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There was a burned and blackened . . . thing . . . nearby that I only identified as a man by the overall shape. The skin was flaked up, like black, crispy shingles, the left arm was mostly gone and the head was on fire. It looked like a human torch, burning brightly enough to actually light up some of the surrounding rubble. One of the cheeks flared as I watched, and I actually gasped, a lifetime of shit still apparently not enough preparation.
It was a small sound, but the thing’s head immediately turned my way.
It didn’t have eyes, it didn’t have ears, it didn’t have most of a head, but it was coming. And it was coming fast. Fortunately, it seemed to have as much of a problem with the rubble mountain as I had. Unfortunately, its struggle had attracted the interest of a couple buddies, who headed over to help.
And I finally caught a clue.
The human torch was tall, maybe six feet or more despite missing most of a head. But the backup guys were shorter, were wearing identical black outfits, and did not look like they’d been hanging out in a bonfire. They were very clearly dead, with slack features and obvious wounds, with one still having a knife sticking out of his eye. They were also familiar.
I realized that I was looking at two of the small, ninja type guys who had attacked Hassani’s place last night, in order to steal the artifacts. Two who hadn’t made it back out, by the look of things. So, what were they doing hanging out down here?
“Somebody make the bodies from last night go,” a low voice said from behind me.
I turned my head to see Lantern Boy clinging to some rubble, and eying the sparks flying out of the guttering torch warily. He still looked freaked out, but there was also a stubborn tilt to his jaw. As if seeing a beat-up woman head out when he wouldn’t had wounded some pride.
“They carry them to morgue for study,” he continued. “But then—” He suddenly splayed his fingers, like fireworks going off. Or, I guessed, like zombies sitting up. Because that was absolutely what those things were.
Looked like Louis-Cesare had been right, after all.
“They attack our people,” Lantern Boy added. “That why master set fire to monster.”
I nodded. A necromancer, especially one as powerful as Jonathan, could probably animate any corpse in the area. Hassani’s people must have mentally communicated with him about what was happening at the morgue, so he’d decided to make sure that the big boy didn’t get in on the act.
Which, points for proactivity, but he could have said something!
Of course, that didn’t explain why he’d wanted to show me the creepy thing in the first place, but that could wait.
“Only it not work.”
I’d started digging in my jacket, to see if I had anything that might help with the current problem, so it took a second for what Lantern Boy had said to register. I stopped and looked back at him. “What?”
He nodded solemnly. “He return. He always return.”
I knew—I knew—I was going to regret asking this. “Who returns?”
The boy’s eyes flickered ominously, or maybe that was just the light. Most of the fuel had been knocked out of our torch during the impact with the other column, leaving it with only a few knotted reeds and some small sticks in the metal holder, most of which had been consumed. But dark red embers still glowed at the base, and deep in his eyes.
“Gods not like us,” he told me. “They not die, you see? They . . .” he stopped, as if searching for the right word. Which I guessed he didn’t find, because he looked frustrated. “Like torch, about to go out.”
He waved a hand at the fading item over our heads.
“They burn lower?”
He nodded. “Yes, they go low. But not out. They just need—”
“Someone to add more fuel,” I said numbly, wondering why what remained of my skin suddenly felt like it was about to detach and crawl off.
A massive crash shook the rubble underneath me, and another pillar disintegrated into pieces. It was on the far side of the room, in an area of mostly shadow, but that didn’t matter. From this vantage point, I could see perfectly well. And what I could see . . .
“He glow bright now,” Lantern Boy whispered.
Yeah, I thought, staring at the creature emerging from the curling clouds of dust.
Yeah.
It was a snake, if snakes were as big as buildings. A cobra by the look of it, with the typical wide spread hood and flickering tongue, and black as sin. But not like the zombie, which had been darkened by fire. This thing looked fresh out of the box new, without a mark on it. The black was a shiny, lustrous gleam of a color, like the paint on a luxury car, or the patina of black pearls. It was broken up into a thousand small scales—if the size of a medieval shield is considered small—that shaded to gray and then to white on its belly, getting smaller and tighter as they went, down to maybe the size of my fist.
I shouldn’t have been able to see it so well from this distance, but I guess my hawk charm was still functional. Because I was getting a perfect view of round, wicked black eyes reflecting the lamplight like golden suns. And of fangs longer than my body. And of a tongue flicking out in between them, as if testing the air, looking for . . .
