Paintings hung on the walls, all sizes and shapes. White canvases with red paint splashed across them.
“Reminds me of arterial spray,” I murmured, retreating another fumbling step, and I couldn’t help noticing the crimson footprints I left behind fit the décor seamlessly. “Macabre, really.”
Admiring the gallery, he tipped his head to one side. “You think?”
Clarity drifted in along the edges of my mind, and I seized it with both hands. “Where are the others?”
A thunderous boom clanged against my ribs, growing louder, and my breaths came in sharp pants.
“Around.” He made a vague gesture, like they could materialize at any moment. “You’ll see them soon.”
“Kierce…” I pushed against a fuzzy wall in my mind. “Where…?”
“Let me see your hand.” He tied what appeared to be a long strand of white hair around my finger. “Don’t say I never gave you anything, Bijou.” He darted glances over our shoulders. “Consider this my down payment for your services.”
As soon as he released me, the room came into tighter focus. Details I hadn’t noticed earlier leapt out at me. With that lucidity guiding my senses, I was drawn to the center of the open-floor-plan home, to what I could tell from a glance had inspired the airy design of the rest of the space.
A collection of museum-quality articulated creatures.
Boom, boom, boom.
The longer I stared, the harder it became to breathe, to think, to move.
Drawn to the creatures with a sense of childlike wonder, I asked him, “Are those dinosaurs?”
Boom, boom, boom.
An echoing bang of displaced air startled me out of my trance as Anunit materialized before me.
She swept her luminous gaze over me, searching for injuries, before exhaling with obvious relief.
Ankou, however, leapt back, no doubt expecting her to retaliate for him snatching me yet again.
“You are well, Frankie Talbot?” Her ears flicked toward me. “Your heart beats loud.”
A distant part of my brain told me that was how she had found where I had been taken, but it was there and gone in a blink, and I didn’t fight to bring it back. It didn’t matter. Instead, I pointed a shaking arm at the massive animals, unsure why it was so important that I show her, except for that the fresh perspective honing my mind demanded it.
“Look.” I heard the tremor in my voice. “There.”
As she turned her great head, her eyes falling on the articulated creatures, a wail erupted from her. Such agonized fury lit up the bond between us, igniting it—ignitingme—and vibrating down to my bones with a call to battle that had me tasting copper wrath and my heart firing with the need to spill blood.
A red haze settled over my vision, anger coating my sight with the demand for crimson retribution.
The remaining fog clouding my mind blew away, unable to withstand the heat of my rising temper, and recognition hit.
I had seen bones like these before. I had held them. I had used their magic.
And I had sworn to protect them.
But I had failed.
“They’re Alcheyvaha,” I breathed, at last understanding why my lungs ached and heart stung with pain.
These monuments erected to stolen power, stolenlives, could not stand.
The anger that had been slowly building in me since Kierce was taken began bubbling over.
Magic singed my veins, burning, and the voices of the dead rose in my ears, deafening.
