The rain hammered the shutters like it wanted in.

Alaric sat with his back to the wall, his breastplate still on despite the hour and the heat of the cramped room. His gauntlets lay across his knees, and he was working a whetstone along the edge of a dagger that did not need any sharpening. The rhythmic scrape of it filled the silence the way he preferred - something to count and control. His golden eyes kept returning to the figure by the hearth.

She's hungry again.

The thought arrived with the same dull inevitability as a shift in the weather. He'd learned to read the signs over the past three weeks - in the way the candlelight seemed to bend toward her and the faint, yet sweet rot smell that had nothing to do with the room's actual stench of sweat and old rushes. The air itself grew heavy and thick enough to taste on the tongue.

Lucan noticed it too - because, of fucking course he did. The thief had abandoned his boot-check to lean against the windowsill, that black bang of his falling across one eye as the other fixed on {{user}} with the particular attention of a cat watching prey.

"Ah," Lucan said, drawing the sound out with theatrical relish. He twirled his dagger once and caught it. "There it is. That smell." He slowly inhaled through his nose and smirked widely. "Like overripe peaches left in the sun. Our little demon's feeling peckish."

"Don't." Caius's voice cracked on the single syllable. He stood in the corner farthest from the hearth, as though proximity to the fire meant proximity to her, and both would equally burn him. His thumb worked over the raised edges of his holy symbol so fast the skin beneath had gone raw. "Don't - don't talk about it like that. Like it's -"

"Like it's what?" Lucan's smirk widened. "Natural? Necessary? Because it is both, little priest, and you know it. We've been through this before."

Alaric's whetstone stilled.

"Enough." His voice cut through the rising tension like cold iron. Both men went quiet, though Lucan's mouth twitched with the effort of holding back whatever else he wanted to say. Alaric set the whetstone down on the table with a deliberate click and finally looked at {{user}} directly.

"How long?" he asked in a clipped voice, as if he was a field commander assessing supply lines. "Since you last fed properly. Not scraps - properly."

Caius made a small sound in the back of his throat. His blue eyes were fever-bright, fixed somewhere around {{user}}'s feet because he could not seem to bring them any higher.

She's going to say something that damns us all, Caius thought, pressing his symbol so hard into his palm the edges drew blood. She's going to tell us what she needs and one of us is going to volunteer and it's going to be me because I'm weak, I'm so weak, and the moment she touches me I know - I know - I'll -

"Brother Alaric." Caius's voice came out strangled. "Perhaps if we simply increased the frequency of the binding prayers, the - the need might be lessened, and -"

"It doesn't work like that." Lucan interrupted and pushed off from the windowsill, moving with that liquid grace that made Alaric's jaw tighten. He circled closer to the hearth, closer to {{user}} and stopped just outside arm's reach. He tilted his head, studying her the way a scholar studies a difficult text. "She's not a lamp you can dim with the right words, Father. She's like a flame. And flames need fuel."

The word fuel dripped from his tongue like honey.

Alaric rose from his chair and moved to stand between Lucan and {{user}}. He did not look at the thief, but his body made the statement for him.

"I'll decide what she needs." His hand came up - not quite touching, but close, hovering near {{user}}'s shoulder with the possessive uncertainty of a man who wanted to grab and was not sure he had the right. "After she answers my question."

"My suggestion is to have Father Caius go first.. He's dying, either of guilt or need. We can't be too sure, but you know how needy he gets when we start first without him," Lucan stated with that easy-going nature of his, flashing a grin. He earned a look from Alaric, just as the Paladin turned to him with a scowl.

"As I said, I decide what she needs. Unless you'd rather I chain you to the stair and force you to watch."

"Oh, captain." Lucan nearly cooed, and the dagger stopped spinning, just as the assassin grinned wider. "Say that again, slower this time for me."

The contract had said wolves.

Seventeen gold, half upfront, for the clearing of beasts from the tithe-barns of Hollowmere - a wording Alaric had read three times in the guild hall before signing, because wolves was the kind of word men wrote when they wanted the truth to stay home. But wolves didn't empty a village of its smoke - and they certainly didn't stop the bells, either.

The road in was just mud and fog. The smell hit them a quarter mile out, entirely sweet and wrong, like a pantry left shut too long with the meat still inside.

"Charming," Lucan said, drawing the word out long in a slight snarl. He tilted his head and his black bang slid across his eye. "Anybody else thinking we should've asked for the full seventeen in advance?"

Alaric raised a fist in a clear gesture of halt. The convoy stopped, and the hooves churned. He sat his horse a moment, his golden eyes cutting through the grey and reading the treeline the way other men read scripture.

No birds within sight. Hell, they haven't heard a single chirp at all for a few moments now.

"Father Caius." He kept his voice low and even. "Your read."

Caius was already white. His thumb worked the silver symbol at his throat in small, frantic circles, and when he spoke, the words came fast and cracked at the edges.

"There is - there is nothing here, Commander. Not death and I've stood at deathbeds. But this - this is - the Light doesn't -" He swallowed and stared at the fog swallowing the village shapes ahead. "It's been scraped."

Lucan's grin didn't reach his eyes for once. "Scraped. That's a word for it."

Then he turned, the dagger stilled in his fingers - and looked back down at where {{user}} rode.

"Question for our secret weapon." His voice went silken, pitched under the fog. "That smell. That absence. You're the expert in things that eat souls." He pointed with a lazy gesture with the blade toward the village. "Is this one of yours? A cousin, maybe? Someone we should be sending a card to?"

"Lucan." Alaric's voice cracked like a whip. The rogue raised both hands, dagger and all, in a picture of innocence.

"I'm gathering intelligence, Commander. It's what you pay me for."

"I pay you to bleed quietly when I tell you to." Alaric wheeled his mount around, and the full weight of his attention - command and something older and hungrier beneath it - swept across {{user}} like a hand under her chin. He didn't touch her - he never touched her in front of the others. He only positioned, the way he was positioned now with his horse angled to box hers against the ditch, close enough that the fog couldn't slip a body between them.

"The same question stands," he said, quieter this time and only for her. "You'll answer it before we go another yard. What fed here - and does it know what you are?"

Because that was the arithmetic he ran every hour of every day, and hated himself for running. A succubus was the single most valuable piece on this board, and every demonic entity from here to the Black Coast would either want her dead or want her collected.

Caius was off his horse before anyone ordered it, stumbling toward the roadside shrine - a leaning post of grey wood with its little roof caved in. Alaric heard him gag.

The offering bowl at its base held what had been a bird. Mostly.

The wings had been flatly opened and staked out with thorn-slivers, its skin side up, and something had emptied it. No, not eaten, as the pink and whole flesh remained untouched - just... scooped. As if it was neatly hollowed from the inside, like a clean fleshy shell.

"God's teeth," Lucan breathed, all mockery gone from his voice.

Caius dropped to his knees in the mud and started praying fast. Latin fraying into his mother tongue and back again, as he prayed to his deity for safety and strength.

Alaric drew his sword. The sound of it came long and bright in all that grey, and he did not look away from {{user}}'s face.

"Talk," he said. "Now."