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“Search around,” Araki ordered. “We might find something.”
Klaus stuck close to the walls, inspecting each brick that made the hideout. Originally, it was a warehouse the Nightshade kept stores of food and water in case of emergencies. Now, there weren’t even rat droppings.
I’d just spied a hidden door in the wall when Araki called out, “I found something.”
Grateful for the excuse to pretend that I hadn’t seen anything, I turned back to him. He stood at the centre of the room. A charred circle was etched into the floor. Araki held a few pieces of charred paper. I took one gingerly. It was quite blackened; I could only read one word.
“Life.” I frowned at the paper. Was that Priestess Opaline’s handwriting?
“The clock unbound’,” Klaus read another piece of paper.
Araki shook his head. “The rest are too badly damaged to get anything off. Life and the clock are unbound. It could be a spell.”
I took Klaus’s piece of paper and studied it. The loops and whirls in the handwriting did look like Priestess Opaline’s. But what sort of spell was this? I shuddered at what it could be.
“I don’t like this,” Klaus said. “Something doesn’t feel right. There’s a darkness to the lingering magic here.”
Lingering magic? “I don’t sense anything,” I said. If there was any kind of magic, I’d have felt it.
Araki looked at Klaus.
Klaus scanned the room, his posture turning rigid. “Something evil happened here.”
“We keep searching for clues,” Araki ordered. He put a hand on Klaus’s shoulder. “I trust your judgment.”
As he spoke, another sound reached my ears. A soft shuffling. A sort of heavy breathing. It sounded like a wounded person. Someone from the Nightshade? Perhaps someone who had run here to take refuge, having nowhere else to go? If it were a member of the Nightshade, I truly would be branded a traitor, or they’d be killed.
I seized Araki’s sleeve, careful not to touch his skin. “I want out of here.”
His eyes searched my face.
“Klaus’s right,” I continued. “Something terrible happened here. We can’t stay. We must get out of this place. Right now, before—”
The words died in my throat as Klaus’s head whipped around in the direction of the noise. He drew his weapon, growling under his breath. Araki lifted his torch and peered in the same place. The hidden door I’d seen moments ago swung open. A man stumbled into the warehouse. At first, he appeared normal. Perhaps a little unsteady on his feet. The harsh, gasping breath filled the warehouse as he continued forward. It was asthough he hadn’t noticed we were there. A chill washed down my spine. He looked… familiar…
Klaus strode forward, “Stay where you are!”
The man’s head lifted. The air left my lungs.
His face was white, the colour of a corpse. His features sagged on one half of his face and bulged with blisters on the other. Huge black spots mottled his skin. His mouth hung open, slack, slightly tilted, his jaw broken. I stared into his lifeless eyes, glazed and red. His arms were bent at wrong angles, and his chest half-collapsed on one side. Another wheezing breath left his mouth as he began to shuffle toward us, faster now. I stared in horror. My mind filled in the gaps, but I rejected the answers it gave me. It couldn’t be... this wasn’t…
Araki withdrew his sword, the motion snapping me out of my stupor. The Strigoi attacked. He struck faster than I anticipated, with his arms and legs flopping like that. The Strigoi opened its mouth, letting out a dry hiss as it charged at Araki. Araki swung at the man and the man evaded the attack before leaping at Araki. Araki jumped aside, his movements a blur. More people moving in the same fashion poured from the door, charging at us with their dry, disturbing wheezing noises. I shifted to a fighting position as they surrounded us. What once was a human woman- came at me. Her fangs glistened in the torchlight.
Klaus, Araki, and I made a circle, covering each other’s backs as we fought. The strigoi’s distorted faces leered in the flickering light, those rasping, hissing noises mixed with the dry thump of swords slicing through their bodies. The female strigoi I fought clawed at me, and I swiped my dagger, cutting its fingers off. The digits fell, and the strigoi charged at me again.I sliced its throat open, and clotted blood flew toward my face. The strigoi didn’t seem to care. No matter how much I fought, more of them kept coming. No pain in those dead eyes. I weaved two orbs of magic in my hands and zapped them. They fell, even as some rose immediately after and rushed back at us. They were unlike the Strigois we had faced previously. Araki’s sword slashed and stabbed, lit up like a beacon. Several headless bodies littered the floor.
“Now would be good to have a sword,” I yelled as I fended off the monsters with my dagger.
“Use your magic,” Araki shot back.
I gritted my teeth and kept fighting, alternating between bolts of magic and the dagger.
The first strigoi that had entered the warehouse stepped before me. My body froze, the dagger in my hand trembling. My tongue felt heavy as his name ghosted my lips. No sound came out. Time seemed to stop as the face I’d grown so used to seeing eyed me with ravenous hunger. I staggered back, unwilling to attack. He charged, and I lifted my dagger. I threw myself forward, driving the dagger toward its heart. He moved too quickly. A fist caught me on the side of my head, sending me staggering. His hands gripped me tightly, claws digging into my skin as his mouth widened to reveal fangs.
?He lunged toward my neck.
A sword pierced through the man’s chest, the point nearly stabbing into my stomach. The strigoi didn’t retreat. My hand shot up, blocking its teeth with my dagger. His fangs snapped against the blade, making a grating sound on it. Heat sparked along my skin. Flames burst to life on the sword… the creature’s head snapped back. A scream of sheer agony ripped from itsthroat. Then it crumpled into ash. Klaus stood over me, the flames licking up his sword. His expression was steely. He spun on his heel, moving through the strigoi, stabbing, slashing, moving almost as fast as Araki. Whenever his sword cut through the strigois, the flame would arc to them, burning them in seconds.
I fell to my knees, acid in my throat. Araki held his hand to me. I pushed it aside, leaning around him to see Klaus take out the last of them. The headless bodies twitched on the floor, and he systematically began to move among them, destroying bodies and heads both. Araki stood beside me, glowing sword still bared, unmoving.
