, like leaves dancing in the wind, only it was crying. Some quietly, a few loudly. There was so many that it was hard to distinguish one from the others.

“How are the preparations?” I asked him.

“We spent two point three million in armament already. We got a tank though, and a second-hand black-hawk, so that’s not too bad for the price. Plus massive amount of amos, more guns, we got good deals on more AK47s and plenty of uzzis.

The reward as gotten a lot of attention from mercs all over. We’re going to have to plan for their displacement here. We’ve gotten plenty of tips, and we have a team already checking everything up. Most is crap but we could get a golden nugget hidden somewhere in there.”

The fire was warm against my skin, contrasting with the early winter wind.

“We’ve gotten massive response from the pack. I don’t think we could have done better with conscription. We had to refuse people.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Most because they were too young.”

“Don’t refuse them. They won’t go on the battlefield but help with preparing weapons, or food, resources, anything we’ll need.”

“I suspected you’d ask for something like that, we’re already compiling everything on this side that will have to be done.”

I wanted to nod, but I didn’t feel like it. I just started at the disappearing shapes behind the flames. I knew Jayson was doing the same next to me.

“All of your sisters have applied to do anything available for them to do. I suspect you wanted to keep them here?”

“Yeah, let’s not create more juicy targets. There will be plenty do to here.”

“An Anabella Peters has applied too, she’s not from our pack—.”

“Timothy Thomas’s mate?”

“Yeah, Eva said to keep her away from anything risky, she’s two months pregnant.”

“Right. Let her help if she wants to, but nothing physically demanding.”

He nodded. “I put Mishka in charge of the mercs and other outside warriors.”

“Good.”

“Boisclair is sending a hundred warriors.”

One of the pyres crumbled as the wood was getting consumed.

“Forty-four other packs are sending warriors. Some just a couple, other a few dozens.”

“Prepare for them,” I told him.

“The brotherhood won’t like this.”

“Fuck the Brotherhood.”

Araeya was still singing. I don’t think she was singing only for the dead. A part of me knew she was calling to her daughter.

“Amen,” said Jayson.

Something pinged.

Jayson pulled his phone out and looked at a few things, I let him.

“Okay,” he said. “The tech team was working with Mishka on tracking some black market outposts. We have a list of five. That’s a start.”

“Any more likely than another?”

“Not that it seems,” he said.

“Call up the army, we’ll go one by one. I want all of them found out. We’re not stopping when we get her. We’re erasing them from existence. I want their heads on spikes. I want to send a message to anything that might get the idea that this is a respectable source of income.”

“Got it.”

“Have they tracked who put the hit yet?”

“Not yet.”

“When we find them, they’re the next we’ll eliminate.”

“Great. I love a good ethnic cleansing.”

He didn’t say it with pleasure, or mirth, but with an acknowledged darkness. He knew it would be bad, like I did, but we both knew it had to be done, and if we didn’t, this could possibly be the first of many. We had to kill it in the bud.

This was not vengeance, this was not justice, this was monster business.

Not matter how much our kin liked to pretend we were nothing but enhanced human, days like these reminded us that this was not our world, this was not what we were. In the face of monsters, you either fight them as equals, or die as victims.

I would fight, and I will win.

Today, we were preparing to march as the greater monsters. None will even hurt us again this way. We would make sure they knew.

This was not so much a battle, but a message. That’s how monsters communicate, in blood and fears. But I can speak the language, and I will.

I tried not to think of what was awaiting Elaeya if I didn’t found her in time.