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The streets in the middle of town were still—doors closed, wagons parked. What should have been a bustling marketplace was dusty and quiet.
But not empty.
Bodies were littered around the streets in various states.
Rin knelt down by the closest one and turned it over. The corpse was unmarked except for the head. The face had been chewed off in the most grotesque manner. The eye sockets were empty, the nose missing, lips torn clean off.
“You weren’t kidding,” Nezha said. He covered his mouth with a hand. “Tiger’s tits. What happens when we find it?”
“Probably I’ll kill it,” she said. “You can help.”
“You are obnoxiously overconfident in your combat abilities,” said Nezha.
“I thrashed you at school. I’m frank about my combat abilities,” she said. It helped if she talked big. It made the fear go away.
Several feet away, Nezha kicked another body over. It wore the dark blue uniform of the Federation Armed Forces. A five-pointed yellow star on his right breast identified him as an officer of rank.
“Poor guy,” he said. “Someone didn’t get the message.”
Rin walked past Nezha and held her torch out over the bloody walkway. An entire squadron of slain Federation forces was littered across the cobblestones.
“I don’t think the Federation sent it,” she said slowly.
“Maybe they’ve kept it locked up all this time,” Nezha suggested. “Maybe they didn’t know what it could do.”
“The Federation doesn’t take chances like that,” she said. “You saw how cautious they were with the trebuchets at Sinegard. They wouldn’t unleash a beast they couldn’t control.”
“So it just came on its own? A monster that no one’s seen in centuries decides to reappear in the one city under siege?”
Rin had a sinking suspicion of where the chimei had come from. She’d seen the monster before. She’d seen it in the illustrations of the Jade Emperor’s menagerie.
I will summon into existence beings that should not be in this world.
When Jiang had opened that void at Sinegard, he had ripped a hole in the fabric between their world and the next. And now, with the Gatekeeper gone, demons were climbing through at will.
There is a price. There is always a price.
Now she could see what he meant.
She pushed the thoughts from her mind and knelt down to examine the corpses more closely. None of the soldiers had drawn their weapons. This made no sense. Surely they couldn’t all have been caught off guard. If they’d been fighting a monstrous beast, they should have died with their swords drawn. There should be signs of a struggle.
“Where do you think—” she began to ask, but Nezha clamped a cold hand over her mouth.
“Listen,” he whispered.
She could hear nothing. But then, across the market square from where they stood, a faint noise came from within an overturned wagon, the sound of something shaking. Then the shaking stilled, giving way to what sounded like high-pitched sobbing.
Rin walked closer with her torch held out to investigate.
“Are you mad?” Nezha grabbed her arm. “That could be the beast itself.”
“So what are we going to do, run from it?” She shook him off and continued at a brisk pace toward the wagon.
Nezha hesitated, but she heard him following. When they reached the wagon, he met her eyes over the torchlight, and she nodded. She drew her sword, and together they yanked the cover off the wagon.
“Go away!”
The thing under the cover wasn’t a beast. It was a tiny girl, no taller than Nezha’s waist, curled up in the back end of the wagon. She wore a flimsy blood-covered dress. She shrieked when she saw them and buried her head in her knees. Her entire body convulsed with violent, terrified sobs. “Get away! Get away from me!”
“Put your sword down, you’re scaring her!” Nezha stepped in front of Rin, blocking her from the little girl’s view. He shifted his torch to his other hand and put a hand softly on the girl’s shoulder. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay. We’re here to help you.”
The girl sniffled. “Horrible monster . . .”
“I know. The monster isn’t here. We’ve, uh, we’ve scared it away. We’re not here to hurt you, I promise. Can you look at me?”
Slowly, the girl lifted her head and met Nezha’s gaze. Her eyes were enormous, wide and scared, in her tear-streaked face.
As Rin looked over Nezha’s shoulder into those eyes, she was struck with the oddest sensation, a fierce desire to protect the little girl at all costs. She felt it like a physical urge, a foreign maternal desire. She would die before letting any harm come to this innocent child.
“You’re not a monster?” the girl whimpered.
Nezha stretched his arms out to her. “We’re humans through and through,” he said gently.
The girl leaned into his arms, and her sobs subsided.
Rin watched Nezha in amazement. He seemed to know exactly how to act around the child, adjusting his tone and his body language to be as comforting as possible.
Nezha handed Rin his torch with one arm and patted the girl on the head with the other. “Will you let me help you out of this thing?”
She nodded hesitantly and rose to her feet. Nezha grasped her waist, lifted her out of the broken wagon, and set her gently on the ground.
“There. You’re all right. Can you walk?”
She nodded again and reached shakily for his hand. Nezha grasped it firmly, wrapped his slender fingers around her tiny hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. Do you have a name?”
“Khudali,” she whispered.
“Khudali. You’re safe now,” Nezha promised. “You’re with us. And we’re monster killers. But we need your help. Can you be brave for me?”
Khudali swallowed and nodded.
“Good girl. Now can you tell me what happened? Anything you remember.”
Khudali took a deep breath and began to speak in a halting, trembling voice. “I was with my parents and my sister. We were just riding the wagon back home. The Militia told us not to be out too late so we wanted to get back in time, and then . . .” Khudali began to sob again.
“It’s okay,” Nezha said quickly. “We know the beast came. I just need you to give me any details you can. Anything that comes to mind.”
Khudali nodded. “Everyone was screaming, but none of the soldiers did anything. And when it came near us, the Federation just watched. I hid inside the wagon. I didn’t see its face.”
“Did you see where it went?” Rin asked sharply.
Khudali flinched and shrank back behind Nezha.
“You’re scaring her,” Nezha said in a low voice, gesturing again for Rin to stand back. He turned back to Khudali. “Can you show me what direction it ran in?” he asked softly. “Where did it go?”
“I . . . I can’t tell you how to get there. But I can take you,” she said. “I remember what I saw.”
She led them a few steps toward a corner of the alley, then paused.
“That’s where it ate my brother,” she said. “But then it disappeared.”
“Hold on,” said Nezha. “You said you came here with your sister.”
