A slither of vines and brambles whipped around the man’s feet, constricting all at once, binding them together like a snare trap. He collapsed like a fallen tree, face first, slamming into the cement. He groaned in pain, the wind knocked out of him. He was lucky the vines didn’t break his ankles right from the start.
Minutes later, we had our four would-be organ harvesters lined up in a neat row, restrained in the dark of an alley, mouths bound as tightly as their hands and feet. Florian and Samyaza stood over them, arms folded, my buddies, but also my musclebound bodyguards. One false move and there was going to be more than just broken teeth.
I let my eyes lock too long with each of the four men, then squatted on the ground, rubbing my wrist in circles, thrilling when they flinched. “I hear you guys are looking for nephilim. Well, you found one. But I bet you weren’t expecting this night to end quite like this.”
One of them whimpered, his feet kicking at the cement.
I chuckled. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to kill you. But we’re going to ask you some questions, and if you don’t give us the right answers, I can promise, you’ll all wish you were dead.”
The man stopped whimpering. The others watched and waited in sweaty, expectant silence.
“Now tell me. Who wants to eat my brothers and sisters, and where do I find them?”
11
Not five minutes into our interrogation it became very clear that the three injured goons knew little to nothing about the other nephilim. All they knew was that abducting people with glowing tattoos could be a profitable side business. Florian conjured a strange, glittering powder from a patch of soil, putting the three of them to sleep. I didn’t even know he could do that.
“From poppies,” he explained, as the three men slumped unconscious.
“A form of opium?” Samyaza said. “Interesting. Very Wizard of Oz of you.”
“Something like that,” Florian said. “I mean, it’s not like you can get the same effect from poppy seeds. You’d need to eat a lot – and I mean a lot of poppy seed bagels to even come close to – ”
“Guys,” I barked. “Seriously. Focus.”
The fourth man groaned into his restraints. I had no doubts that he was hoping the bagel conversation would go on longer, so long as we forgot about him. I bent lower, too comfortably close, squatting above his legs so that we were nearly face to face.
“I’m going to take off your gag now,” I said.
Both his eyes and his skin were damp. He nodded slowly in agreement.
“If you scream – no, if you so much as whimper without me asking you to – I will break your teeth.”
The lump in his throat bobbed as he swallowed and nodded again.
“Your buddies over here already have so much dental work they’ll need done between them. Don’t be another casualty.”
I nodded at Florian. He gestured, and the vines tangled around the man’s mouth fell from his face. He smacked his lips, swallowed again, and waited in silence.
“Good boy,” I said. “Now, tell us everything. You clearly know what I am. You clearly know what my people are. I want to know who you were planning to sell me to. I want to know who wants to eat my insides.”
He trembled as he shook his head. “I don’t know about wanting to eat you. They just said to abduct anyone with the shinies on their skin, make a drop.”
Samyaza lowered himself to the ground, leveling his face with the man’s eyes. The man flinched away, now confronted by two interrogators.
“A drop?” Sam said. “Where is this drop, exactly?”
“It changes,” the man stammered. “Depending on what the site asks, it all changes. The site changes, too.”
I cracked my knuckles, the snarls and snatches of bizarre information getting mixed up in my head. “You’ve mentioned the site before. What is it?”
“Websites. Not just one place, many of them. It’s everywhere on the internet. Sites, blogs, videos, chat rooms. People talking about you nephilim, asking to find you. They call themselves the Hunger.”
That sparked a new flare of anger in my throat. “Who? Who calls themselves the Hunger?”
“Everyone. It’s everyone, all these people talking about finding nephilim. All the forums, it’s people trying to get rich selling off nephilim parts, and then there’s people trying to buy them and eat ’em. It’s why it’s called the Hunger.”
“And what does Marcel Dubois have to do with this?”
His forehead wrinkled as he mouthed the name. “I – I’ve never heard of him.”
“Bullshit,” I hissed. I flexed the fingers of my right hand so hard that my knuckles popped. Since switching my focus from the Vestments it had become a lot easier to concentrate on the things I wanted to create, and I’d quickly come up with a small arsenal of favorites. That included the mace, shields, swords, and an old classic: a golden gauntlet.
Yellow light gathered in a shell around my fist, encasing it all the way down to the wrist. It solidified into something that had the weight of sunlight, but all the durability and strength of steel. The man gasped, his eyes stuck on the wickedly jagged knuckles on my gauntlet. I curled it into a hard fist, giving him a better look at its structure.
“You said earlier that you didn’t know anything about eating. You’re lying to me about Marcel Dubois. And now you’re telling me that there’s rich people out there who want to buy nephilim especially for eating. Which is it? Tell me. And be sure not to lie again this time.”
He spluttered in fear, watching my hand carefully as his eyes darted back and forth. “Don’t know Marcel. But the eating, I knew. Just scared. I knew. They’re trading because – because some people believe that eating nephilim makes them stronger. That they might get their powers, too.”
The air left my body. It was the answer I was expecting, but
