Chapter 225: Dimitris Silence
He used the Silence, and it was something to witness. Every strike landed like a muffled detonation, force without sound, wrong in a way that made the stomach turn, and he moved through the zombies the way a bad dream moved through sleep, unhurried, inevitable, leaving nothing standing behind him. His massive paws came down with that horrible soft finality. His teeth tore through rotting hides like they were paper left out in the rain. Level 90 or not, it made no difference; nothing that came at him stayed standing long enough to matter.
On the ridge, the atmosphere was doing what it always did after violence, loosening at the seams, the killing tension bleeding off into something warmer and more dangerous in its own way, the particular charged air of a pack that had been wound tight all day and was only now remembering how to breathe.
Lucan had found a tree to lean against, arms crossed, watching the carnage below with the satisfied expression of someone who had wanted to be down there himself and was managing his disappointment with reasonable grace. "Dimitri’s really getting it out of his system, isn’t he?" he said, not quite a question. "Haven’t seen him move like that since the last time Voss and Ivan had that territory dispute over who stood closest to her on a night watch."
"Convenient timing," Thane called from somewhere overhead, his wings catching the updraft off the valley, talons snapping a branch on his way past just for the sound of it. "He’s been waiting for an excuse all day."
Felicity, still tucked into Damien’s arms with Luna’s warm weight settled back against her chest, laughed softly. "He’s relieved the cubs were off his back for five minutes. They’d been working on his braids for an hour."
"He was very patient about the braids," Victor agreed.
Ivan had moved closer without anyone remarking on it, which was how Ivan did most things, gradually, deliberately, until he was simply there and had apparently always been there. He wasn’t watching the fight. He was watching the small bead of sweat tracing its way down the side of Felicity’s neck, and his eyes had gone that particular shade of dark gold that meant he was thinking very specific thoughts and had decided to have them out loud. "When we reach Bowral," he said, his voice dropping into that low rumble that seemed to bypass the ears entirely and go straight to the chest, "I am building a training room. One with a lock that the cubs cannot figure out. And I want you to watch me the way you were watching him just now."
Felicity tilted her head, the corner of her mouth curving. "Ivan is that a date request?"
"It is a statement of intent."
"I’m keeping a list, you know," she told him, reaching up to boop his nose, which he suffered with extraordinary dignity. "You’re currently winning most brooding by a significant margin, but you’re losing on snacks, and I think we both know snacks matter."
The low rumble that came out of him was not entirely disagreement.
Damien’s arms tightened around her, his tail doing that slow possessive curl at her hip that she’d stopped pretending she didn’t notice. "I am the snack provider," he said, his voice carrying that particular smooth amusement of a man who found most things funny and himself funniest of all. "Ivan provides the scenery there is a difference, and the difference matters."
"The difference," Ivan said, without looking at him, "is that I don’t shed."
"I don’t shed, I leave deliberate reminders of my presence."
"On her pillow."
"On our pillow, which is a distinction I shouldn’t have to keep making."
Felicity made a sound that was mostly laughter and slightly exasperation, and Lucan, from his tree, looked deeply pleased with himself for no reason she could identify.
Down in the valley, the dust was settling like something exhaling. Dimitri stood in the wreckage, white fur dark with the rot and black filth that came off zombies when they finally stopped moving, and the vibration that had been running through the pack since morning had gone quiet at last, replaced by that heavy, satisfied hum that came after a hunt well finished. He looked, from this distance, like something carved out of the landscape itself, like he had simply always been standing in that particular circle of fallen bodies and always would be.
Richard was on a rock a hundred meters back, head in his hands, elbows on his knees, still breathing. He’d made it through a valley full of Level 90 zombies on nothing but speed and desperation and whatever it was that made a man run toward something that wanted to eat him, and he looked exactly how you’d expect a person to look on the other side of that. He lifted his head as the teams began descending, and his eyes found the ridge, found Felicity, and stayed there with an expression she didn’t have a clean word for. She gave him a small nod. Almost imperceptible. It was the most she had right now, and they both knew it.
"He’s useful, Victor," she said quietly.
Victor’s red eyes stayed on the ruined town below, steady and unreadable. "He’s breathing," he said. "For now. But the next time he opens his mouth without thinking first, I might let the cubs decide what to do with him." He paused, something moving briefly across his face that might have been the ghost of dark humour. "Luna’s been asking about consequences."
"Luna is six."
"Luna is terrifying, and you made her that way."
the road picking back up beneath their feet, and the air had that particular quality it got after violence had been properly used up, heavy and warm and smelling of blood and something that was almost, in its own strange way, like contentment. Bowral was still weeks away. The road was still long. But it felt, in the way that only a shared thing could make it feel, slightly shorter than it had this morning.
Luna clambered back up onto Dimitri’s blood-matted back as they walked, completely unbothered by the state of his fur, patting around until she found her preferred spot between his shoulder blades and settled in with the authority of someone reclaiming a throne that had always been hers.
"You’re a very messy king, Uncle Dimi," she informed him, in the serious tone she reserved for her most important observations.
The leopard said nothing. But somewhere in his chest, low and slow and almost too quiet to hear over the sound of boots on the road, a purr started up, and Felicity heard it, and smiled, and kept walking.