24. Bryn

Bryn

It felt like my entire nervous system was being fried, as if someone had injected acid into my veins. I couldn't move. I couldn't think as my brain and my body started to shut down.

Then a touch on my thigh initially felt like deeper pain than what I was already in, but then everything inside me cleared and I was gasping for breath. I looked down to find a boy of maybe eight staring out of the net we were locked inside.

"You're a fouke, right?" he asked without looking at me.

I nodded, still panting for breath.

"There are wetlands under this site. I can feel them. Can you?"

Honestly, I'd been so overwhelmed by the shit being thrown at us, I hadn't even touched the ground. But now that he mentioned it, I nodded. "Yes, I can."

"I can keep the neurotoxin away for a while longer. Can you do something with the wetlands?"

I looked around us, finding more children stuck within our net, as well as Emrys and Zen. The two monsters were on all fours, heaving up bile as their bodies convulsed .

"I need to?—"

"If you can get the net down, they'll lose the toxin and it'll clear up. But you need to hurry. Spreading this to others is hard."

He looked up at me and for the first time, I saw that this boy was blind. I didn't want to know if he was born that way or if he'd been… made blind.

Closing my eyes, I took a breath. "Give me two minutes. You can do that?"

"Yes, sir."

I smiled and reached inside myself. Time to come out, monster. Come out and play.

My monster unfurled until it consumed me. I hunkered down so I could place my hands on the ground. The boy's grasp slipped and for one shocking second, I could feel the neurotoxin again.

"You have to tell me when you're moving," the boy said, "so I can hold on."

I didn't have a voice like this though, so there wasn't anything I could do to answer. Instead, I reached into the ground to feel for the suffocating swamp the facility had been built over. The ground shook when I started to pull it up.

There were bodies here. A lot of bodies. So many that I shuddered as I brought the swamp to life. I could sense the moment Javan felt what I was doing. He reached in with me and our efforts multiplied.

The ground came to life with death. The world shook. Screams filled my head.

The little boy said, "That sounds nice." Then laughed maniacally. "Music. Sweet, bloody music."

His words made me shiver. I didn't want to know what he'd been through. I was suddenly very convinced that he was made blind in a building like this one. His laughter filled my head as Javan and I brought the swamp to life and screams continued to fill the air.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much we could do to differentiate between our friends and foes. We had to trust that ours would know what was happening and vacate the area .

I wasn't sure when the net went down. I was only made aware of it when a cold hand touched the middle of my back and I felt Zen's presence. "Sweet monster, let me taste your anger."

With a nod, I shifted so he could reach my neck.

"Wait," the boy said, horrified. "What's happening? What're you doing?"

"He's a moroii," one of the kids explained. "This stuff made him weak. He needs to feed."

"What about you guys? This one is busy! He's saving us."

"Easy," Emrys soothed. "We're a little winded right now. Bryn is the strongest at the moment. Zen's not going to feed on the weak."

"He's the strongest right now besides you, Lasser. You could offer your blood," a little girl snapped before coughing.

"I had to choose," the boy named Lasser said. "Given my options, the fouke was our best chance at not dying."

Zen took his mouth from my neck and snapped, "Enough bickering. Focus, will you? You're not here to fight each other. Go home or get back to work."

I could feel the kids drooping at their chastisement.

Zen kissed the side of my head. "Thank you. You okay right here, or do you need something?"

I shook my head.

"I'll stay with him," Emrys said. "Which seems the easiest solution at the moment anyway, since he's made the ground into marshmallow quicksand. You want to get the kids out of here?"

"Yes. If they're done being pains in the ass."

"You don't have any children, do you?" one of the kids asked. "You're not very patient."

"Actually, that child wailing right now? That's my kid. I have two more. The difference is, they're not sitting here bitching when there's a war going on around them," Zen said. He said something else, but his voice got further away. I tried to make sure the ground solidified wherever his feet fell. Since he'd been so close, he wasn't too difficult to follow, especially not once I found the cadence of his walk.

Emrys snorted. "He cracks me up."

When I glanced over my shoulder, Emrys stepped closer to me and rested his hand on my shoulder. "I know you can't talk right now, but do you need something?"

Shaking my head, I went back to concentrating on the swamp. When Koa rose up, swallowing the morning light, I sighed in relief and sat back on my haunches. Our monster boy was starving.

Emrys' hand remained on my shoulder as we watched Koa devour like a possessed monster. He consumed everything in his path, somehow bypassing all of our people. I wasn't sure that he'd have the presence of mind to do so.

I was surprised when Rue came barreling into me, wrapping her arms around me tightly. "You're okay?" she asked, voice shaking.

More of her, like three more identical Rues, crashed into us, wrapping us in their arms, too.

"How many wives do you have?" Emrys asked, shocked. "Also, he can't talk like this, Rue. His monster doesn't have a voice, never mind a mouth."

She pulled back to look at me, eyes wide. All four sets of eyes. I hoped she could feel my amusement. Unsure how to express myself, I leaned my forehead against hers, hoping she understood I was fine.

Her echoes slowly stepped off the battlefield and sank back into her. I lost count after seven. I would have to ask her how many she broke off into.

The building survived as requested. All except one corner. Someone had shot something at Koa and when he dodged, it collided with the building. There was now a giant crevasse in the ground where he'd launched the idiot who'd shot at him. Through my connection with the ground, I could feel that body being added to the swamp .

It was probably early morning when we were finished, but Koa wasn't having any part of coming down right now. Not even with the promise that there was another building we needed to get to. It also took me a hot minute to come out of my monster. As Emrys, Rue, and I stopped in front of Koa the beast, Little Koa was standing next to him.

Except this boy was nothing like I'd seen him before. He was a dark mass. An outline of a child covered in the abyss. He stared blindly, still as a statue at the monster's heel.

"Koa?" I asked, approaching cautiously. "What do you need, honey?"

He didn't answer.

Rue moved forward and dropped to her knees in front of Koa. My heart raced, unsure if Koa recognized anyone or anything right now.

"You know what I need?" Rue asked quietly. "I need a hug. I was really scared. Will you give your mum a hug?"

She held out her arms, but Koa didn't move for several beats. Long enough that Calix and Javan had joined us.

I thought we were all pleasantly shocked when Koa stepped forward and sank into Rue's arms. She hugged him tightly, wrapping around him like she was protecting him from the world.

"Jesus, my heart can't take this," Calix muttered as he stepped closer and rested his hand on the monstrous void hovering over us like a black hole in space. "You still hungry, baby?" he asked, looking up into the most terrifying face I'd ever seen.

The beast nodded.

"I know this is hard, but if you want to eat some more, we need to get you… less threatening so we can head back to the compound and Torin can take us to the next fast-food joint," Calix explained.

Javan laughed, and I leaned heavily into his side .

"Think you can do that for me? Be a good boy and let me take you to the next place."

The beast snarled and thrashed his head. His foot furthest from us flexed, causing enormous claws to sink into the ground as if it were hot butter.

Koa was the only void I'd ever known. There was a lot I didn't know about him and his monster. Not least of all because I hadn't asked before. Some things just didn't come up in conversation. Now there were aspects of him I was incredibly fascinated by that I only just thought to wonder about since it was happening right in front of me.

Such as, I didn't know that the little boy Koa and monster Koa could be separate outside his void. But before my fucking eyes, the beast who was hovering like a skyscraper shrunk until he was roughly the size and shape of a bull mastiff. Still enormous, but not like… the size of an entire building.

The massive black void itself sank into both of them—the little boy curled up in Rue's embrace, making him somehow darker, and the beast dog thing so that they were both holes in time. I was amused when it looked like a leash hung between the two of them.

One of them, even in this state, had a sense of humor.

"You never cease to amaze me," Calix praised, resting a hand on both of their heads as we walked back to the compound.

At the sixth facility we found nothing but hybrids and beasts milling about outside. We let Koa—boy and beast—have a field day while we went through the inside. My husbands, wife, and I sat at the edge of the area, creating a perimeter with some of our friends while others went into the building to see what was there to find.

We had Koa's team wired in and they very excitedly said they found the metaphorical ‘vault' of Silence, but it would take Koa to crack it. What they could confirm was that we'd been right; there were only six facilities after the two we took out in years prior. We'd also been correct that there was a ‘zoo' of sorts with Rue's menagerie of monsters, but without anyone driving them, they appeared rather docile, according to the screens they could watch.

With that news, we felt we truly had found the end of the horrors. In days to come, there would be a lot to do. Examine all there was at Silence and unravel the mysteries within. Hopefully identify everyone involved. Find the motive that caused the inception of the organization. Answering once and for all whether the connection between ORKA and Silence was actually there, or if it was as we presumed and Silence used them to their advantage.

There were also all the monsters to deal with who were recovering victims. The humans who'd been kept as experiments and breeders. And of course, the children who we'd just freed.

And there were two worlds to rebuild—that of the humans, which in all honesty, could probably wait a while since there weren't enough left to speak of, and that of the supernatural. If the human world was the site of a new apocalypse, the supernatural world was a war zone.

"Is it really over?" Rue asked.

We hugged our wife between us as we watched our little boy and his monster play with their food.

"I suppose we don't know for sure at this moment, but we will over the next several days as we dissect and dismantle everything that is the Division of Silence," Javan said. "But from what Koa's team can see digitally and what our friends are finding… it's over."

She sighed, resting her head on my shoulder. I kissed her hair and leaned my face against her as we quietly watched Koa. Some of the other kids had gotten the courage to play, too.

And by play, I meant play with their meals. They were simply toying with those who were still alive now. Tormenting them. Making them scream. Hopefully healing some of their trauma by knowing that those who had caused it were now dead or suffering. Some of which by their hands.

I wasn't sure that was the healthiest of ways to deal with trauma but hey, we were monsters. We did whatever our beasts pushed us to.

"I'm looking forward to going home," Calix said. "Our home. As much as I've enjoyed being so close to our friends, I miss our house."

"You're assuming it's still standing," Javan countered.

"We are also going to have to take into account the absolute breakdown of the world. No more going to the grocery store for food," I pointed out.

Calix was quiet for a minute. "Well, fuck," he muttered.

I laughed.

"I guess the compound isn't so bad," Rue said. "Maybe we just get Torin to expand it, so we have more space between us and… live like that. We were already fully sustainable, weren't we? We didn't rely on anything from the outside? From humans?"

"Correct," Javan agreed. "We'd closed it up a couple years ago. Right after Silence exterminated ORKA. Gut feeling, I suppose."

"Then we change our physical environment to match what you're missing from your old place and bring it here," Rue said.

I nodded.

"Is the air breathable now?" Obry asked as she stepped up beside us.

"Ah," I said. "We'd forgotten about death by breathing when we let the humans out of the facilities. Since they didn't keel over in a rapid rabies death—yes. I'm going to say it is."

"Kind of you to forget," she mused as she crouched beside us and watched the mayhem in the distance. Minutes passed before she said, "This is all kinds of disturbing."

I laughed, closing my eyes and breathing in my wife's hair.

There was so much to do. So many answers left to find. Worlds to rebuild .

But right now, we were going to do nothing and relish the fact that we were alive. We survived.

We won.

Happily ever after, for everyone, started now.