18. Where It Ends #3
A humorless sound fell from my lips, and my mouth twisted into a grimace as I faced that particular truth.
I nodded once to myself, accepting this sorry state of affairs because it was not as though I had a choice.
I could not unearth them myself. I could not pull hundreds of corpses from the scorched wreckage and give them the tribute they deserved.
A crow cawed from its perch on a beam jutting out from rubble, the dark, purply black wings of its body flashing with an iridescent gleam. It was the only evidence of life within the carnage, and my gaze clung to it for a long moment, hungry for this proof of life.
I didn’t see anything else. Not a single soul . . . not even a pet. The village boasted several dogs and cats, but they were eerily absent, not trotting about as they usually did. Had they perished, as well? Or taken to the woods?
The crow suddenly bolted, launching into the smoke with panicked shrieks.
I froze, my heart lurching to my throat, fleeing with it.
I glanced around wildly, shifting only my eyes, afraid to move my body, afraid that something had spooked the crow, something that remained in the ashes, something not of the mortal world.
Something I must evade.
Would that I could fly away like the crow and escape this place, too. Although the skies hardly felt safe anymore either, home as it was to the creatures that had wrought such death and destruction.
I told myself that I had startled the crow.
It was me. Solitary me tromping through the dead village.
And yet even with that mental reassurance, everything in my body tightened and squeezed as I watched the startled crow vanish into the haze.
There one moment and then gone the next, swallowed up, out of sight.
All of me quivered like the plucked string of a lute. The tiny hairs on my arm vibrated. I lifted my face, turning it skyward, searching, peering into the drifting smoke and fog.
Fog and smoke. Smoke and fog. It was impossible to distinguish the two.
There was just so much of it. Dense and opaque, it thickened, a heatless steam billowing from some unknown source.
The fire had burned down to smoldering ash, seething and crackling beneath the thick soles of my boots as I took cautious steps, my hand flexing over my dagger.
I could not peer through the smoke and fog to see the clouds, to assess for enemy bodies.
A menacing sense of awareness needled through me. Heat flushed over me followed fast by icy prickles. There was a presence. Close.
I felt it in my bones, in my teeth. Something was out there, here, with me in the smoldering pyre that was once my home. The knowledge hummed in me as it did all those years ago.
I pulled my dagger free, the iron a comforting weight in my hand.
Could it be? Now? Finally? After all this time?
I turned, rotating in a circle, trying to see everywhere at once, eyes in the front and the back of my head. My flitting gaze ached, straining, seeking evidence of the someone occupying the dense air with me.
Suddenly it was not just my heartbeat pounding in my ears. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. A second beat joined in, overlapping mine so that our two hearts worked in tandem.
“Who is there?” I hissed, flexing my sweating palm around the reassuring hilt of my dagger.
I moistened my lips warily, telling myself it was probably just a survivor. Someone, miraculously, the dragons had missed. Perhaps even Da. Foolish hope sprang in my heart for this, but the sour fear persisted, coating my mouth and tongue with the knowledge, the certainty, the truth.
This was no villager.
No survivor.
No friend.
Not Da.
The fog swelled, strengthening, thickening all around me, and I stretched my free hand through it, fingers straining, reaching, but it was like plunging into white paint. For all I knew, there could be someone—something—directly in front of me.
I lost sight of my wiggling fingers in the devouring mist, and I shivered as I was assailed with the image of my fingertips dancing inches before the face of another. The featureless face of a witch with black eyes, her mouth a dark consuming maw.
Or perhaps it was a monstrous dragon left behind, its flaring nostrils so close, fangs baring, dripping, ready to bite down and devour.
The possibilities were endless. Just the thought made my heart pound, battering against my rib cage. My breath trembled from my lips. I compressed them, attempting to contain the sound.
I dropped my hand.
Turning, I moved swiftly, wishing I’d never come back to this place of death. It was not my home anymore. But it was too late for that now. Too late . . . for me. I was where I should not be.
The wind suddenly picked up and gusted around me—all at once a storm, a raging squall that hammered my body, ripping the hair back from my scalp.
I tightened my grip on my dagger and leaned against the force and swell of air that threatened to knock me down.
The earth shuddered, nearly toppling me off my feet. I fought for balance at the violent disturbance.
That voice inside me—in my gut—had been right.
I wasn’t alone.
But this was no black-eyed witch with a devouring maw for a mouth. I should be so lucky . . .
This was something else.
Something more.
Something worse.
The ground shook as though struck by a shower of comets.
They landed all around me.
The dragons were back.