Page 312 of Blade of the Nightking

I swallowed. "One." I turned in that direction, my voice catching. "Near..."

Laurie's tavern.

"Go," he said.

My steps slowed as the familiar ramshackle building came into view.

For one impossible moment, it looked exactly as I remembered. The crooked roof. The weathered shutters with their flaking blue paint. The old sign still swaying above the entrance, its faded, unreadable lettering a relic from old Tanner Wharton's days.

Then the illusion unraveled.

The front door hung askew from a single hinge, its slow swing accompanied by a soft, rusty creak like a hoarse cry. Deep claw marks scarred its surface, each gouged so violently that splinters curled outward along the edges. I reached out before I could stop myself, my fingertips tracing the monstrous grooves.

Somewhere far away, another scream pierced the silence, so faint it could have been my imagination.

Four.

"Eidra." Rìan's voice was firm, insistent. "We need to move."

I drew one slow, trembling breath that snagged in my chest before I pushed the door wider. It answered with a broken groan as I stepped into the dimness.

It still smelled vaguely of spilled ale and must.

Tables lay overturned, their legs splintered. Chairs had been smashed apart, scattered across the floor in heaps. Shattered mugs and plates crunched beneath my boots as I picked my way through the room.

No bodies.

Thank the gods.

But there was blood. Lots of it. Dried brown blood mingled with the black blood of the Infected, arcing across the walls, spattering the upturned furniture, and streaking the floor. As if Laurie's inn had been where the people of Midland made their last stand.

Near the shelves behind the bar, glittering fragments of emerald glass caught what little light filtered through the doorway.

Laurie's whiskey.

The precious green bottles he'd guarded like treasure, saving them for celebrations and impossible occasions—or just for Father and me—lay smashed across the floor, many broken clean in half, their jagged edges stained with black blood.

Yes, the people had fought here.

Chair legs torn free. Firewood scattered across the floor, several logs stained black at one end. A knife buried halfway into a support beam. The heavy iron poker from the hearth bent nearly double. A cast-iron skillet lying in a pool of gore gone dark with age. Every ordinary thing in the tavern had become a weapon.

My eyes found the empty space beside the fireplace.

The heavy wooden bat Laurie always kept leaning against the hearth was gone.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

He'd used it. Of course he had. He would've stood between those monsters and every soul inside this tavern until the very end.

My heart lodged in my throat, I circled the bar.

The old cellar hatch was closed, the same scarred planks Laurie had lifted time and again when the horns blared and the Infected attacked the walls, ushering beneath them the children, the women, the elderly, and those maimed by my judgment and Father’s hand.

Now the wood was raked with more claw marks, the iron ring nearly torn away.

If I lifted it…

No. I couldn't bear to know. I couldn't bear to see more bodies slumped inside the cellar.