Chapter 407: Something Drew a Map
The movie had reached its final fight by the time Lingyun stopped complaining about his ribs and fell asleep against my shoulder.
He hadn’t admitted he was sleeping. According to him, he was only closing his eyes so his body could concentrate on healing faster, but his breathing had deepened several minutes ago, and his hand had gone still beneath the edge of my shirt.
I left it there.
Yuche remained beside me with one hand resting on my thigh, while Chenghai still held my ankle at the other end of the sectional. Zhenlan had leaned more heavily against my knee sometime during the movie, and my fingers remained buried in his hair.
Moving would’ve meant disturbing at least three people and waking Lingyun, who would probably interpret that as an invitation to continue what his ribs had interrupted.
There were worse ways to become trapped.
The credits had started rolling when the baby vine lifted both leaf-heads from my lap.
See? Something always comes to fuck it up.
The vine’s body tightened around my wrist, and the leaves turned toward the hallway leading to the garage. A second later, the roots beneath the mansion shifted in the same direction.
They didn’t move e they were trying to kill something.
I mean, nothing burst through the floor, and no vines attempted to drag anyone away. Instead, every plant connected to the house seemed to pause and listen.
I sighed.
Yuche looked at me. "What’s going on?" he asked, his brows furrowing in concern.
"The plants are staring at the garage," I grumbled. Was it really too much for the world to give me one night with the guys before fucking everything up again?!? It really shouldn’t be that hard.
Chenghai released my ankle and sat forward. "At him?"
"Unless something else moved into the metal box while we were watching the movie."
Lingyun opened his eyes immediately. "I’ll burn it."
"You’re not burning anything from the couch."
"I can reach the garage from here."
"Which is exactly what you’re not doing," I replied, not impressed. I wasn’t having a wayward bit of fire burning down my house... or even part of my house. I was done with repairs.
Zhenlan rose from the floor and offered me his hand. I looked at it, then at the comfortable position everyone expected me to abandon.
"This had better be important." Was I pissed? Of course. What idiot in their right mind would think that I wouldn’t be pissed?!?
The roots beneath the house shifted again, tapping lightly against the foundation near the garage.
Unfortunately, given the current silent cues that the plants were giving me, I was willing to put money down on the fact that it probably was important.
I took Zhenlan’s hand while Yuche helped move my legs off his lap. Chenghai remained close in case my ankle objected, but I managed to get to my feet and cross the living room without being carried.
Progress, right?
Lingyun pushed himself upright behind us.
"You’re staying here," I said.
"No."
"You can barely move."
"I can move enough."
"To reopen your ribs?"
"If necessary."
Yuche looked at him. "It isn’t."
Lingyun ignored both of us and followed anyway, keeping one arm pressed over his bandages. I could’ve forced the issue, but that would’ve taken longer than walking to the garage and letting the healer yell at him again later.
The metal door separating the garage from the house remained sealed. Yuche rested one hand against it, and the locks withdrew before the reinforced panels folded aside.
Cold air drifted through the opening.
The garage lights were still on, illuminating the large metal box Yuche had constructed in the center of the floor. It had no windows, exposed seams, or direct contact with the concrete beneath it. The bitten man remained restrained inside, separated from every plant on the property by several layers of steel.
Seriously, what could happen when you were trapped in a metal box?!? Someone had to be really fucked up to stir up shit from there.
The roots still surrounded the garage from below, gathering beneath the box.
The baby vine hissed from my shoulder as Yuche opened a narrow viewing section in the metal wall that he had just created out of thin air.
The man inside was asleep.
Or, at least, he appeared to be.
His head hung forward against his chest, and his restrained hands rested near his knees. The fresh bandages around his side remained intact, but blood covered the tips of his fingers.
Chenghai’s expression hardened. "How did he injure his hands?"
Yuche opened the viewing section farther.
The answer appeared on the wall behind him.
Long scratches covered the steel from floor to ceiling. Some were shallow, while others had been carved deeply enough to leave curled strips of metal hanging from the surface. Dried blood filled several of the grooves.
The man’s fingernails were broken.
Lingyun leaned around Chenghai for a better view. "That seems strange enough to burn."
"He’s sleeping," Zhenlan said.
"So was I and I didn’t draw on the walls like that."
"I thought you said that you weren’t asleep," I replied, turning to look at the man.
Lingyun looked offended. "I was healing."
I ignored them and stepped closer to the opening. At first, the scratches looked random. Lines crossed one another, curved around dents in the steel, and disappeared beneath smears of blood.
Then I recognized the shape near the lower corner.
"That’s the outer wall."
Chenghai moved beside me and followed the line with his eyes. "It could be."
"It has the sealed entrance and the eastern turn."
Yuche’s attention sharpened as he examined the rest of the marks. He pulled the damaged panel away from the box and replaced it with a solid section of steel before the sleeping man could be exposed.
The scratched panel floated toward us and flattened against the garage floor.
Without the curve of the box distorting it, the pattern became clearer.
The lines weren’t random.
They formed roads.
Chenghai crouched beside the panel and traced one broad mark without touching it. "This is the main road north of the property. That curve follows the drainage channel."
Zhenlan pointed toward a cluster of intersecting scratches. "Those are the buildings outside the private barrier."
My irritation settled into something colder.
The man had never been shown a map. He’d arrived injured, barely conscious, and had remained under guard before being sealed inside Yuche’s metal box. He shouldn’t have known the shape of the property, let alone where the smaller buildings sat beyond the mansion.
Lingyun’s fire warmed the garage. "Wake him."
Yuche sent a narrow band of metal through the box and tightened it around the man’s ankle.
The prisoner jerked awake with a shout. His head snapped up, and he pulled against the restraints before realizing where he was.
"What happened?" he asked.
"You drew us a picture," I replied, pointing at the metal sheet still on the ground.
He stared through the viewing gap at the panel on the floor. Confusion crossed his face before giving way to fear.
"I didn’t do that."
"Your fingers would disagree."
The man looked down at his broken nails and the blood covering his hands. His breathing became uneven. "I don’t remember."
"Were you dreaming?" Zhenlan asked.
"I don’t know."
"That isn’t an answer," Lingyun said.
"I heard something." The man swallowed and pressed himself against the back of the box. "It wasn’t speaking, but I knew where it wanted me to go."
Chenghai examined the scratches again. "Where?"
The man shook his head. "Down."
A root struck the underside of the garage floor hard enough for the sound to vibrate through my feet.
Yuche shifted the panel, rotating it until the roads aligned with the actual property. Most of the scratches formed a rough map of the buildings and outer defenses, but one line was different.
It began outside the wall, passed beneath the garage, and continued through the property without following any road.
The line ended beneath the mansion.
More specifically, it ended beneath the living room.
I stared at the final gouge cut into the steel and thought about the couch waiting on the other side of the house.
Apparently, the Devourer wasn’t satisfied with finding me.
Now it was drawing directions to where I slept.