Chapter 17 - The Smell of Death

— Ylva —

This was my fifth scouting mission in the last two weeks and I really hoped this would be the right one. I've never really been blessed with patience, especially when we're running in circles.

This was an island near the coast. Small, isolated, and perfect for secret stuff, and villainous ventures.

I brought five men with me, and we went all into different directions to get the best global overview. Except for one, who's using a drone as high has he could—so not to be detected—to get a better and more precise overview. Which was sent back on a live feed to Kaden back home.

We'd left Monaweard after a few days, once the forces and equipment arrived. I kinda went back and forth—between Monaweard, Blakemore, and wherever the Alpha sent me scouting.

I walked slowly between the brushes.

I can be pretty darn silent if I want to—and I wanted to. So I was doing my best impersonation of a ninja, slithering through the woods, slowly creeping closer to the centre.

I don't enjoy scouting as much as battles, but quite frankly, I do appreciate the fact that for sneakiness' sake, I was empowered to do quite a lot if necessary. It's mostly the main redeeming quality of scouting. That and being a crucial step before a battle.

So as long as it meant a future battle incoming, I was pretty open to scout as much as necessary, so that I could kick-ass at a later date.

My biggest issue was when we wanted information alone, and little else. I get the power of information and its use, but I'm not an intelligence agent, I'm a warrior, pure and simple.

After a few minutes of slow walking toward the core of the island, I noticed metal amongst the thick vegetation. As I sneaked closer, I saw the metal fence stretching on both directions before me.

Well, at least there are signs of life.

We hadn't seen the fence in the vegetation from the aerials, but we did see some buildings. Though, we couldn't tell if they were abandoned or occupied from above.

I checked the fence to see if it was electrified. It wasn't.

So I climbed silently, which also meant slowly, and moved further inland.

I saw the first buildings ahead after a few minutes.

Night was about to come which would hide my presence even better, but make scouting a little harder. Which is why we moved at dusk. Enough light to get a first overview of the land, but dark enough to hide our presence when we moved further in. Which, when timed right, can be pretty darned efficient.

I began moving in a slow circle around the buildings that i could now see before me. I kept in the shadows of the trees. I knew the guys would do mostly the same so we'd get a good general view first.

There was a lot of buildings. Mostly large ones. The place smelled of wolf hard. A lot of wolves passed through here. Young, old. But there aren't many noises. Usually, when you get such a strong smell, you get the activity with it. The slow rhythm of people moving about, the low buzz of voices, the clanking of objects being moved around and used. The quiet music of life and society. But this was mostly dead silence.

There was the rustling of leaves in the breeze, and the song of insects in summer, accompanied by the occasional birds. Small mammals moving around, squirrels, frogs. The distant rush of water against the shore. But not people.

It felt oddly like a ghost town.

A place that is empty without being empty.

It weirded me out.

As I completed my part of the circle, I felt a slow pressure against my skin. It was like nails on a blackboard, like a whole orchestra of bandsaws, like wails of pain, and the rattle of one's last breath. I felt death. And it was close.

Being part Valkyrie has its advantages.

You can hide the smell of death. But you can't hide its aura. Not to me.

And there was a lot of it.

I moved slowly until I spotted the building that set my teeth on edge.

The sun was not completely down yet, so I was really careful.

There were no windows, no opening of any kind for me to look into. Only one door.

I don't like building with only one access in or out. They can become easy traps.

They are also harder to sneak into.

I laid a hand against the outer shell of the building, half-closing my eyes, concentrating.

I'd heard no sound, smelled no one, so to be sure, I extended my senses. I let them seep into the fabric of the building itself. The coldness of death seeped under my skin in seconds. And so did a greasy, slimy, nauseating feeling. One of fear, of pure abject terror. There was despair too, a lot of it. I could feel darkness, like a mist crawling on the floor, clawing at the walls. And insanity assailing my mind.

I released my contact with the wall in a shudder.

I knew three things.

One. This was not the result of a battle, not of any kind. This had been an execution. Plain and simple. The lives that had been taken here had not even fought back for survival. I'm not even sure if they could have. Maybe they had been restrained, or drugged, or killed from a distance, or by gas. Either way, they've had no chances of survival.

Second. They were victims, that's the only word to describe them, and there had been many. The strength of this aura of death meant, at the lowest, dozens, maybe more. And not all of them so recent. Some could have been weeks ago, maybe even longer.

Third. Those who did this, I was sure, didn't know them. There was a disconnect between the killers and the victims. Maybe they never met before then. Or they were of a different specie. Or they were simply insane. Either way, there was something there about their state of mind that set my teeth on edge.

I enjoy a good battle, I might even indulge in the occasional bloodbath. This wasn't it. And it made me feel uncomfortable.

But I also knew a fourth thing. The building was empty. At least of the living.

So I moved to the door, careful not to be spotted, and slipped in.

The place had been scrubbed clean. There was a lingering smell of disinfectant.

No one could smell death from outside, but inside, a wolf's nose could get the lingering smell of blood. It was faint though, and if I hadn't been looking for it, I might have never noticed it.

I found nothing interesting from that building other that it's insanely creepy aura of death, so I moved on.

I retreated in the woods a little as the sun went down to connect with the rest of the crew.

We shared our findings so far, while we waited for dusk to settle.

When it got dark enough, I cut the meeting short and we moved to infiltration.

I took care of my part of the grid. Our drone guy doing lookout in case any problems occurred.

Most buildings were empty, their purpose not clear, but they all had the smell of being well used. Some with strong chemical smells, probably disinfectants, others with that of a lot of unwashed bodies crammed together for long.

I made short order of my part of the grid, and sent our faint click signal notifying the team I was done. It was quieter than speaking in our earpieces, so if one was sneaking close to someone else, then they wouldn't hear it. Even if they were werewolves with their supernatural hearing. We had our own codes, not unlike the Morse code.

I received the code of Anders wanting to talk to me, so I retreated to somewhere I was sure no one would hear me or sneak up on me, and opened communication.

"I think I have bodies here," said Anders.

"Seen any?" I asked.

"No. But I can smell them. I think they're underground."

"Want me to get your six?"

"Better safe than sorry."

"What's your position?"

He told me, and I made quick work of eating the distance between us.

Once there, we moved quietly inside a building not unlike any other infiltration I did tonight.

Inside, I got a whiff of decay. It was definitely decomposing meat. I also got something Anders probably didn't get. That same type of bone-chilling feeling I got at the creepy building.

It was a bit different. My feeling was less of an execution ground and more of a disposing facility. Given the smell, I think I was right.

We moved furtively inside. It took us a while to spot the trap door, but the moment we lifted it, the smell got stronger.

The basement was packed earth, and there was an old stone circle in the middle that looked like a disused well. The smell came from there.

There was also something else here. Something Anders could not feel. It was other than the pungent smell, and more powerful as we got closer. He probably had no clues about what I was sensing here. The buzzing against my metaphysical skin.

It was the remnant of souls. A lot of them. And other things too. Faceless things, invisible things. Things attracted by death, things that fed off this. On flesh, on rot, on death, and whatever lingers behind.

I knew that as long as I didn't put too much of my attention on them, they wouldn't notice me, but I didn't like it. Not at all. They were a lot of them. Abnormally so.

I could hardly suppress a shudder.

There are things in this world, far beyond what the mind can understand, and things no being of flesh and blood can defend themselves against.

Those things in the well made my skin crawl.

Anders didn't even notice my reaction as he got closer to the well.

I didn't.

He shone a light in it.

"Man, that's brutal," he said moving his nose away.

"You see anything?" I whispered.

"No. It's either real deep, or there's a room down there."

"We're not going down there. We don't need to. We know enough about this building, let's move on."

He nodded, not sad to leave this stinking hell.

We heard the steps first.

It took us barely seconds to move silently to the wall behind the stairs.

Someone walked slowly down, flashlight at hand. The heavy steps of a man.

We saw his feet first.

We stayed deep in the shadows so that he wouldn't notice us unless he put that flashlight directly on us.

I saw him shift around. He was probably looking for whomever opened the trap door.

I made a sign at Anders, not to change position as the man began to move the light in his direction. I glided in the opposite direction, keeping myself at the stranger's back.

When the light hit Anders, I took it as the perfect moment to strike, and while the man was focused on Anders I stood right behind him, moved my arm above his shoulders, and with my knife, slid his throat in one smooth motion, before he had time to react to either Anders presence or me. He didn't had the time to scream.

I put my other arm around the guy to stop the body from falling loudly on the ground, and used my knife hand to cut the sounds gurgling from his throat. I move my head in Anders general direction and signaled for him to check for any other intruders.

His night vision might have been compromised by having a light shone in his face, but he seemed to understand me.

It took a few seconds for the man to die as I dragged him closer to the well.

He was at his last moments when I shoved him over the edge.

I'm pretty sure if he's involved in whatever mess is going on here, I'm not gonna lose sleep on him.

I took the sword I have on my back out of its scabbard, and began scraping the bloodied dirt of the ground, then shoved it in the well too.

I tried not to have my head above it, not to attract anything's attention.

I don't know if people go down there sometimes, but it will at least give us time.

"Clear." I heard Anders mutter, and I moved back up.

We got clear of the building and moved back into the woods.

I signaled for others to rally up when done. We had designated a place for this before hand.

It took a little while for them all to join us, but in the end, no one was missing.

"Anything important?" I asked them.

"Prisoners," said Dodson. "A lot of them."

"Why didn't you signal?"

"Too much movement around. I would have been detected."

"You found MAM?"

"Yeah."

"Any others?"

"Yeah," two more men said.

"Can we get a good estimate?"

We spent the next hour jotting down information.

All of our communication was recorded, on top of the body cameras we had, so I was not surprised when Kaden called. He might have seen the whole thing.

And, of course, he had a few questions for us of which we didn't have the answers, so we had to make a few additional runs to get everything down.

But we all agreed on one thing. This place was a prison, and execution ground. It was probably where some of the missing people have disappeared, maybe some of the missing rogues too.

And they were using them for something. They weren't just killing them.

We didn't find what they were using them for, but has the night was drawing to a close, Kaden called this quit, and we left before sunrise.

I will probably see a lot more of this place before the end of this story.

I can feel a war in the air.