Arc 1: Chapter 37: Catrin
“You’re wounded.”
Normally, those words would have held a note of concern or panic. Catrin said them like it was something erotic.
She stepped forward on light feet, heedless of the chimera blood on the floor. She’d lost her fine shoes at some point, and left one purplish footprint on the stone as she advanced.
“I’m fine,” I said, heart quickening in my chest. The young woman — was she truly young? — brushed my left arm with her fingers. The chimera had left two deep, ugly gouges just above my elbow.
The elven armor I’d received from the oradyn wasn’t a full set of plate, and there were parts of me it didn’t protect. In this case, I only had metal covering my upper arm from the spaulders and short sleeves of the hauberk, then a gap until the vambrace strapped to my forearm. The monster had found that gap.
So did Catrin. Her fingers curled around my elbow, her red eyes fixing on the wound. They were unnaturally bright in the gloom, a feverish shade of crimson, the sclera darkened closer to yellow than white. She seemed to be breathing quicker.
Then, before I had even quite realized what was happening, she brought her face down to nuzzle the wound. Her tongue ran across the slashes and her whole body shivered.
I shoved her. Catrin slammed against the opposite wall of the hallway. She recovered instantly, glaring up at me. Her face had turned corpse pale, her eyes fever red and veined. She hissed like an animal, revealing teeth closer to wolf than human.
She lunged at me, or tried to. With a furnace growl I summoned my aura again, filling the passageway with dim amber flame. Catrin recoiled from it just as the chimera had, letting out a noise of frustration and fear.
I kept it up until she got her breathing under control. With it came her senses. She knelt against the wall, her corpse eyes unfocused, but I saw a hint of the mischievous spy I’d come to know over the past several days peek through the bloodlust. Her eyes, still empty, widened as she met mine.
“Alken…” She shuddered. “I’m so sorry. Bleeding Gates, I’m sorry, I didn’t… I can’t…”