Never Knew Another Read Online Free Page B

below.
    He howled back to me. I hear.
    The mattress was the first thing to go through the window. It was little more than a large bag of feathers and hay sewn shut. It wasn’t hard to shove it through the gap. Little goose feathers floated down from holes in the seams. Next, I threw all the clothes they weren’t wearing, and all the buckets of the hall.
    Sergeant Calipari could barely stand. Franka helped him into a chair. He heaved where he sat, but there wasn’t much inside of him. It spilled across his chest and stayed there. He didn’t have the strength to clear it away. She wasn’t as weak as him, yet.
    I pushed Franka away from him. I told her to keep cleaning. I cleaned him up while Franka worked, throwing papers and the pillows from the furniture. She must have been embarrassed that anyone found her in such disarray. She must have been embarrassed that she hadn’t been able to help the sick as I could. I made Calipari swallow dandelion wine with mint to settle the burning inside of his guts. I didn’t have enough with me. It would take weeks to clean away the worst of his demon-fever. He was too sick to speak. We had to turn the tide inside of him, and burn everything he had touched that could not be cleaned.

    ***

    In the yard, the fire attracted a crowd. Everywhere the demon stain had seeped in from Calipari’s deep fever of sweat and vomit, the fire caught it like kerosene, and coughed up balls of fire. People came out of their rooms to watch. Spectacle was more effective at clearing the building than our holy command.
    My husband had already left, running through the dark to reach the nearest temple. We would need more supplies to fight the demon’s death tide rising inside his killer.
    The drunks cheered now. Later on, their hangovers would be worse and the occasional bout of coughs would linger long into the night. Some among them might die, if they had been here night after night, drinking in the stain. My husband would try to walk the farms and houses here while I stayed with Calipari. The temple would help. Even Imam’s clergy would try to help. Death does not care whose god you serve.

    ***

    I stayed with Calipari, in a cleaner room, on the second floor. After a few days, Franka was healthy enough to work downstairs. I couldn’t convince her not to work. We tried to quarantine the place, but Bellini only allowed us to block off the inn rooms. The tavern remained open against our command. We would fix that soon enough.
    First, we focused on the man. As the stain faded from him, Sergeant Calipari was able to talk for long periods of time. With Calipari’s face and voice to feed Jona’s memories, a candle flickered in my mind, burning steady, then growing clear as scenes separated from each other. But Calipari himself was a hollowed out shell of the battering ram with legs that Jona had known. He should have been a tightly wound spring, not this feather on a mattress.
“What are you looking at me for?”
    I had been staring. It made him uncomfortable.
    I closed my eyes. “Do you feel strong enough to talk a while?”
    “Yeah,” he said. The weakness of his voice betrayed him. I waited a while more. He said nothing else.
    I smiled. “This isn’t an interrogation. I’m just picking up the pieces, healing the sick, and making sure there are no more.”
    He still didn’t speak.
    “We won’t hurt anyone, I promise. We’re trying to help.”
    “Well,” he said. With my eyes closed, I imagined his face, his mouth screwed up like he was about to spit out the side where there was a gap in his teeth. “I don’t know. It wasn’t right, but, I know what happens when demon stains get involved. I don’t want to think about what comes next. Never good when we can’t handle it ourselves. You aren’t even human like us. You’re this other thing, a wolf or a priestess or something.”
    I opened my eyes and reached out to touch his arm. “I’m human, Sergeant. I’m also a wolf. The divine