Marcom was gaining on it; it was fifty yards ahead…then thirty…then ten. Embers stung his face; soot and ash fell like snow, turning the vibrant, lively city into another Hellsgate.
Not…on…my…watch…
His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword; it was the only weapon he had on him. The image of Matthew’s smoking and blackened hand, still gripping the sword he had plunged into the devil’s breast, flashed through his mind, but what choice did he have? He had to stop it. He had to.
His quarry rounded the next corner, and Marcom was right behind it, half panting, half coughing. The smoke was thinning here, and he caught sight of painted stalls and wooden skeletons.
Slow down, you bastard…
The thing was only out of his sights for a moment, but by the time he rounded the corner, he had no idea where it had gone. Ahead, a wall of people blocked the entire street, their backs to him in a solid mass of black cloth and painted leaves. Someone was shouting, a woman was screaming, children were crying.
He pushed his way forward through the press of bodies, his gaze sweeping over the crowd, frantically searching.
Where are you…where the fuck are you…
The crowd parted easily before him. Many of the people, most clad in their Samhain cloaks, blinked owlishly at him out of dazed and ashen faces. Mothers cradled children in their arms, young men and women were clinging to one another, some of the older ones were urging the younger ones away.
Where?
Abruptly, he was through, slipping on a wet patch on the cobbles and falling to his knees at a section of the street clear of revelers.
And that’s when he saw them.
Three women—two humans and a Satyrian—lay in the middle of the street, their painted cloaks in tatters and their eyes staring sightlessly up into the colored lights of the paper lanterns. Beneath them, the largest pool of blood Marcom had ever seen in one place was spreading in a widening circle. He glanced down, recoiling from the sight in horror, only to find it was the same blood that had made him fall. Scarlet coils of gore were strewn across the cobbles like a butcher’s discarded spoils; he could almost see the steam still rising from them.
Gods…
He took a deep breath, nearly choking on the coppery scent of death that filled the air, overpowering the festival’s sweet aromas and the acrid smell of smoke. Grimly, he got back to his feet.
“Everyone,” he shouted, turning toward the onlookers, but there was no need to raise his voice; a hush had fallen around these poor unfortunates—a momentary island of silence amidst the chaos unfolding throughout the city. “Take cover. Go home if you can. Stay out of the streets and find somewhere safe—”
A shout rose up from further down the street. “More! There are more of them!”
His heart sinking, Marcom turned toward the cry. As he did, the crowd surged forward in a stampede, and his gaze fell on something shiny and metallic crouched on top of one of the stalls at the edge of the road.
The demon thing jumped down beside the bodies, blood splashing—splashing!—around its boots. Behind it, the stall exploded into flames. A flickering snake of fire followed the string of paper lanterns which connected that stall to the next …and the next…
For a moment, standing mere feet away, Marcom stared into the thing’s face. He saw his own visage reflected in its glass visor, and underneath he saw its strange mottled gray flesh and emotionless black eyes. He sensed a challenge in those eyes, though he knew that was impossible. There was nothing—nothing at all—in those dark pools, certainly nothing human.
He drew his sword, but the thing gave a stiff sort of bow and turned away, moving through the crowd with inhumanly large strides that were almost leaps. It was as if it wasn’t constrained at all by gravity.
Marcom started after it. The thing was forced to move slower now, fighting its way through the tide of people scrambling to get out of its way, and Marcom was close; only a few feet separated them now.
I’ve got you, he thought, raising his sword.
A dark shadow slipped out of the crowd and darted in front of him. With a grunt, Marcom stumbled over a shiny black loafer and fell to his knees once again. As graceful as a dancer, a second loafer materialized out of the dark, kicking his sword hand with expert precision. Involuntarily, his fingers opened, and the weapon clattered away across the cobbles as he scrambled back to his feet.
The hard edge of a blade was suddenly against his throat, and he felt a strong arm encircle his neck like a vice.
“I don’t think so,” a low, cultured voice whispered in his ear. “I’m not supposed to dispatch you—but I want to. Oh yes, I do. So stay very still, my good man. Move not a muscle.”
Marcom slowly turned his face toward his captor, wincing as the knife at his throat dug a little deeper, piercing the skin and drawing a bead of blood.
He couldn’t see the man’s face—only the black sleeve and shoulder of a fine waistcoat and a fancy hat pulled down to hide his features.
The man adjusted his grip and lifted his blade up into Marcom’s field of vision.
“I’m not afraid to use this,” the man cooed as if to a lover, and Marcom saw that the knife in his gloved fist was already dripping with blood—a great deal of it. “In fact, I want to.” The knife returned to Marcom’s throat. “But I exercise restraint. It is what separates man from the animals, is it not? Our ability to refrain from acting on our impulses.”
“What do you want?” Marcom asked quietly, anger roiling up inside him.
“Nothing,” a new voice answered in Marcom’s other ear—and that was a voice he knew. The man Michael had called Jack, the drunkard. “We don’t want anything at all. Just time, Captain—time for our associate to get a head start. Can’t have you cutting the party short now, can we?”
There were more screams in the distance, and suddenly, Marcom was free again. He caught a quick glimpse of the man in the black hat slipping back into the crowd like a ghost in the wind, and then he dove for his sword. Snatching it up, he started forward again, pushing his way through the crowd.
A hand caught hold of his arm, and he wheeled around, raising his blade instinctively.
He expected to find Jack, but it was Michael, Garrett at his shoulder. The boy took a step back, his eyes fixed warily on Marcom’s raised weapon. Marcom lowered it.
“We can’t stop it,” Michael said quickly. “It’s too fast. We need to try to get as many people to safety as we can.”
As if to punctuate his words, more explosions boomed in the distance, accompanied by the tinkle of glass and the roar of fresh flames.
“It’s not just that,” Marcom snarled, his gaze flicking back to the corpses at his feet. “There’s a madman carving up people like damned pigs.”
“All the more reason to get people out of the streets,” Michael said, turning to Garrett for support.
The big Karikis was still and silent, staring down at the dead women. Marcom hadn’t ever known any Karikis well enough to learn how to read their body language, but he suspected Garrett was not seeing the white faces staring back up at him with firelight in their eyes—he was seeing his wife.
New screams soared over the panicked babble, and more of the stalls turned into so much tinder. In the distance, a series of loud pops echoed across the city as a stash of Bonfire Night firecrackers exploded into life. Michael was right. They needed to get people off the streets.
“Captain!” Marcom turned to find Elijah and Vuc shoving their way through the crowd toward them.
Thank the gods, he thought, feeling a mixture of relief and bitterness. Two more hands to help with this mess.
Elijah seemed composed enough, but Vuc’s young face was white, and his eyes kept darting toward the bloody bodies in the street and then away again, like those of a frightened animal.
He’s too young for this, Marcom thought, grinding his teeth. Too many boys growing up before their time. Emily’s face passed before his mind’s eye—too many
girls as well, mayhap.
When the pair reached him, he didn’t bother giving them a chance to report. It was a moot point at present. The Dragon’s Brood could wait.
“Two parties,” he told them. “You two take the east end. We—” he gestured to include Garrett and Michael, “—will take the west. Get as many people to take cover as you can. Look for buildings that are stone. If they’re locked up, knock down the bleedin’ doors. Just get as many people out of the streets as you can. Understood?”
Elijah nodded and started away, Vuc trailing dazedly in his wake.
Marcom turned back to the others. “You two are with me.” The pair exchanged a wary glance. “Look, we don’t have time to argue. I have experience, and I’ve already dealt with the thing that is turning this whole city into a fuckin’ bonfire. I need your help. Trust me.”
There was another beat when he thought they might still protest, but then Michael nodded.
“We’ll do what we can.”
The next hour was a blur of motion accented by one horror after another as they worked to herd the shellshocked citizenry into the few structures that were not on fire. The smoke was so thick that many people were overcome by it and had to be carried, and everywhere—everywhere—there were bodies. The dead lay in pools of their own blood. Victims of any and every age, sex, and race burned beyond recognition; others who were simply in the wrong place when a burning building collapsed. These horrors outmatched any he’d seen in Hellsgate or the like. And there were just far too many people on the streets, with more pouring out of crumbling buildings with every passing moment.
The air was full of cries for help, shouts of alarm, and terrifying screams as another body was found in the gutter or pulled from the flames. Now and then there were angry voices, bordering on the edge of madness, as rescuers or common folk stumbled across one of those damned dragon murals burned into the cobbles of the streets or into the stones of the structures that were not ablaze.
So fast… Everything was happening so fucking fast.
Marcom was struggling with a young Sarqin girl who was screaming for her dah when a woman stumbled into him, clutching his arm to stay on her feet and nearly knocking him over. He shoved her away, trying to be gentle, but she fell to the ground in a lifeless heap, her eyes still open and pleading, blood gushing from a red slash across her throat. The wound grinned up at him like a jester’s painted mouth. She couldn’t have been attacked more than five seconds before, and yet he saw no sign of the dark killer who had to be there somewhere, lost amidst the crowd and smoke.
With a superhuman effort, Marcom lifted the Sarqin girl off her feet, thew her over his shoulder, and dashed for the entrance to a small stone guardhouse at the edge of a palatial estate. It was already full with more people than was wise, but he had to get the girl away from the sight of that corpse—away from the madman who was surely out there in the shadows.
“Help her,” he said shortly, thrusting the girl into the arms of a startled looking Satyrian man, and then he was heading out again into the night.
It was hopeless. How many dead already? Dozens? Hundreds? More? So much of the city was burning, Marcom wasn’t sure if there would be enough of it left to rebuild come morning. This made what had happened at Seven Skies pale in comparison. Anger and disgust roiled in his gut, tapped down only slightly by the growing numbness that was creeping over him. So much death…so much destruction…so many horrors…
He scanned the street, squinting through the smoke and debating which direction to head in next. Through the haze, he caught sight of Garrett staggering out of a doorway full of flames with a pair of human boys in tow. He hurried to his aid, skirting a knot of volunteers who were helping to search for more children. Why did all this have to happen at Samhain when there would be so many youngsters alone on the streets? It was so unfair…
He reached Garrett and took charge of one of the boys; both looked like they were about to faint, from the smoke no doubt.
“There’s no more room at the guardhouse,” he told Garrett as they started across the street. The building behind them groaned ominously, and they hardly noticed as bits of plaster and burning timber began raining down around them. “We need to find somewhere else.”
“I don’t think there is anywhere,” Garrett growled.
“The manor,” Marcom said, shifting the child’s weight in his arms and starting toward the gate that stood open adjacent to the guardhouse. “There should still be some room in there.” In truth, he wasn’t sure of that at all, and he worried about the ground they had to cover to get to it, but Garrett was right—they were rapidly running out of places for the populous to take shelter. Even now, he heard new explosions of flame that marked the start of a new bout of destruction. Not only were most of Coalhaven’s structures partially or entirely wooden, but the streets were full of wood and paper adornments for Samhain. There was just so much material to burn.
How by all the gods could they fight at enemy like this? Astus’s guards had come to help, of course, and they—some of them flyers—had had no more luck in apprehending the demon than the guards at Seven Skies had. Less, really—Matthew had given his life to stop the monster, albeit temporarily.
Marcom and Garrett passed through the gate and headed down the narrow path that wended its way between the trees toward the estate’s main house. For all he knew, this could be King Astus’s manor. It was too dark, and there was too much smoke, to hazard a guess.
Through the trees, Marcom could see lights blazing in the windows of the enormous house, but it seemed very far away. Between here and there were endless connecting paths that ran through large pines, oaks, and fancy shrubbery. Those paths were full of people too, slowly making their way toward the house. It was maddening that there was no direct route across the grounds, and the whole place was a bleeding labyrinth.
“Out of the way,” Marcom barked, slowing as he came abreast of a group of half a dozen men and women gathered at an intersection of two paths. “Get to the house.”
“There’s no more room,” a man snapped, wheeling around to face Marcom and Garrett, his fancy cloak swirling around him. “There’s no more room anywhere. I want to know what the hell’s—”
“No!” Garrett roared, stunning everyone into silence as he dropped the boy he was carrying and dove into the knot of people. Several of them shrieked in surprise and scattered.
Marcom lowered the boy he was carrying to the path and hurried forward, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Garrett was on the ground, grappling with what seemed to be nothing but shadow.
A piece of the darkness broke away and tumbled through the air toward Marcom, and he batted it away. It was a hat—a fancy hat.
He sprang forward, trying to catch hold of one of the shadow’s arms, but their adversary writhed like a cat, seemingly as insubstantial as the smoke that blotted out the stars. Garrett seemed to have hold of the man’s coat, but with a quick movement, the man had slipped out of the garment, leaving it empty and dangling from Garrett’s enormous fist.
There was a flash of steel and Garrett let out a cry of surprise and pain. He fell backward onto the ground, dropping the coat and clutching his chest.
Marcom made one last grab for the man, but he vanished into the shadows as if he’d never been there—as if he was made of nothing but smoke. He couldn’t even tell which direction the son of a bitch had gone.
Fists clenched and, fury raging through him, Marcom wheeled around toward Garrett and dropped to his knees. The big man had his hands pressed to his breast, and there was blood oozing from between his fingers. It, like so much more he’d seen throughout the night, looked black in the darkness.
“Garrett!” Michael materialized from out of the shadows, supporting the weight of a man who had apparently injured his leg. Even in the meager light from the house and the obscured moon, Marcom saw the stricken looked that crossed his features.
“Someone help me,” Michael snapped, and the young m
an in the fancy cloak came forward to take Michael’s place.
Garrett tried to sit up, but Marcom gently pushed him back down to the ground.
“Stay still.”
Garrett didn’t protest. Every one of his breaths were labored, wheezing gasps, and there was a terrible gurgling coming from his chest that Marcom didn’t like the sound of at all.
Michael approached, kneeling by Garrett’s other side, and he and Marcom exchanged a glance across the fallen Karikis. The boy looked much, much younger now, and again, there was a tickle of recognition gnawing at the back of Marcom’s mind. He pushed it away. There wasn’t time.
“What happened?” Michael asked, but his voice shook, and Marcom could tell the boy already knew.
“Stabbed,” Marcom said shortly. He looked around them at the frightened people still hovering among the trees. None of them seemed to realize what had happened.
“Do any of you have a knife? A dagger on you? Anything smaller than a sword?” he called, and a human woman came forward, holding out a tiny blade to him. He took it without comment and began cutting through the thick leather armor across Garrett’s chest.
“What are you doing?” Michael hissed, reaching to stop him.
“We need to be able to see the wound,” Marcom snapped. “I know what I’m doing.” He raised his voice. “Someone go up to the house. Find out if there’s a healer in the place. If there is, bring them here with a light.”
He didn’t look to see if anyone obeyed. He focused on getting the armor out of the way. Garrett’s eyes were closed, and it was impossible to tell if he was still conscious. Marcom hoped he was not.
The leather fell away, but in the dark, all Marcom could see was the blood that continued to pump out in a slow, steady rhythm.
He reached for the dropped coat where he knew it must have fallen, but it was gone. Frustrated, he cast around for something else he could use to staunch the bleeding. Surely he had something. His fingers found the rag still tied around his head, covering the socket of his missing eye and the brand of the dragon that had been burned into his skin. For a moment, he hesitated.
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