Late in the night when the ghouls were all awake, a graceful black shadow slinked between the shadows that the forest offered. The creature was a black cat with silky rich fur and ears that were longer than ordinary cats.
The feline snuck past a ghoul and leapt atop a tree. From that position, it jumped to the roof of a cabin and settled down to eavesdrop on the conversation that was happening in the room below it.
"-your ghouls haven't found the rat. Do you think it must have already escaped?"
"My babies are not dogs. Their sense of smell and sight have been sacrificed for viciousness and strength. How do you expect them to hunt if we don't give them direction?"
"Which is to say they're no more useful than puppets. I can't believe we've wasted so many years perfecting the technique only to end up with such useless grunts that only know how to kill and eat."
The cat on the roof twitched its ear and looked below it where a ghoul was scratching the wall and sniffing the air above it. Annoyed by the scratching, the cat relocated away from the edge of the roof where it had been sitting. Not a whisper of a sound could be heard as it padded across the wood on its soft paws.
"Do you think I've failed our lord?" The girl asked, sounding morose. "I worked so hard, Theo. You know I did."
"You haven't failed him," the male voice, Theo presumably, replied. "But there's room for improvement. We cannot mobilise an army that can't hunt for itself. We're already having to extend our manpower keeping the brutes fed. Imagine how much harder it'll get when their numbers increase."
The cat blinked its large round eyes as it realised how high the stakes had gotten. He couldn't die here because if he did, the intelligence gathered would die with him and humanity would be unprepared for the army of ghouls that the lunatics were creating.
This entire time, Artemus had been following the tracks of what he thought were serial killers. His instincts had him suspecting that a greater plan was being unveiled and he had unfortunately been proved right. Just how many ghouls had they made? How many killed and tortured in their experiments to create ghouls out of living breathing people? And who was this lord they spoke of?
"I'll put them to sleep in the quarry once they've all gotten fat on meat. We won't have to feed them for a few more months, Theo. And if we're desperate, we can just release them in a cemetery for one night, plenty of corpses to eat, no?"
"Absolutely not. You're asking for us to get exposed, Eva. Do you think the humans won't suspect that their dead were eaten by ghouls? It's the first conclusion they'd come to! I haven't worked so hard to cover our tracks only for you to ruin everything by getting careless."
"Fine! It was just a suggestion!"
Thunder rumbled in the sky above them and Artemus shivered. He hated being rained on because it took forever to get his coat dry. But this was good. If he and Abigail were to attempt an escape then the best time would be during a rainstorm when their scents would get muddled by the water.
The smell of dirt before the rain, earthy and rich filled his nose as he continued to listen.
"Where are we heading next?" Eva asked Theo.
"I don't know. Juvan will decide."
Artemus heard the sound of a window being thrown open. Eva's voice floated up from the window.
"It's a pity that such a small group of people were sent here. My children haven't had enough to eat and I can't put them to sleep till they're all full."
The ghoul that had been sniffing the air under the roof, shuffled to the window where Eva held out a piece of meat to it. The meat came from the corpse of a person that still remained in the cabin. It had been stripped down to its bone but a small sliver of meat remained between its fingers and this was what Eva was feeding her baby. She was a demonic necromancer and the primary culprit of the torture-murder scenarios that the Sanguine had been investigating.
Artemus was slowly piecing together the information he had so far, and it painted a picture that was finally making sense. Eva, Theo, and Juvan were turning people into ghouls by torturing and casting a spell on them that rapidly decomposed bodies while the victims remained alive. The caravan murders were their first failed experiments. But they had improved since then. Some of the humans still ended up dying but the rate of success had dramatically soared. The proof of it was in the number of ghouls that were roaming the quarry and its surrounding jungle. This also explained what had happened to the people who were previously working here.
Those missing people had been turned into ghouls who were then released to attack and devour the new batch of workers that Artemus had arrived with.
"I'm bored. Why don't we go look for the person who burnt down the cabins?" Eva asked Theo.
"I doubt they are still alive. The ghouls are everywhere, Eva. And we've checked the cabins. Where else can they possibly hide?"
"I don't know. But we can't leave any stone unturned. One loose rat and this whole secret undertaking will come crashing down like a stack of cards."
Just as she spoke, thunder sounded again, louder this time. A bolt of lightning struck the tree closest to the cabin and it caught fire. Artemus wasn't one to read too deeply into nature's wrath when it struck but something about the lightning made him feel differently today.
Run away from here, it warned him. The black cat stared at the smouldering tree and felt its hackles rise. When he leapt off the roof, the first few drops of rain were already pelting down on the quarry.
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