Chapter 362: Do Better Next Time
The injured man, who had already taken up more of Rouxi’s time than ever should be allowed, stared at Rouxi for several long seconds after she told him to start talking.
His eyes were clearly drawn to his woman, but the hunger that Yuche thought he had seen before was gone.
Now there was only exhaustion on his face.
If Yuche was any other kind of man, he might have felt something for that bone deep exhaustion. But he refused to trust the man any further than he could throw him.
The stranger tried to brace himself on his ruined hands, only for his shoulder to jerk the moment he put weight on them. Chenghai’s grip tightened on his weapon before he caught himself, and Yuche noticed the reaction without looking away from the man for long.
Rouxi, on the other hand, watched him without pity.
That was one of the reasons Yuche loved her.
Other people saw suffering and immediately tried to make it meaningful. Rouxi saw suffering and looked for the knife hidden under it first. If she found no knife, then she would look for a gun, if she couldn’t find a gun, then she would assume that they had enough power to take out a block full of zombies.
But she never assume that what she saw on the surface was everything she needed to know about a person.
"You said it ate everyone," she said after the silence started to stretch just a bit too long. "I’m going to need to you be a lot more specific than that. Did this... thing use a knife and fork? What about a barbeque or a smoker? An oven? Saying that someone ate people could mean a lot of things in this day and age."
The man swallowed, and the movement pulled at the spiral marks under his skin, making the whorls along his throat tighten before easing again. "It kept us underground."
Rouxi’s gaze sharpen for just a second before a sarcastic smirk was back on her face.
Yuche saw it happen. One moment, she was standing there like someone who had been dragged out of bed against her will and was considering making that everyone else’s problem. The next, the last traces of sleep disappeared from her face.
"Underground where?" she demanded, her voice an unassuming purr.
The man’s eyes squeezed shut. "I don’t know the name. There was a hotel above it, I think. Or something like one. All I remember was the concrete, the exposed pipes. Like a basement. It had a hole in the wall."
The very air around them changed.
It was not dramatic enough for Old Chen or the workers to notice. But Chenghai had noticed, Lingyun had noticed, and even Zhenlan’s head lifted slightly from where he had been studying the marks on the man’s shoulder.
Yuche felt his own hand tighten against the metal.
But Rouxi didn’t move.
For a second, she looked almost bored with her head cocked to the side. And that was how Yuche knew the words had hit her hard.
Hell, they hit him hard, too.
Yuche’s hand tightened against the metal before he could stop it.
He had been there when Rouxi fought the Devourer. They all were. But what still ate at him to this day was the fact that he wasn’t able to be beside her, he wasn’t where he should have been. He should have been close enough to put his body between her and the thing that had decided she belonged in its mouth, but everyone was keeping them away from the hole, the fight, the... sacrifice.
He was just close enough to hear the chamber coming apart around her, close enough to hear the kind of scream Rouxi would never have allowed anyone to hear if she had been given a choice, close enough to know she was being hurt and still too far away to stop it.
That had been the part that stayed with him.
Not the blood afterward. Not the vines holding her broken body together. Not the medic’s hands shaking before he said she was alive.
And now there was a man kneeling outside of Rouxi’s home and hinting just enough of the Devourer for those who had meant that creature before would know what he was taking about.
Rouxi let out a controlled breath, the smile on her face never changing. "Big ugly thing? Pale body that is a little too close to a maggot for comfort sake? Mouth like someone gave a woodchipper feelings?"
The man’s eyes snapped open, and for the first time since they had arrived, the man in front of them actually looked afraid.
"You’ve seen it," he whispered, his eyes darting around frantically like he expected the Devourer to pop out of the earth beside him for even whispering its name.
Rouxi smile changed just a fraction, just enough for warning bells to go off in Yuche’s head. Rouxi had a plan. And if it involved the Devourer... Yuche wasn’t going to be happy.
"We’ve met," she said, her eyes going wide with joy.
The man made a broken sound and sagged forward until the vine buried in the road in front of him shifted in warning. He froze immediately, breathing hard through cracked lips. "Then you know. You know what it does."
"I know what it tries to do," Rouxi replied with a shrug of her shoulder.
Lingyun’s fire rose a little at that, but he said nothing. Clearly he was picking up on the same thing that Yuche was.
The man dragged in another breath. "You are making it seem like you managed to walk out of there." He looked up and down at Rouxi, clearly not seeing what he wanted to see. A slight sneer crossed his face, but then it quickly vanished. "You don’t look like someone who managed to defeat it."
"You’re right," Rouxi agreed, then her voice turned cold. "It ran before I could finish the job. I’ll have to do better next time."
The words were spoken like a promise, and the warning bells were now turning into fog horns in Yuche’s head.
The man only shook his head weakly. "It couldn’t chase far after. I think it was hurt. There was poison in its mouth. Black veins. It screamed for a long time after you... after someone hurt it."
Rouxi’s baby vine lifted from her wrist.
Not much. Just enough that its little leaf-head turned toward the man, sharp and interested.
Yuche looked at it, then at Rouxi. She had not noticed. Her attention was fully on the survivor now, and that was its own danger.
"How did you get away?" Zhenlan asked.
The man turned his head toward him, as if only then remembering anyone existed beyond Rouxi. "I don’t know. Not fully. There was fighting. The ground kept moving. Parts of the tunnel collapsed. It was screaming. Some of us ran when the zombies stopped watching us."
"Some?" Chenghai asked.
The man’s mouth trembled. "Most didn’t make it."