Author's Note: So, the chapter count went up again... I promise this is the last time. And the good news is I've actually got most of the sixth and final written. This chapter just wound up huge and it felt right to break it up where I did.

The scene that met Rick's eyes when they reemerged onto the roof had to be seen to be believed.

While Morales didn't appear to have moved from where they'd left him, T-Dog was now standing precariously on top of the duct-work between the two bound men. His new perch was presumably an attempt to ensure that even the parapet encircling the roof wouldn't hinder the radio's signal. And then there was the contraption he was holding which could generously be called the Frankenstein's monster of walkie-talkies. Parts of its casing had been removed so that wires from it and the gutted EMF reader would allow it to make use of the power from the battery pack of the Xanatos Special.

Meanwhile, Merle Dixon was leaning as far away from T-Dog and the Franken-walkie as the handcuffs around his wrist would allow. Something like trepidation on his face as he asked, "Now, yer sure this is gonna work? This ain't something you've just been percolating on the backburner, cause that usually means something's gonna go up like a roman candle."

"Eh," Stoney hedged, "It's a little of column A and a little column B."

And now T-Dog and everyone else on the roof was eyeing the Franken-walkie as though they'd just found themselves in the presence of a live grenade with T-Dog looking the most disturbed by this development because he was the one actually holding it.

"Is that an option?!" he demanded. "You didn't tell me this thing blowin' up was an option!"

"With Sparky here it's always an option," Merle explained wearily, while Stoney just waved them off.

"It should be fine."

"That's not a no," T-Dog, ground out.

Stoney sighed, leaving pink streaks in his white-blond hair as he absently scrubbed at his scalp with bloodstained fingers.

"Look," he said finally. "I'm like eighty-five – no, ninety percent sure it won't. And if it does I'll catch it."

T-Dog still looked far from comforted.

"You'll catch it," he repeated incredulously.

The answering grin that split the blond's face would have been concerning enough without the fever bright glint in his eyes.

"Yuns don't think I let my brother tattoo a hellbender salamander on my arm because I just wuv snot otters that much, did ya? This things more'n half the reason I wasn't turned into a crispy critter when they started carpet bombing the safe-zone I's in."

'Well, shit,' Rick thought, felling as sick as Merle looked at this announcement. He'd thought Stoney had been at the edge of his safe-zone when it'd been bombed not at ground zero.

"And if that don't make all of y'all feel better about it –" which if Rick were being honest it really didn't – "then how about this. That is Xanatos tech not some POS put out by Nightstone. You have to work at it to make his shit blow up when it ain't supposed to."

"You are kind of shit at this comforting thing, you know that," T-Dog demanded, dark eyes cast skyward as he prayed for patience.

But seeing as they had no other options, he visibly swallowed his nerves and turned the Franken-walkie on. But it was only after it had done nothing more alarming than crackle briefly as it powered up that T-Dog and everyone else on the roof released the breath they'd been holding.

"So far so good," he murmured as he pressed the push-to-talk button and held the Franken-walkie up to his face.

"Hello, base camp! Can anybody hear me? Base camp, this is T-Dog. I'm hoping to hear somebody's voice 'cause I'm getting sick and tired of hearing mine," he said into the device, only to groan when there was no reply. "Base camp," he tried again. "D'you read me?"

And there was still no reply, save for the faint creak of abused plastic as T-Dog gripped the Franken-walkie tight.

'Damn it,' Rick thought, they'd been so sure this would work.

Merle slapped his unbound hand against the ductwork in what the deputy thought was just frustration until he bit out, "Hey, ratchet jaw, how about you ease up on the PTT so they can actually respond!"

And T-Dog released the push-to-talk button like he'd received an electric shock.

"Shit," he swore eyes apologetic as he glanced at the anxious faces of his fellow scavengers.

It was only a moment later that an unfamiliar man's voice came through the radio.

"T-Dog this is base camp, we can hear you. Over," he said, and there was a collective sigh of relief amongst the scavengers. They knew the person on the other end of the radio.

"Dale, is that you?" asked T-Dog, then without waiting for an answer he went on. Laying things out for the people on the other end of the radio as he explained the situation they'd found themselves in. "Base camp, we're in some deep shit. We're trapped in the department store in Fairlie-Poplar. There are Geek's all over the place. Hundreds of 'em. We're surrounded."

Then with deliberate care he released the push-to-talk.

Dale's alarmed voice came back immediately.

"T-Dog, repeat that last," he demanded. "Repeat."

Rick found himself wincing at the incorrect radio lingo, but refrained from commenting.

"I said we're trapped in the department store in Fairlie-Poplar," T-Dog repeated. "We need Savannah to wake up Daryl to get us out of here."

But apparently T-Dog wasn't the only one having problems with the push-to-talk button, because distant voices that weren't Dale's began to drift from the receiver.

"He said – department store – didn't, he," asked a woman's voice that they could just barely make out.

"I heard it too," Dale replied, his voice clearer from his proximity to the mic on his end.

"– not that far – right?" asked the same woman as before.

"No way," said a man's voice that was achingly and impossibly familiar. However, all thoughts of just who might be on the other end of the line came to an abrupt stop when Rick realized just what the man was saying. "We do not go after them. We do not – the rest of the group. Y'all know that."

"He can't be serious," Glenn breathed, betrayal written plainly across his face.

"That son-of-a-bitch," Andrea snarled, green eyes flashing as she glared at the radio in T-Dog's hands as though she'd like nothing more than to reach through it and strangle the person on the other end.

"So we're just gonna abandon them?!" an unfamiliar woman's voice shouted though the receiver loud and clear and utterly furious.

The second man's voice was too muffled to make out his reply through the static, but all of a sudden the voices on the other end went quiet. Dale or whoever had been keeping the push-to-talk button pressed had released it.

T-Dog, jumping on the chance for them to be heard, nearly crunched the Franken-walkie in his haste to mash the push-to-talk button on their end.

"What the Hell, man?!" he burst, echoing the fierce invective that was spewing forth from more than a few mouths and in more than one language on the roof. Then forcefully regaining his composure he demanded, "Dale is Savannah to where she can hear this?"

The voice that came over the radio next wasn't one Rick had heard yet, but it was apparently the aforementioned Savannah.

"I'm here," she said firmly.

"Good," T-Dog breathed with relief.

"Finally, someone with some damned sense," Merle growled. "Tell her to wake Pebble's ass up and that she is to inform him that he's to get his scrawny ass here while we've still got as much daylight as possible. She'll know what it means."

T-Dog nodded, "Dixon says to tell you to wake up Daryl… And he says for you to tell Daryl to try and get here while we've still got as much daylight as possible."

Apparently she did recognize the obviously predetermined phrase and what it meant, because when she came back her voice shook as she forced out, "Under-understood –" though it was steadier when she asked, "Do you have a safe place y'all can hunker down until he gets there? Over."

"Safe enough," T-Dog replied wryly. "We're on the roof. Andrea and a couple of others just got back from barricading the main doors so they look like they'll hold for a bit. But even if they go there's a chain on the roof's access door, so we should be able to keep 'em out."

Rick nodded to himself; he'd made a passing mental note of the same chain and padlock T-Dog was talking about when he and the others had been returning to the roof. They hadn't even been a blip on his radar the first time they'd come busting out the doors.

"Good to hear," Savannah breathed, voice distorting slightly as though she was moving the mic away from her mouth. Her next words, however, were as crisp and clear as anything they'd heard as she asked, "Hey, T-Dog, would it be possible for y'all to mark the roof somehow? Daryl ain't exactly done much city flying and he'll be coming in a bit too high to be reading street signs."

As one, all of the scavengers turned to look at Glenn, who did not exactly look comfortable as he found himself the sudden center of attention.

"How about it, Sugar," asked Jacqui. "You're the only one who's been here before."

"I – give me a minute," Glenn requested, clearly thinking hard. "There – there's a home goods department on the third floor. They've got stuff like bed sheets and shower curtains and stuff like that there. Some of its for kids, so it's pretty eye catching."

T-Dog nodded.

"Glenn says there's a department for bed linens and such on the third floor," he relayed. "So we should be able to rig up some California King sized welcome banners for him. If not we'll figure out something even if it means sending up smoke signals. We got a new guy here who's apparently pretty damned good at making things go boom," this last was said while shooting Stoney a pointed look.

The Seabee just shrugged and discarded another shimmer of heat haze that did nothing to ease the fever bright shine glazing his eyes.

And it was with apparent amusement that Savannah asked, "Glenn picking up strays?"

T-Dog opened his mouth to reply only to shut it when Stoney cut him off with a quiet, "Don't."

At their questioning look, he elaborated.

"Don't tell her I'm here. She and the baby'll be under enough stress as it is knowing someone here's hurt without her knowing it's me and that I'm bit."

And didn't that just raise some interesting questions in Rick's mind, but now wasn't the time to entertain them.

"Please," Stoney pleaded and T-Dog caved, but he did not look happy about it.

"Let's just say this one found us instead of the other way around," he said finally, which was certainly one way to look at the fact that Stoney had climbed up the side of the building like it was a rock-climbing wall at a state fair.

"All right," Savannah returned, voice determined. "I'm going to pass you back to Mr. Horvath so I can go and wake up Daryl. Ya'll stay safe and watch for idjits. Red, over and out."

There was a faint crackle of static and then the radio went silent.

'Okay,' Rick thought to himself, 'we've got a plan now we just need to put it in motion.'

But, while T-Dog was climbing carefully off the ductwork and Rick was mentally running though the best candidates to head for the supplies they'd need to mark the roof, Andrea was looking at Stoney as though he were the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

"Savannah's baby – you're the father aren't you," she said with certainty. "You're Travis."

The full body twitch Stoney gave at that pronouncement had nothing to do with his rising fever if the look of disgust on his face was anything to go by. Meanwhile, Merle was bent double as he wheezed.

"Damn, Blondie, I'm gonna miss you and Skeeter's theories when we part ways. Y'all are better than watching Maury," he managed, slumping against the ductwork. "Although –" he shot Stoney sharp grin.

"Stop. Don't even go there," Stoney scolded his uncle before heaving a sigh and leveling a flat stare at Andrea. "While my uncle's right that a DNA test would indicate paternity – I'm not the father. I'm Tate. Travis is – was – my brother. I'm told the resemblance is remarkable."

Merle snorted, "That's one way to put it. The only way to tell you two apart at a glance is lookin' at yer ink."

After her gaffe Andrea was more than willing to follow after Glenn to the home goods department. Her perfectly logical reasoning being that, as one of the people in the group who was armed, he would need her along as his bodyguard if they stumbled across a stray Walker. Even though it was plain to see for anyone with eyes that the real reason that she was going was to escape from the redneck's continued snickers.

"I take it she and her sister do that a lot," Rick asked Merle.

"Oh you don't know the half of it, Friendly," Merle rumbled. "For a while they's all convinced that I's Red's baby-daddy."

"You're old enough to be her Daddy," Stoney – or perhaps Rick should address him as Tate now – grimaced. "Hell, I think you're older than her Daddy."

Further discussion on this front was put on hold when Glenn and Andrea returned from their trip to the third floor with a bundle of shower curtain rods, packets of curtain rings and a stack of brightly colored shower curtains that were clearly meant for a kid's bathroom. The first was a vibrant green with the Incredible Hulk emblazoned on it. The second was a near day glow shade of yellow with Batman grappling his way across it. The third was a fire engine red with the atomic paw symbol of his son Carl's favorite comic Science Dog. And the last was a blue-green color with a group of five people in gold armor on it with the words The Pack in aggressive red lettering.

"I'm not sure how long this one's been sitting on the shelf," Andrea remarked as they unfolded each of the curtains. "I mean all of these guys went to jail – and broke out of jail – and are not the sort of people you'd want on your kids bed sheets."

And so, while he, Glenn and the two women set to stringing up the shower curtains between pairs of the curtain rods banner-style, T-Dog had gone over and crouched down in front of Morales and was going through a well practiced concussion checklist with the battered man.

"I figure its best we make sure neither of you've had any more screws knocked loose than you already did," he said amicably, tossing a look over his shoulder at Merle that promised he was next.

"You never said you had medical training, Honey," Jacqui commented as she helped Rick to hold their makeshift banner in place while Glenn and Andrea secured it to the ductwork's support struts with the plastic curtain rings.

"I don't. Not really," T-Dog readily admitted, checking Morales's pupils with a penlight he'd retrieved from Dale's tool-bag. "But you sit through enough of these you pick up a thing or two. Plus, I had to be certified CPR and basic first-aid before I could coach my church's peewee football league."

Stoney, who up until this point had been alternating between tossing away twists of more heat haze and carefully dismantling the Franken-walkie so that they'd once again have two particle beam pistols at their disposal, looked up from his work with a thoughtful hum.

"Y'know, I thought I recognized you from somewhere," he said, giving the other man a similar once over to the one he'd given Rick when they'd first met. "You played middle linebacker for Tech back in the day."

"I did," T-Dog admitted, an almost bashful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Right up until I got my knee blow out my senior year –" he shook his head ruefully – "Never planned to go pro or anything, but it sure would have been nice to finish out that last season. But man, that was over ten years ago. How d'you remember that?"

"Y'know how folks are around here about their college ball," Stoney said simply, "Plus there ain't too many Yella Jackets with T-Dog, or was it T-Dawg, as their moniker."

"True enough," T-Dog agreed, and satisfied that Morales's brains weren't about to start leaking out his ears he moved over to Merle. Frowning as the redneck's eyes reflected the light back with a muted catlike flash of eye shine. "This trick with your eyes is new…"

"Not really," Merle remarked wryly.

Jacqui, apparently not one to put up with the older Dixon's sass, said, "Well, it's a new one on us, Sugar."

To which Merle just grunted.

As they worked on setting up the final shower curtain banner, Rick couldn't help noticing the way Glenn kept shooting looks at the two bound men as though he wanted to ask something, but wasn't sure if he could or even if he should. But after nerving himself up he asked, "Does the eye stuff have anything to do with what Savannah let slip in camp the other day. You know – when she said your family had "moon-eyed" kids occasionally?"

And both Merle and Stoney froze; their pale eyes focusing unblinkingly on the Asian kid, though thankfully without a hint of that uncanny glow from earlier to be seen.

"Well ain't you a sharp one," Merle rasped dangerously, but if Rick wasn't mistaken there was a thread of unease in the brash man's voice.

Someone else might have let the matter drop in the face of those intense almost predatory stares, but Glenn was swiftly proving himself as someone with a pair of brass ones at least the size of bowling balls. Because after swallowing his nerves he went on, "And you – you said that the Cherokee called the local gargoyle clan moon-eyed…"

If the two bound men hadn't looked nervous before they certainly did now.

"Got it all figured out don't'cha, Kimchee," said Merle, and it was a statement rather than a question.

"No," said the kid simply. "I don't know how it's possible for a gargoyle and a human to have kids together. I mean gargoyle's lay eggs, right? It just doesn't seem possible. But I'm right, aren't I? You're – You both are part gargoyle … even though you look human."

Uncle and nephew exchanged a loaded look, with the younger giving a faint hum that was just shy of a sound meant for a purely human throat. While Merle's answering hum was closer in range to something meant for a human being to make.

"We are human," the big redneck said slowly. "Or at least close enough for government work."

"Quite literally," Stoney added with faux-nonchalance, looking far too pale underneath his tan. "Especially considerin' just how many of us in the family have served without gettin' carted off t'some lab the moment we wound up in medical."

"Folks like us," the elder Dixon explained. "We call ourselves liminals. We're not one thing or the other, we're stuck somewhere in the middle. And it's certainly less insulting than being called a Halfling, which is what Oberon's Children like to call their half-human get."

"But how," asked Glenn, voicing the question they were all wondering. "I mean big, honking beach ball sized eggs! Were you hatched?!"

And at that both Dixon and Stoney relaxed a hair.

"At least you're asking how rather than why," said the elder Dixon, shifting so that he was in a marginally more comfortable position.

And it was Glenn's turn to huff and level a flat look at the big redneck as he said matter-of-factly, "Dude, up until two months ago I had the internet. The number of people who post NSFW fanart of the current leader of the Manhattan Clan is not zero and he has a beak."

"It's the white hair," Andrea chimed in informatively, side-eyeing Stoney's similarly colored hair. "At least according to my sister, that is," she added quickly.

"So, now that we've established that Cute Monster Girls is a trope for a reason," Glenn pressed on. "May we know how, please?"

For a minute it looked as though they were going to refuse to answer, but then Merle sighed and grumbled under his breath, "Why am I always the one that has to give the newbies the talk?"

But with no answer forthcoming, he went on.

"It was love and a boon from the Neighbors," he explained carefully as though navigating a minefield. "Their magic tends to last a single night, a year and a day or a life time. My great-great grandparents met when Grandpa Jubal saved Grandma Kesiah's life when the family got burned out during the war. She lived with the clan until she could rebuild and during that time –"

"They fell in love," Jacqui murmured softly.

Merle nodded.

"The boon came later, but the gist of it was that every day they could live as husband and wife, while every night he turned back into a gargoyle. Only thing is, magic like that – it's rarely perfect. It's hard to make things go against their nature. So there's almost always a bit of bleed through. It's why at least once every generation there's usually at least one moon-eye, some times more. My mama was one, Sparky and his brother Doodle are another, and their cousin Bethy is the latest."

He chuckled ruefully.

"Now, that girl got hit with it hard. She's sugar and spice, but you rile her up and them eyes start to glowin' like coals from a campfire. And she can't stand to keep her feet on the ground. Not that many of us can."

Which made sense, Rick supposed. If your instincts said that you were supposed to have wings, then you probably felt crippled being bound to the ground. So it was no wonder Stoney had took to the sky when seeking out his family.

"So you and Daryl are actually related then," asked Glenn, and Rick blinked. His mind hadn't quite made that jump yet, but it did sound possible – or at least as possible as anything else had after he'd woke up in that abandoned hospital.

'I wonder if he looks anything like them,' he wondered idly, trying to picture Merle or Stoney with a gargoyle's features. But it was an exercise in futility. Gargoyles were so varied in appearance that it was impossible to know what to expect when Daryl arrived.

"Jubal's egg-twin was Daryl's granddaddy so if you want to get all technical about it he's my cousin a few times removed. But since that's a mouthful I'll just keep callin' him my brother if it's all the same to you."

And Morales, who up until this point had been suspiciously silent allowed just one word to pass his bloodied teeth and swollen lips as he stared at the bound men with a creeping sort of horror filling his eyes – "Abominación."

Merle's lips pulled back from his teeth in a silent warning. But, before he could do more, Stoney abruptly slumped backwards, the sun warmed metal of the ductwork the only thing keeping him up right.

"Shit," Rick gasped, boot soles scraping on the rough texture of the tarpaper as he hurried to the Seabee's side. Crouching he laid the back of his hand across the blond's forehead and hissed at the heat he felt pouring off him.

"Hey. Hey, Tate you listen to me," Merle called, straining at the cuff around his wrist as he tried to move as close to his nephew as he possibly could. "You hang in there, boy. Daryl'll be here before you know it."

Rick glanced up at the concerned faces of Glenn, Andrea, Jacqui and T-Dog.

"How far from here is your camp?" he asked, hoping to get a better idea of just how far Daryl was traveling.

"Not too far," said Jacqui quietly. "Our camp's just inside the perimeter at the old Bellwood Quarry. You know the one they were planning on turning into a reservoir before all of this started up."

Rick nodded, because even though he wasn't quite sure where the Bellwood Quarry was in relation to them. He still had a good idea of how far they were from the perimeter.

As he heaved himself back up to his full height, he thought, 'C'mon Daryl. You need to get here soon. Stoney's running out of time.'

"Why isn't that spell of his working anymore," he asked the elder Dixon, the only one on the roof who was coherent enough to give him the answers he needed.

Because even though Stoney was still plucking at the air before him as though trying to draw the heat of the fever away from himself, more often than not Rick wasn't seeing the little curls of heat haze dispersing in the wind like he had before.

"You ever tried thinking with a bad fever, Friendly?" Merle asked, worry easy to read on his face. "D'you remember how hard it was to concentrate even on things you knew by rote how to do?"

"Yeah," Rick confirmed. He had always been prone to extreme reactions whenever he got ill. Odd dreams and hallucinations were sure to follow whenever he spiked a fever. Heck during a particularly bad bout of flue a few years ago he'd been convinced that Carl had sprouted antlers like in that children's book about a little girl called Imogene.

"What he's doing takes concentration and focus," Merle explained. "You have to know exactly what you're telling the universe to do or it'll just fall apart. And he can't right now."

"Can you do it instead," asked Rick. "Could you pull the heat for him?"

The crestfallen look on Merle's face was answer enough.

"It's not my gift," he rasped. "He got it from his mama and her people. I can't use what I don't have."

'But there has to be something we can do.'

And Rick had no sooner finished this thought when he saw Merle's head jerk from the corner of his eye. It was their only warning before a large shadow passed overhead as Daryl dropped from the sky to land on the ductwork between his brother and nephew with a crunch of abused metal.

The deputy hadn't put too much effort in trying to picture what Daryl might look like when he'd learned he was a gargoyle or even later once he'd learned that both Merle and Stoney were related to him by blood. It had seemed a Sisyphean task when gargoyles could range from near-human in their features to something that was completely inhuman. The only constant being their wings – and even those could vary wildly in shape and composition.

Daryl was one of the gargoyles whose facial structure was near identical to a human's, which made it all the easier to read the fury on his face in spite of his glowing eyes as he dropped down from the ductwork to the empty space between Merle and Stoney. But, there was nothing human about the way he stalked towards them; talons scratching on the rough texture of the tarpaper, while his wings were partially furled behind him to give the impression that he was bigger than he actually was while also allowing him to shield his bound kin behind him.

"Any of you pricks wanna tell me which one of you handcuffed my brother and my kid to the fuckin' roof?!" he snarled, giving them all a good look at a set of fangs that would have given Bela Lugosi pause. "Or was it a group effort," he surmised, glowing eyes scanning them; the lack of visible pupil and iris making it nearly impossible to tell exactly who he was focusing on at any one moment.

And while the lizard part of his brain was telling Rick to get while the getting was good, there was another part of him that told him things hadn't spiraled quite that far just yet. Because while Daryl was visibly angry about the state he'd found his brother and nephew in, he was still talking. Furthermore, he hadn't yet reached for the crossbow strapped to his chest.

'Not that he needs a weapon,' Rick considered, trying not to be obvious as he cataloged the arsenal nature had provided the gargoyle before him; taking in the long talons on his hands and feet, the boney protrusions at his knees and elbows, not to mention the ram-like horns that curled up and over the top of his head.

"I'm the one that cuffed your brother," he said firmly, taking a step forward and mirroring Daryl's protective posturing in front of the wide-eyed scavengers. "It was the only way to break him and Morales up after they had a … disagreement."

"And who're you?" Daryl growled, glowing eyes boring into him.

"Rick Grimes," he introduced himself careful to keep his voice as even as possible, hoping that as long as he remained calm, then Daryl would as well.

"Rick Grimes," the gargoyle repeated, placing an odd emphasis on his last name as his nose wrinkled. "Well, Rick Grimes you wanna tell me why my kin's the only ones that are cuffed. And why, if it was my brother and Morales goin' at, that my kid's been trussed up like a prize turkey too," he demanded, tail lashing out behind him in a way that even someone with only a passing familiarity with a cat could read as agitation.

With an audible swallow, T-Dog stepped forward to stand at Rick's side.

"He – Tate's bit and we were scared," he confessed.

And it was this show of vulnerability that seemed to sooth a bit of the gargoyle's bad temper as the glow slowly faded from Daryl's eyes to reveal irises the exact same pale gray as Merle and Stoney's.

"That don't explain why my brother's still cuffed," he rumbled, still angry though looking less like he was prepared to rip them limb from limb.

"We dropped the key," T-Dog admitted awkwardly.

Daryl cocked his head inquiringly. "And you couldn't pick it up?" he asked bemusedly, a faint chirr lending an odd flavor to an accent that was otherwise straight out of a Appalachian mountain holler.

"It went down that drain," T-Dog explained, indicating the drain in question.

Daryl scoffed.

"Guess I'm stuck playing lock pick then," he rumbled, backtracking to his clan members side and crouching down on his haunches between them, never once turning his back completely to Rick or the other as he did so.

"Damn baby bro, you ain't go no idea how glad I am to see you," said Merle the relief palpable in his rough voice.

"Well I am a damn sight easier on the eyes than your ugly ass," Daryl snarked back on automatic as he slipped his claws between his brother's bruised wrist and the bracelet of the handcuff then pulled – the handcuffs coming apart at the seams like they were made of wet cardboard rather than stainless steel.

"Madre de Dios," Morales breathed behind them and judging by the sound of his voice he had only just realized how badly any of his previous badgering of the gargoyle and his clan members could have gone for him.

It was only then, with his brother loose and able to properly guard his back, that Daryl turned his attention to Stoney.

"Damn, Tate yer burnin' up," he murmured, a picture of familial concern as he laid the back of his hand on Stoney's brow; the infected man stirring at the contact.

"Hey uncle you made it," the Seabee managed, glassy eyed and with a smile that was little more than a grimace pulling at his lips. However, he was prevented from saying more as a shudder rolled through him with enough force that Rick was afraid the fever had triggered a seizure.

Apparently he wasn't the only one fearing the worst, because with a wordless snarl Daryl discarded his crossbow then shredded the cuff around his nephew's wrist. Breaking it with the same ease he had his brother's, though in his haste he managed to snap the blond's bracelet as well.

As the bracelet of seeking stones fell unnoticed to the tarpaper, Daryl maneuvered Stoney so that his back was flush against his chest; one arm curling around his ribs to hold him in place as he raised the other up to his mouth so that he could use his teeth to quickly undo the buckle of the heavy leather cuff around it. This too was discarded, the gargoyle lobbing it in Merle's general direction with a toss of his head.

As soon as the cuff left Daryl's possession the pair began to change.