Nox lowered his head.
Snowflakes whispered, gathering to conceal the scars of battle. Small fires surrounding the downed copter snapped and twirled with sparks.
Death surrounded Nox.
Emptiness filled him.
Nox waded through the field of corpses, retracing his bloody footprints stamped into the ground back to the bunker. Snow gathered at the edge, the gaping hole he’d made meeting puddles of blood. Mangle bodies carpeted the floor. Flesh squelched under his feet, bones splintered. But Nox saw none of it.
He entered the room. Reese sat with Luca’s head in his lap. Bones jutted from the man’s mangled shoulder. He looked up. Sweat glued Reese’s hair to his temple, blood trickled from his ears, and his skin had paled until the faint freckles on his face stuck out in contrast. Palpable pain surrounded Reese, yet he’d managed to stay upright and watch over Luca.
Glass crunched under Nox’s feet.
Reese lifted his head and widened his eyes. His gaze skipped over Nox as if he couldn’t believe what he saw.
Nox crossed the room to where Luca lay, intending to lift him up and leave, even though he wasn’t sure where he would go. Instead, he kneeled next to the man’s lifeless form.
Threads of black peeled back from Nox’s hands, disappearing from fingers, to shoulders, and withdrawing from his face. He reached for Luca and Reese helped Nox shift Luca’s body until he cradled him against his chest.
The pain in his heart numbed by the Anubis returned, infecting every nerve, turning Nox’s blood to acid.
“Nox.” Reese swayed. “The blood, Nox.” He shifted his gaze past Nox. “The blood, look at it.”
Nox was tired of blood, he was tired of agony: he just wanted everything to stop.
“Please, Nox.”
He did. Thin trails of blood drew multiple paths in the direction of the destroyed cell of smoked glass. With two corpses and a man badly injured and bleeding it was no surprise how much covered the floor.
But the lines of crimson led back to Luca’s and no one else’s.
“I don’t understand.”
“In the lab, when we….” Reese swallowed and his eyes fluttered. “Separated the ichor. it…” He started to fall forward. Nox caught him by his good shoulder. Reese moaned.
“It what?” Nox shook him. “It what, Dr. Dante?”
Reese gripped Nox’s wrist. “The ichor always tried to rejoin.” His head rolled to the side.
Nox eased Reese to the floor. When Nox tried to pull away, Reese dug his fingernails into Nox’s wrist.
“Let it.” Reese raked his nails over Nox’s skin.
Blood filled the score marks, and the wound didn’t knit. Droplets rolled against gravity, inching up Nox’s hand, crawling over his fingers merging with Luca’s blood.
“Do you understand now?”
“No.” And Nox didn’t.
“You are the ichor.” Reese smiled.
Nox lay Luca on the ground.
Blood flecked Reese’s lips. “Bring him back, Nox, just like Koda brought you back.”
Nox’s canines lengthened, and he sank them into his wrist over the scratches Dr. Dante had made. Flesh tore, the muscle parted, veins ripped, and a flow of ichor surged from the wound, splattering onto the floor.
It slithered over Luca’s hand, up the sleeve of the coat he wore, emerging from around the collar. Nox held his open wrist closer, and the ichor spun out in thick ribbons, covering the wound on the side of Luca’s head.