Chapter 404: Bite Twins
The injured man folded around the pain in his side while the roots tightened their circle around us.
None of them touched him, but every strand beneath the driveway had turned toward the same place under his bandages.
That was enough proof for me. "Bring him inside," I said tiredly.
The worker supporting him looked uncertain. "Shouldn’t we keep him away from the house?"
"We’ve already brought him inside the barrier. That ship sailed, hit an iceberg, and sank sometime while we were shopping," I grumbled in reply.
Yuche’s gaze remained on the injured man. "We’re not taking him into the main house."
He lifted one hand, and metal shifted somewhere near the garage. A reinforced storage door opened with a heavy scrape, revealing the smaller building we’d been using for tools, spare equipment, and anything we didn’t want strangers wandering near.
Chenghai took the man by the uninjured arm. "Can you walk?"
"I’ve been walking."
"That wasn’t the question."
The man looked at Chenghai’s size, reconsidered whatever stubborn answer he’d planned to give, and nodded.
We moved toward the storage building as the roots followed beneath us. Zhenlan stayed beside me, matching his pace to mine without mentioning my ankle or the burning scar on my leg. I appreciated the silence right up until he placed one hand beneath my elbow when I stepped over a crack in the driveway.
"I can walk," I muttered.
"I know."
That answer was becoming popular, and I didn’t like it nearly as much when all four of them used it.
Lingyun stayed close to my other side, despite the healer following behind him and repeatedly warning him not to tear his bandages again. He ignored her until she grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him to a stop.
"You’re going to sit down when we get inside," she told him. Look at me, I wasn’t even bitching over the fact that there was now someone else new in my house.
"I’m helping."
"You’re leaning on Rouxi."
"And that helps me."
The healer looked at me as though I was responsible for him.
Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t accepting that kind of liability.
Inside the storage building, Yuche pulled a metal chair into the center of the room and reinforced it before Chenghai lowered the injured man onto it. Steel bands formed around his wrists and ankles, holding him in place without touching his wounds.
The man stared at the restraints. "I told you I didn’t bring anything here."
"And I told you that I didn’t think I did either," I replied. "That doesn’t mean much anymore."
The baby vine climbed down my arm and stretched toward him. Both leaf-heads hissed as soon as they reached the edge of his bandages, then recoiled hard enough to wrap themselves around my wrist.
Lingyun’s expression lost its warmth. "Take them off."
The healer glanced at the restraints before approaching the chair. "I’m removing the dressing, not reopening the wound. If any of you decide you need a better look, keep your hands to yourselves."
Lingyun smiled at her. "You’re very brave."
"I’m very tired."
She cut through the bandages along the man’s side while he sat rigidly beneath her hands. Layers of stained cloth fell away, exposing torn flesh that had begun closing around several deep punctures.
The bite was larger than mine.
It curved around his ribs instead of his calf, with uneven wounds where the Devourer’s teeth had entered and dragged through muscle. The damage should’ve killed him. Judging by the healer’s expression, she agreed.
"How are you alive?" she asked.
"I don’t know."
Lingyun crouched in front of the chair, ignoring the way the movement pulled at his own injuries. "That answer’s becoming annoying."
"I woke up alone," the man insisted. Sweat gathered along his forehead as the scar on my leg burned again. "The thing was gone, and I could move, so I moved."
"What did it look like?" Yuche asked.
"I barely saw it. It came through the wall behind us. There were arms, but they didn’t move right, and the mouth..." His breathing quickened until the steel bands around his wrists began rattling. "It wasn’t attached to the part that bit me."
That sounded familiar enough to make my stomach tighten.
The Devourer didn’t need to bring its entire body somewhere when it wanted to eat. It sent pieces of itself ahead, using limbs that could tear through walls, bite survivors, and disappear before anyone understood what they had seen.
"What happened after you escaped?" Zhenlan asked.
"I kept moving until I found people."
"What people?"
"I don’t know their names. They had vehicles and weapons, but they wouldn’t let me stay. One of them told me there was a protected house nearby."
Yuche’s expression hardened. "Who gave you the location?"
"He didn’t give me an address. He pointed me toward the district and said I’d know the place when I saw it."
That wasn’t an accident.
Our walls were sealed, the mansion wasn’t visible from the main roads, and no one wandered toward it by chance. Someone had deliberately pushed a bitten survivor in our direction without giving him enough information to understand what he was doing.
Lingyun rose slowly. "Describe him."
The injured man shook his head. "Dark clothes. Short hair. He stayed inside the vehicle."
"That describes half the men still alive," I sneered.
"I wasn’t exactly taking notes."
The roots beneath the building shifted closer to the chair. One slipped through a seam in the floor and hovered near the exposed bite without touching it.
The man flinched and at the same moment, pain travelled through my leg.
I grabbed the back of the nearest shelf and reached for the root with my power. The instant my awareness touched it, something pulled from the other side of the scar.
Not through the plant.
Through me.
The sensation lasted less than a second, but it carried direction. Distance. A faint awareness so deep beneath the ground that I couldn’t tell whether it was kilometers away or directly below us.
The injured man gasped and pulled against the restraints. "It knows."
Every man in the room became still.
"What knows?" Chenghai asked.
The survivor looked at me, and terror spread across his face. "The thing that bit us."
Lingyun’s fire warmed the room, while steel creaked beneath Yuche’s power. Zhenlan’s wind pressed against the walls, and Chenghai positioned himself between the chair and me.
They were ready to kill him before he finished another sentence.
"No," I said.
Lingyun looked at me. "Rouxi."
"He’s not attacking me."
"Yet."
"That’s why he stays tied up."
The injured man swallowed. "You believe me?"
"I believe that something is using both of us. I haven’t decided whether you’re useful or just unfortunate."
"That’s not comforting."
"It wasn’t supposed to be."
I looked down at the root hovering beside his wound, then at the baby vine still wrapped tightly around my wrist. The plants could sense the Devourer’s connection, but they hadn’t attacked either of us. Whatever had been left behind wasn’t controlling our bodies.
At least, it wasn’t controlling them yet.
"Move him to one of the sealed rooms," I told Yuche. "No windows, no soil, and nothing growing inside."
The metal restraints released from the chair and reformed around the man’s wrists before Chenghai pulled him upright.
Lingyun frowned. "We’re keeping him?"
"For now."
"Can I burn him if he starts acting strange?"
"He’s already acting strange."
"Stranger than this."
I considered the frightened survivor, the matching bites, and the invisible pull that had reached both of us at once.
"Yes," I decided. "But try not to destroy the useful parts."
Lingyun smiled again.
The injured man looked significantly less relieved than he had a moment earlier.
Oh well... we were bite twins after all. Why would I give up the useful parts?