Lupi 04 - Night Season

She was still demon enough to be much more dense than she looked. “This is wrong,” she said. “It’s wrong.”
    â€œGan.” That was Cynna Weaver, her voice tired and achy. “The sooner we leave, the sooner those still alive can help the wounded. The only thing we can do to help them is leave.”
    At the foot of the stairs, in the big common room, were more bodies. Some were dead, some weren’t. Two of the Ahk were tying up the injured guard with some rope. Only two of the dead were people Gan knew—had known—but one of them was Tash. Seeing her all bloody and still made the bad feeling swell up again until Gan thought it was going to swallow her, like being eaten from the inside.
    There was a lot of blood. The innkeeper stood against one wall, wringing his hands. “I couldn’t do anything,” he said to Cynna Weaver. “I can’t fight them. They’re my neighbors. I couldn’t do anything.”
    Cynna Weaver looked at him the way a full demon, maybe a Claw or one of the other big-deal fighters, looks at an imp or a bug. Like she might step on him, only he wasn’t worth the trouble. “You told your neighbors we were here, didn’t you? You call that doing nothing?”
    â€œYou have picked the wrong one for your betrayer,” the Ahk leader said. “Wen of Ekiba told us where to find you. He told us a great many things.”
    Her eyes widened. She and Steve Timms exchanged a look. They kept walking, though. Maybe they wanted to get out of the place where all the bodies were, and all the blood.
    Gan felt so weird. Not long ago she had really liked blood. Human blood, anyway. Demons got very silly and happy when they drank human blood, and she remembered how good that felt. But it was different when it was the blood of people you knew, and they were dead. She didn’t like looking at their blood all over the place.
    Was this what happened when you grew a soul? You could hurt, hurt a lot, even when you weren’t hurt?
    It was so confusing.
    In front of the inn more Ahk waited. They’d brought the horses from the stable, but not the little pony Gan had ridden before. The Ahk leader said the pony would slow them down, and Gan would have to ride in front of one of his warriors.
    Wen of Ekiba waited there, too.
    â€œTash is dead,” Cynna Weaver told him. “Bilbo is dead. My father is injured. Two of the guard are dead, another is dying, and every bloody one of them is injured. You happy about all that?”
    He just turned away. He didn’t answer her at all.
    It took several minutes to get everyone and everything loaded on horses. The Ahk wouldn’t leave their dead behind, so those bodies had to be strapped onto their horses. Their healer worked on the two Ahk who were injured badly enough to need it. A third was deemed too far gone; the Ahk leader chanted over her, then slit her throat.
    While all that was going on, others brought down all of their captives’ belongings, including Cynna Weaver’s bag with the chocolate kisses. Gan thought she might feel better when she saw that, but she didn’t.
    Daniel Weaver was a problem, being unconscious, and Cynna Weaver tried to persuade the Ahk leader to leave the man here. He wouldn’t do it, though. He thought she’d cheated him out of the sorcerer and wanted everyone else for hostages so Cynna Weaver would do what he told her to do. Find the medallion.
    Everybody wanted the stupid medallion. Gan hated it. It made people kill her friends before she’d even known they were friends. It made someone she’d thought was nice betray the rest of them.
    Cynna Weaver stood very still and silent while they passed her father to one of the mounted Ahk, who would hold on to him while they rode.
    â€œCynna Weaver?” Gan said in a small voice. “Do you feel really awful, too?”
    â€œYes, I do. Thoroughly damned awful.”
    â€œWould we feel better if we killed Wen of Ekiba?”
    Cynna Weaver looked at Gan, her expression all sad and strange. Then she did something surprising. She got down on one knee like she had when Gan said she didn’t have any friends here. Only this time she hugged Gan. Gan knew it was a hug because she’d seen humans do that. She knew hugging wasn’t always because they wanted to do sex, and she was pretty sure Cynna Weaver didn’t want sex now because that would be stupid, but she