5 – A Full Plate

As Andy carved his knife through the joint behind the second pincer and Jace pulled it away from the scorpion corpse, the System hit him with a surprise message:

***Congratulations, Andy! You’ve earned the notable skill: Butcher’s Insight. With a perceptive eye, you strive to discern the most valuable or useful parts from the corpses of animals or monsters.***

“Huh,” he said, bending to scrape his knife blade against the sole of his shoe, cleaning the ichor from the metal.

“What?” Bella asked, her eyes on Jace as he hauled the big pincer over to the trailer.

“I got a new skill for, uh, butchering monsters.”

“Hah! The System’s weird, right? Good to know about that skill, though.”

“Yeah.” Andy looked up the road toward Lucy, who was pacing back and forth, bow in hand, scanning the desert for trouble. So far, it seemed the scorpion had been a solitary creature.

“Ready to get rolling?” Lydia asked, approaching from the other direction. As Andy turned, she added, “At this rate, it’s gonna be dark before we even get to your place.”

Andy laughed, shaking his head. “Nah, we’ll be there in less than an hour. Road’s clear now, and we’re only about three miles away.”

“Well, don’t jinx us, mister.” Lydia smiled, but her gloved hand found the haft of the little sledgehammer that hung from her belt.

“We’ll be fine,” Andy said, determined not to bow to superstition. He nodded up the road to Lucy. “We’ll take the lead again.” He looked at Bella. “Ready?”

“Yep, I’ll go grab Jace, and we’ll guard the rear.”

“Perfect.”

###

It turned out that Andy’s words were not

a jinx; they reached the foot of the trail leading up to the top of the mesa without incident, and the journey only took about forty-five minutes. When they arrived, Andy and Lydia walked up the trail to arrange for some help unloading the trailer, while the rest of the folks stayed below, guarding the horses and all the supplies. They were about halfway up when Lydia paused, turning to look out over the desert and the road below.

“I can’t believe that idiot tried to attack this place. I really think that bloodline thing of his made him crazy.”

“Bloodlinething?”

“You didn’t see it? Didn’t he become a damn werewolf?”

Andy nodded, the horrific memory of Brooks’s transformation flashing through his mind. “Yeah. I thought it was his class or maybe a curse or something. I mean, you know, in the movies, werewolves are always seen as cursed.”

“He said it was a bloodline—talked about it all the time. Anyway, he loved to fight, and he wouldn’t back down from any kind of challenge. I have a feeling some of that—some of the awful stuff he did—was due to that bloodline.” She was staring down at the wagon as she spoke, but she turned to look at Andy as she added, “I don’t know how it all works, but I feel like I’d be irresponsible not to give voice to a worry I have. I…” She trailed off, looking down toward the road again.

“Lydia, just say it. I’m not gonna judge; I know how crazy things are.”

“It just makes me sound awful—like a racist.”

“Oh.” Andy sighed, shaking his head. “You mean Jace? I get it; he’s scary looking, but he’s been no problem so far. He has two sisters like him. They’re all… well, they’re all fine.” Andy shrugged. He understood Lydia’s feelings, especially after what she and the others had gone through with Brooks, but he wouldn’t judge Jace and the other cambions based on fears about how they looked or what myths said about their kind. He’d judge them on their actions, and so far, he hadn’t seen them do anything that a human wouldn’t do. Jace and Lena were both hotheads, but they were reasonable hotheads. As for the other sister, Andy couldn’t even think of her name. She was an introvert with a little girl, and that was all he knew about her.

“I know, I know.” Lydia smiled at him, shaking her head ruefully as she started up the trail again. “I feel awful even saying it. It’s just, well, Brooks was a hell of a lot like the werewolves in horror movies. I was never with him when he was fighting, but I heard stories—he went nuts when he changed. Some of his buddies even joked about how he would kill our people if they got close to him. Then there was his personality…” She shuddered, looking at Andy and shaking her head.

“I get it. Like, you’re worried that our religions and myths were rooted in truth, right?” When she nodded, Andy said, “Trust me, I’ve had a couple of people approach me about that, telling me that cambions are basically like devils in some religions. Don’t you think that, if cambions were really around a couple of thousand years ago, people might have called them devils or demons because of their looks? For instance, if a child was born with a recessive gene activated and came out looking like that, people might make up stories about devils visiting the mother at night. That’s how women got labeled as witches and burned at the stake!”

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“Hey, don’t get all upset,” Lydia said, looking at him and holding her hands up, palms out. “It's like I said—I don’t want to sound racist or judge people based on stories, but I felt like I had to say something, just so I know I’m not the only one looking out.”

“You’re not.” Andy thought back to when Lucy had brought up Jace to him. Had she been hinting at something? He ran her words over in his mind again, trying to see if there was something ulterior there, but he couldn’t see anything. They walked in silence until they came to the last switchback, and then Lydia cleared her throat and gestured to the edge of the trail.

“You might want to consider building some kind of elevator platform.”

“Yeah, maybe. Seems like a hell of a project, though, and we’ve got more pressing needs.”

“Sure. Pressing needs come first, but I’d be happy to help you with things like that. I know, I know—I was all about needing to keep our settlement separate from you, but since I’ve got you alone, I don’t mind saying that I was doing that mostly for the benefit of a handful of women who were—well, they were abused. They want our own, safe, secure place, but I think they’ll come around to the idea of moving here.”

Andy stopped walking, and she stopped too, turning to face him. They were a reasonable distance from the top of the trail, so he felt like their conversation was still private. “What do you mean? You want to abandon the hardware store? That whole peace settlement thing was just for show?”

She shook her head. “No, not exactly. I mean, I think we should take the next few weeks to move as much out of the store to this mesa as possible. Think about it—we’re surrounded by other buildings back there. We’re a lot closer to the city, too, and that store is not a… Well, it’s not a healthy place to live. Not like this!” She gestured to the trail leading up the cliffside. “If we get attacked by something really strong…” She shook her head. “I heard stories about some of the things Brooks and his men fought…and ran from. There are some monsters out there that I’m not so sure we can deal with.”

Andy looked at her face, from the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, to the little silver ring in her left nostril, to the way she chewed her lower lip nervously as she watched him, waiting to see what he’d say. She struck him as an honest person, and the people who were left at Grace Refuge seemed to really respect her, even Oscar, who’d stayed behind to run things while she was gone.

He slowly nodded, saying, “I get it. If your people feel comfortable with it, then, yeah, let’s make it a priority to move everything of value from that warehouse to the mesa here. You can tell them it's because we can defend this place better than the warehouse, which is true. I don’t think we should abandon the store, though—not unless we have to. It makes a good waypoint if nothing else.”

“Yes! I also want to bring my people to visit so they can see what it’s like. I really think most of our people will be better off here. I’ll tell them we’re coming to collaborate with your craftsfolk, and that will be true, too! We can help each other a lot, I’m sure.”

Andy smiled and shrugged. “Sounds good to me. Come on.” He gestured to the trail and started walking again. “We’re gonna get chewed out by everyone down below for taking so long.”

Lydia nodded, hurrying to keep up with him. “Oof! Good point. Not looking forward to hearing Robert’s grousing.”

###

Andy and Lucy sat at one of the picnic tables in the dog park, each of them working their way through a bowl of stew. Andy wasn’t sure who’d made it or what exactly was in it, but he’d definitely seen some hunks of beef and carrots, and it was good. The park was a little crowded and noisy; kids were playing, and more than a dozen other people, including most of the convoy members, were sitting or standing around, chatting and eating.

“Good, right?” Lucy asked.

Andy nodded. “So good. I mean, after living on protein bars and spam for a few days.”

“Wonder where they got the meat.”

Andy grimaced slightly. “Let’s not ask.”

Lucy snorted softly, taking another bite, then she asked, “Did you hear Bella and Jace when we were in line?”

Andy shook his head, frowning. How could she have overheard something he didn’t? The answer was obvious: he’d been daydreaming about something else and had tuned out pretty much everything because his darn Reaper’s Senses made it way too easy to hear more than he wanted.

“They were wondering if you were serious about going out tonight.”

“Oh.” Andy looked up, scanning the sky for the sun. It was toward the west and not too far from slipping behind the mountains. “I want to, but I also want to make sure there’s nothing to worry about beneath us.” He pointed toward the ground, indicating the tunnels beneath the mesa. “I also have a ton of improvement points I need to spend, and I was hoping to try to meditate”—he laughed, shaking his head—“I mean, think about my classes. The System keeps hinting that I’m close to merging them.”

“Merging? So you can do more than just evolve a class, huh? That’s…” She stared at him, but her eyes unfocused as she pictured something. Andy wondered what it was. After a few seconds, she shook her head, her voice rising with frustration as she said, “There should be a manual for all of this! Why does the System drop everything on us with no guidance?”

Andy shrugged. “I wish I knew, Luce.”

Several people at the table had stopped eating and were staring at Lucy after her little outburst, but she ignored them. “You have to do it. I mean, you have to figure it out. It could be super valuable to understand how it works.” She peered into his mostly-empty bowl. “You could go work on it now. It won’t be dark for a couple of hours.”

Andy sighed, scraping his last hunk of potato into his spoon. As he chewed, all he could do was think about everything he needed to do. He felt a little overwhelmed, having so much on his plate, but he also felt good. He had purpose, and none of the tasks ahead of him were things he was dreading; they were all interesting.

As he swallowed, he said, “Fine. I’ll go and work on that, but you need to do me a favor and check on Tucker. He was supposed to close off the entrance to the tunnels. I don’t want some kids to get down there, or, you know, something to come up here before we get a chance to explore.” When they’d been unloading the trailer, Andy had asked Tucker to use some of the wood and hardware to close the entrance off. He’d agreed, saying he’d use the horses to move the trailer out of the way first.

Lucy smiled. “Deal. I wanted to see where the opening was, anyway.”

Andy set his empty bowl on the table and pushed himself to his feet. “All right. Guess I’ll go see if I can puzzle out this class merger thing.”