Where Dark Things Wait: Night Creatures Book One

Chapter Five - Army of the Damned

They passed a room marked 'lecture theatre' and entered one that had a plaque that read 'meeting room one', and Kalyna froze as those gathered around the boardroom table turned towards her. Most looked outwardly human, although the deathly pale complexions of a few indicated undead origins. The winged man with an ethereal look and pearlescent skin definitely didn't seem earthly, though she could tell in his origins were angelic or fae. As for the scaled woman with yellow eyes, she looked like some demonic and reptilian entity. Her slit pupils had a crocodile appearance that unsettled Kalyna, yet another's interest unsettled her more.

Amber and honey eyes focussed on her with an accusing intensity that seemed to see into her soul. Above them, dark brows pinched together into a frown. Dunstan's left brow was pierced, a silver hoop decorating it which hadn't been there the previous night. That wasn't his only hardware either. Another silver ring curved around his lower lip, toward the right-hand corner. That hadn't been there either. Whatever rules he'd felt obliged to follow while playing copper, clearly this branch of the military weren't as strict as others.

The tattoos on his forearms only added to his bad boy image, and while she couldn't make out much of the design, she got the impression of knot work that wove together into animal forms that wrapped around runes, and warriors. From his hair, with its messy spikes, bleach blond tips, and dark roots, to the studded cuff at his wrist, his whole aesthetic seemed completely at odds with the army fatigues he currently war, and with the police uniform he wore the night before.

He wasn't her type.

She preferred natural blonds, with storm cloud eyes, and a passion for hiking, and the wilderness, and making tea on camping stoves at the summit of hills and mountains. She preferred Cináed. Her husband. The man she'd sworn her life to. Not some punk wannabe who's survived a millennium and a half only to stall somewhere between the seventies and nineties.

Yet, when those amber eyes appraised her, she felt a zap of electricity. She hoped that faded soon, that it was something g left over from taking his blood. Especially as he looked less than happy to see her.

Dunstan Eorl hadn't taken a seat with his colleagues. Instead, he leaned against the wall at the rear of the meeting room, his arms folded over his chest as he scrutinised her with open scorn, and something that looked almost... wary. She had the impression that he'd positioned himself as far from the door as he could get. As far from her arrival as he could get. Yet that didn't mean she couldn't pick his scent out amongst the others warring for her attention. That scent tugged a moan from her lips, a hungry sound that said more than she wanted to reveal.

As she moaned, Dunstan Eorl groaned. He peeled himself away from the wall, and went as far as taking a forward step before the groan became a growl. His lips peeled back from descending fangs, and his snarl was the only sound in the room as spectators glanced between him and her.

"Right then," Maloney interjected. "I don't want to be tripping anyone or sending anyone to sleep today, so how about you sit here, Kalyna, and Dun... you just stay up there."

"Please, we'd like to avoid any further injuries," a man in an officer's uniform noted, then smiled at Kalyna. "Ms O'Cuinn-Lyall, I am Major Caeso Marcellus Nerva. I'm in charge of B Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Supernatural Brigade - which is affectionately known as the Midnight Bats - of the 1st Occult Division of the Occult Task Force. B Company is responsible for your removal from police custody. Depending how things go, you may eventually meet Lieutenant Colonel Uri Ursagkala as well, the Commanding Officer who oversees the 1st Battalion as a whole.

"As for the rest, you've met Staff Sergeant Eorl and Corporal Maloney, and here we also have Captain Suraritu Mauti," he indicated to the scaled woman with crocodile eyes. "Then there's Warrant Officer Odharnait Ó Fallamháin, Lieutenant Ottiwell Verdier, Lieutenant Ida Harrison, Second Lieutenant Lowell Beck, Sergeant Max Caldwell, Sergeant Rhys Evans, Sergeant Fuchsia Latharn, and Sergeant Eliezer Menahem," he added, ending on the angelic creature.