“Okay, okay.” I turned in a circle of my own, trying to open myself up to the feel of the energies, like I had before. It was harder this time; those energies seemed to flow all around me, something I could feel with my mind but not touch with my senses. “Can’t you just, you know, magic out which way to go?” I wiggled my fingers stiffly at him.
“Of course,” he snorted. “I could also light a flare, in case anything happened to be watching. I think I’ve got some in my bag.”
I twitched with the effort of not hitting him with his own stick. The ability to take deep, calming breaths to relax would have been downright lovely, but it just wasn’t in the cards, not anymore. “Right. Creepy forest, creepy cave, or creepy statue graveyard? How do I know?” I muttered to myself. Closing my eyes for a moment, I tried to find my center, tried to feel myself out, but to no avail. We were too close to answers, to resolution, to Lori, for me to calm down.
Instead, I tried to examine the energy that tugged me in different directions. The area around us was strangely soothing. There was a peace to it; the peace of the grave, familiar now that it had caressed my soul and left its mark on my psyche. I could rest here, if I wanted. And in some ways, I did, just not as much as I wanted other things. But it couldn’t be the place I was looking for. There was none of that raw, bloody feel that the sigils and scars had reeked of.
The forest was intriguing. Inviting. It inspired a longing to go and lose myself in whatever it offered, perhaps never to return. It caught at me like the cover for every fantasy novel I’d ever fallen in love with, a siren song I didn’t dare answer. Another time, another place, another me. Maybe one day. I shook off the temporary longing; I didn’t have the luxury. Besides, it couldn’t be the place I needed, either. It just couldn’t.
That left the creepy cave, the only region of the three that unnerved me, with its ominous maw and hidden depths, standing ready to consume us whole. Something deep within its recesses both called to my core, and repelled me with its repugnance.
“That way.” I pointed directly at the dark opening. In my mind, I snarled away the little voice that said, What if you’re wrong? What if you’re letting her down? You always let everyone down, eventually. There was no time to play second-guessing games. Not this time.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Charles grumbled. His heart had never settled back into its natural, slower rhythm. Neither had Corey’s. I wondered what the pair of wizards knew or could see that the rest of us couldn’t. Or maybe the environment was simply more disturbing to the two humans, its hills echoing with the silent sound of mortality.
We made our way quickly across the rolling hills that stood between us and our destination. “Charles,” I lowered my gravelly voice a few notches, for safety’s sake. Here, any sound seemed to carry unnaturally far. “Did your vision tell you what we’re up against?”
He chuckled darkly, quietly. “It doesn't work that way. Given time to decipher the symbolism, it might have. Maybe.” He kept low as we crested the hill, minimizing his profile even though no one else thought to do the same. “And I would have equipped myself with the specialist tools to destroy it. But we’ll simply have to make do. Too many lives are depending on us.” His face twisted into a frown. “Really, it could be anything: a monster, a vampire, a fae. Even a powerful wizard, long gone mad and trapped in this realm.”
“That happen often?”
“Sometimes.” He kept his voice low as well as we stepped into the cave mouth. Crossing that threshold changed the way the very air felt on my skin, charging it with pregnant menace. No one else seemed to notice. “A few of my kind have lost themselves here entirely. Mostly powerful, old wizards. Like Merlin, lost in the mists of Avalon.”
That gave me something to think about as he fell silent, and we traveled deeper and deeper into danger. Without asking, I took point as the walls narrowed toward us. No one objected, and it seemed like the best idea: I was strong, tough, and could see in the dark. If nothing else, maybe whatever lurked within would take long enough eating me that the others could run away.
Behind my back, the unzipping of a bag heralded Corey producing a flashlight, a solid, metallic, sturdy one that hopefully wouldn’t just die the first time someone muttered a spell. Likewise, Charles produced light, an old-fashioned, flame-powered lantern that made me instinctively shy away, despite the sphere of glass between me and the fire. It was probably my imagination, but I thought the flame swayed a little toward me each time I happened to get too close. I quickened my pace and walked a few feet further in front, just in case.
The tunnel wound and sloped down as we went, the walls closing in on us until there was barely enough room for any two of us to walk abreast. It stayed tall enough, though, that Charles would have had to tip-toe to brush it with a hand. What lives down here? I wondered for the hundredth time. I stayed to the middle of the path, blocking it, just in case.
The cave floor and walls transitioned away from plain, hard-packed dirt and dark rock as we went, turning into a rectangular-cut passageway framed in tightly packed, jumbled stones of greatly variant appearance. Each one was rough to the touch, as if worked with by hand with tools from some distant past. The floor was the same, like cobblestone, coarse but relatively even with dark, gritty mortar.
When the floor turned to bone instead, it caught us all by surprise.
Stepping down, I heard the first crunch, echoing grotesquely down the tunnel, louder in the near-silence than it had any right to be. Everyone paused, and I turned to look back. The walls were now tightly pressed, irregular rubble. The floor, layer upon layer of bone, was stacked and packed impossibly tightly, all the way forward and back, as far as my dead eyes could see.
All of us froze. I looked down. It wasn’t just bones.
It was human bones.
Enough of them to carpet the floor; in fact, I had no way to tell if there even was a floor, or if it was just layer upon untold layer of human detritus, running endlessly deep.
We all exchanged a long look. Tamara shivered. Corey’s heartbeat picked up, shuddering anxiously from the walls. Even Charles’ impassive poker face wavered for a moment before returning in full force. He gestured me onward, and onward I went. Lori was that way.
Our steps slowed, the bones grating on bones with each forward stride, stealing any sense of stealth we desired. Bone and more bone confronted us as we went further, peeking between the wall stones and jutting sharply from the ceiling like wayward fangs. The morbid surroundings seemed to put my companions increasingly on edge; everyone started walking with more hesitance, even me, as if all too aware we were trespassing. Which, of course, we were. But for myself, it wasn’t all bad. The further we went, the more energetic I felt; the more death surrounded, peering from every crevice in the wall and touching every footstep, the more not-quite-alive I felt, just as Charles had predicted.
It felt like the journey went on too long and too far. It reminded me of the time I’d died, those unending moments between moments.
Then suddenly, something changed.
We heard it before we saw anything, the low, slow rumble that gradually deepened, paused, and began again. The closer we came to a curve in the bone-dense tunnel, the louder it became, the air moving hot and humid, back and forth across our exposed skin.
Without warning, the passage opened up and emptied us into a subterranean cavity, chambered like a heart and several times the size of my apartment. Corey’s flashlight scanned rapidly back and forth, its beam cutting through the dark of the underground, but I didn’t need it to see bits of the adjoining rooms, partially separated by contoured barriers of rock that bristled with protruding bones.
The floor here wasn’t simply covered with the debris and remnants of long dead humans. The decay of past and present civilizations also littered the floor, bits and pieces of ruined and dead human settlements, everything from a car bumper and a pile of sundered cinder blocks, to rusted farming equipment and a nest made from decaying ma
ttresses, blankets, and cast-off clothing accumulated from the last couple of centuries. It looked like a post-apocalyptic garage sale had come and gone, leaving behind all the bits no one wanted to take home.
Indiscernible piles lay here and there, some hidden amongst the bones and shadows, while others sat near the center of the chamber like garish decorations or trophies. More shadowy areas harbored other channels that led who knew where, large and small tunnels branching off of the main chamber like blood vessels attached to a solitary, cavernous heart of stone.
“Something’s coming,” Charles hissed, setting his lantern aside. He gestured as if scooping something up, and the chamber flooded with steady firelight that poured from the amorphous orb in his upraised hand. And he wasn’t wrong.
Into the slowly shifting light strode a horror, ten feet of monstrous predator on six furry legs. Its coat was a dull, mottled, rusted gray, stained with blood and matted with chunks of gore. The thick pelt hanging shaggily from its figure did nothing to conceal massive paws, each with six toes tipped with a sharp, curved claw like a great cat’s. Its dirty fur covered everything but a broad, scaled tail—half feline and half reptile—and its massive head, larger than my torso.
The head of the great beast wasn’t covered by anything: not fur and not skin. My eyes and Charles’ light revealed it to be nothing but raw flesh and wetly glistening muscle, as if someone or something had stripped its head down to the warm, steaming meat that flexed and shone in the light, shining and damp with blood. Its eyes shone too, watching us unblinkingly with a lambent yellow-green stare like one of those radiation warning signs. Topping the exposed flesh and muscle at the crown of its head were two twisting, forward-pointing horns like that of a bull’s, enormous and sharp and obviously deadly, as the ancient blood stains on them attested.
It looked savage, sickly, and voracious, all at once.
Muscle rippled and flexed, a not-so-subtle threat, as it strode into the room as silent, predatory, and dismissive of our presences as it could be. We stalled at the sight of it, just inside the entrance to its lair. It grinned a Cheshire Cat’s grin at us, revealing two full rows of uneven, pitted teeth, bits of bone and rotting flesh still lodged here and there. Behind me, everyone’s heart rates spiked, climbing and clamoring over one another until their cadences were indistinguishable from one another.
“Son of a bitch,” Charles spat through gritted teeth. “It’s the Rawhead.” I didn’t dare glance back at him, didn’t dare take my eyes off of the huge supernatural predator before us.
“I feel pain. Sadness. Tears and sorrow,” Tamara whispered, her hushed voice barely making it to my ears. I finally risked a glance over my shoulder to see her nod minutely toward the chamber from which the creature had emerged.
Red crept in at the edges of my vision. My fists curled into tight balls of their own accord. I took a deep, useless breath.
“Hail mortals, immortal.” Its voice shifted across an alien range, settling into a cross between the harsh grating of metal on stone and that of crumbling marrow. Yet it spoke politely, choosing its words like a professor enunciating proper, if slightly out of date, English. “What has brought you to my lair?” I really wished it would stop grinning, but it didn’t, not for an instant.
I tensed as I watched it settle casually onto its haunches. Didn’t it already know? Why didn’t it attack? From its greeting, it surely knew I was Strigoi, and its lack of surprise felt like bad news by itself. It didn’t seem impressed by the sight of us at all, and I felt unprepared, outmatched. If its intent was to intimidate me, it was doing a hell of a fine job.
Charles stepped up to right behind my shoulder, leaving me still between himself and the beast. “Greetings, demon.”
Well, now I knew what it was, at least. Now if only I knew what that meant.
“I see you bring your kind’s weapons of war to my private sanctum,” the creature admonished, sickly lantern eyes focused on Charles. The polite tone barely covered a blood-chilling threat as it flickered a glance over Charles’ staff.
Charles stretched a fabricated, pleasant expression over his face. “Indeed, you have my apology,” he replied deferentially. My mouth almost fell open. “We did not intend to trespass upon the home of one such as yourself.”
The monstrosity preened a little, puffing out its chest ever so slightly. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“We came here following a trail, seeking the location of a large number of young human women that have been taken from their rightful Home,” the tall wizard continued, inclining his head in a slight, apologetic bow.
The thing, the Rawhead, the demon, it just grinned and grinned. “Of course. You have come to the right place, wizard, though I do not believe I can assist you this day.” I did not like the way it smiled at Charles’ mention of our goal; that smile made my flesh want to crawl and my blood want to boil. “At least, not without a price.”
At my shoulder, Charles stiffened, but I couldn’t tell what his real feelings were beneath that strained mask of a smile. “Might I ask why, most indulgent host? We have traveled a long way in the seeking and would be loathe to return Home empty handed.”
I’ll burn in hell first. I ground my teeth so hard they creaked audibly.
It chuckled, the sound of bones being milled down to powder. “Because they are mine.” It rose to standing, its body language still casual, but tinted with an air of menacing superiority. “A gift. A tribute, in return for services rendered.” It licked its teeth, that hideous scar of a mouth unzipping even further than it had before. From the corner of my eye, I saw Corey cover his mouth, as if he might retch at any moment. It smiled. “A feast.”
I went from zero to seething with righteous anger in a second flat. Charles finally stepped in front of me, gesturing frantically behind his back for me to calm down.
“I have seen your markings upon our world, mighty demon,” the wizard said, shifting in front of me as if to block the line of sight between me and the creature. His hand gestured insistently, the other gripping his staff with pale white knuckles. “It must be some great service indeed to draw you so often to our Home.”
“Not so great a task for one such as I.” It nodded proudly, tongue still edging along its lengthy, serrated maw. “Though it has been far too long since I tasted such divine fare.”
I glanced around and spotted a pile of heavy, decaying cement blocks, like cornerstones. I shifted that way, edging out from behind Charles.
“But,” Charles protested, “it seems unfair to ask you to hunt and retrieve your own prey, your own reward. Where is the decadence in that befitting one such as yourself? Surely I can offer a more worthy tribute in exchange. Perhaps for information?” He was so intent on his conversation with the gross abomination he didn’t seem to notice me sidling away.
The creature paused, hideous face cruel and considering. “A worthy offer, good wizard—” It rumbled on thoughtfully, viscerally, the air trembling around it, but I’d already stopped listening.
I wrapped my hand around the rebar jutting from the largest block I could see, and threw a few hundred of pounds of stone at the Rawhead like a baseball.
No fucking demon was going to eat my girlfriend.
My aim was true, and I had a big, ugly target that was easy to hit. The cracked block collided with its gross face so hard the cement exploded, shattered remnants and bits of concrete shrapnel lodging in the behemoth’s juicy, meaty face.
It recoiled, front paws thrown clear off the ground by the impact, barely catching itself before slamming into the bone-studded wall at its back. Then it dropped back onto its paws, lowering its head, shaking it back and forth as if to clear it.
When it looked back up, its eyes blazed, and it glared balefully at the lot of us. Specifically, me. “As I was saying,” it continued, seeming barely fazed by the blow. “Those I work with want a place of safety, of security in this harsh, cruel world.” The demon flexed its massive muscles and stretched. “But
now that there are those hounding their trail, their plans have changed, and those girls will serve a much different purpose, a much more…transitory purpose.” It grinned again with relish, thick saliva steaming and warm where it dripped from its jagged maw.
“Dammit, Ashley!” Charles snapped. “Back off!” He glared at me, the anger in his intelligent cinnamon eyes blended with blatant fear. He turned back toward the Rawhead as it took a stride forward, settling low onto its half-dozen legs and pawing the ground. “Perhaps, perhaps we may yet deal for—”
The logical, reasonable part of my mind said that Charles probably knew how to handle this better than I did, that I should just let him do his thing and back him up. But my vision was white-hot with outrage at this abomination’s insinuations, at its actions, at its very existence. So the rest of me told that rational part of my mind to fuck right off. I grabbed Charles by the back of his long coat and hauled him out of the way as the Rawhead lowered its horns, lining them up with the lot of us.
My face twisted involuntarily into a snarl of challenge.
Only one of us was walking out of here in one piece.
The Rawhead grinned its unholy, ravenous grin and lowered its great, horned head. The bone-encrusted chamber rattled, burdened with the violent weight of its charge.
17
Regardless of cost
The Rawhead’s roar hung heavy in the air, reverberating invasively inside my skull like the sound of an industrial saw cutting flesh. At the edge of my vision, I saw Charles start to dive out of the way, but the sound caught him and staggered him like a physical blow, forcing him to brace himself with his staff and clutch at his head.
Meanwhile, the pounding of its six legs on bone was like muted thunder in the confines of the stone chamber, crushing the human residue littering its lair without effort, smashing aside its own entropic decor with inhuman, destructive abandon. It crossed the chamber in seconds with our entire group lined up perfectly for its devastating rush, everyone but me staggering and reeling from its horrible bellow.
Dead Girl's Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 1) Page 14