“Its neck,” Eamon guessed.
Shea nodded. “Its neck. Most of its predators come from the ground so its shell evolved to protect them from those attacks, but for whatever reason, it never developed a protection for its neck.”
“How’d you get on top of it?” Buck asked. He was now standing right next to the beetle, and as he spoke reached up to run one hand along its carapace.
Shea turned and pointed at the rope dangling from the cliff.
Buck whistled low and shook his head. “That takes balls.”
“I didn’t think it would actually work,” Shea confided. She was still jittery from the adrenaline rush. “Actually, I wasn’t sure any of the plan would work. I’m kind of surprised it did. I definitely didn’t expect it to be so hard to saw through its neck once I was up there.”
During her confession, Eamon’s eyebrows had arched higher and higher until they almost disappeared into his hairline, and his frown got darker and darker.
Buck shook his head. “You’re fucking insane.”
“Would you rather I just let you two be beetle food?” Shea snapped, feeling a little defensive.
“Now, don’t go getting defensive. He’s not arguing with what you did. We’re both rather attached to our limbs.” Eamon grimaced in the direction of one of the bodies.
“Nope, not saying that all,” Buck agreed. “Appreciate it, but doesn’t change the fact that you got a couple screws loose.”
Shea lifted one shoulder. He may have had a point. “So are you two the only ones left?”
Eamon turned on his heel and strode to the closest body, the one that had been ripped in half. Shea wrapped her arms around her knees as he turned the torso onto its back and then dragged its lower half over to arrange it in a macabre parody of a whole person.
Guess that answered that.
“It ambushed us on our way back to the horses,” Buck said above her head. He had finished examining the shadow beetle and now watched Eamon with his arms folded over his chest. “It got John first. Lorn tried to run. You see how well that went.”
He nodded his head at the body missing its arm and half its torso. Shea could just make out the back of Lorn’s head. After a moment, she realized she recognized the clothes he had been wearing, though they were a different color now.
“We took shelter in the rocks. Didn’t think we were going to make it out this time. Not 'til you showed up anyway.” He ruffled her hair briefly. She nearly fell over in shock. “Guess you’re not such a waste of space after all, Daisy.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Eamon dragged Lorn’s body to join the other and bent down, fussing with his neck.
“What’s he doing?” Shea asked.
Buck looked down at the top of her head with a thoughtful expression. “You’re not Trateri are you?”
Shea’s shoulders stiffened.
He was asking the sorts of questions she really didn’t need him to be asking. For her disguise to work, people couldn’t be curious about her. They couldn’t look twice because if they did they might see that her bones were too small, even for a seventeen-year-old boy. That even a boy would have an Adam’s apple and that her cheeks were entirely too smooth, missing the pimples and baby fine hair that came with puberty.
“Is that a problem?”
He pursed his mouth and shrugged. “Just strange is all. Normally the Scout’s trainers don’t take any but a Trateri as an apprentice. They don’t usually trust throwaways.”
Shea shot him a sharp look.
He smirked at her. “That’s what we call those that we take from the villages. Because their people threw them away for a few months more of safety.”
Throwaways.
Huh.
Shea crooked one side of her mouth. Unbelievable. Cruel but true.
“Thought us being integrated into your army was the whole point of us becoming ‘throwaways’?”
He nodded. “In theory, but in reality throwaways aren’t trusted. They’re used as filler. Most of you go to the frontlines or work as cooks or launderers. You’re the first to die in battle with your own people, or you’re given jobs that you can’t cause a lot of damage in.”
“So we’re thrown away twice.”
“Not you, though.”
Shea slouched and looked away. She needed him off this topic.
“He’s preparing them for their trip to the afterlife.”
Shea looked up in alarm. “We don’t have time for a burial. Shadow beetles live in pairs.”
“Relax, our people aren’t interred beneath the ground like you mud squatters. If a body can be taken back to camp, we offer them up to the sky and give them a funeral pyre.”
Shea blanched. That was even worse. No way could they lug two dead bodies smelling of blood and meat all the way back to camp without encountering beasts.
“Since we’re a very warlike people and most of us die in battle, this often isn’t possible. Eamon will cut their hair and take their amulet. Later, he’ll burn the two items so their spirits have a path to follow to the other world.”
Shea relaxed. That wasn’t as bad. Though she would prefer to be out of here sooner rather than later.
“You really think there are more?”
“I know so.” She gestured at the bodies. “The shadow beetle didn’t eat the bodies. Means it probably has young it wanted to feed. Where there’s young, there’s usually a mate.”
“Great.”
Pretty much.
Eamon insisted they head back to the horses first to see if the others had returned.
Shea didn’t like the idea much, but with Lorn dead, Eamon was in charge. Since she’d given up her opportunity to escape, she was back to playing the obedient soldier.
One day she was going to get control of herself and stop doing stupid shit to save ungrateful idiots.
For now, she waited by the horses with folded arms and a tapping foot. She wanted to be gone. Hanging around wasn’t smart. Not with a mate and possible young still out there.
Vale and his team weren’t back yet.
Shea had a strong feeling they weren’t coming. She’d noticed at least one burrow hole in the rock walls. It probably led all the way to the other canyon. Chances were good the other group had encountered the same problems as Eamon’s.
“We need to go after them,” Eamon said, coming to stand beside Shea.
She sighed. She knew he was going to say that.
“Is there any way to see that thing before it strikes?”
She tipped her head back. That was a good question.
“Chances are it’s gotten to Vale and his team. If it has glutted itself on blood, it’ll lose a little of its camouflage. If it hasn’t eaten any of them yet, it will only be seen once it moves.”
“Where’s my rope?” Buck asked from behind them. He held his saddlebag up and then glared suspiciously at Shea. “I’m also missing a knife.”
She turned away and made a face at the canyon. She’d forgotten about that. That meant her pack was still sitting at the top of the cliff.
“Uh-“
“You took it, didn’t you?”
“I may have, in my haste, gone through your bags, looking for anything that might be of use.”