Chapter Seventeen #2
The school is silent and empty when we reach it. Mason unlocks the door with a flick of his fingers, but despite his magic, I nudge him out of the way to go in first. My torch picks out nothing but dust and empty rooms. Mason’s boots are heavy on the floor behind me.
“There’s nothing here, little lamb,” he murmurs, but when I glance back, he’s frowning.
“Did you expect there to be?”
“Seems as good a place to hide out as any. Maybe they just got lost and confused.”
I shake my head. One of them, sure, but both? And Otto was right there …
Mason trots along after me as I search every inch of the school, but he’s right, nothing seems to be out of place. I pause by the teacher’s desk in one classroom, for a second sure that I’ve heard something , but searching turns up nothing and Mason says he can’t sense anything, either.
I sigh when we step out into daylight again. “Where do you think those zombies came from the other night?” I ask. “Can you track them with… you know?”
“Magic?”
“Hm.” I still haven’t quite wrapped my mind around that.
“I am not certain how. If I were able to do that, I could have tracked Otto by now.”
“You don’t think the zombies got them, do you?”
“Do you ?”
I sigh, twirling my bat in one hand. “No, I guess not. Not Otto.”
Mason grunts. His mouth is a flat, irritated line, and I don’t think he’s angry with me. He and the rest of the townspeople have kept this place safe from zombies for years. Now people are just disappearing?
We check each house on the way to the shop, splitting up halfway through to cover more ground faster. It doesn’t matter. There’s no sign of anyone or anything. No sign of any townspeople either, but then maybe those who aren’t searching are staying in the church, where it truly seems to be safe.
The town hall is the only place to give anything up. Mason opens the doors, and I move around him to go in first—
And stop at the sight before me.
The room is empty of people. It’s a wide, open space with a chestnut-coloured wood floor and a stage at the other end, framed by dusty velvet curtains.
None of that is what has my attention. No. My entire focus narrows in on Otto’s war hammer, lying dead centre in the room.
A bag sits next to it. Not one of ours, but to my eyes, it’s Citadel-issued.
Mason swears. I shake my head. “He wouldn’t—”
He wouldn’t give up his weapon voluntarily. None of us would. It’s one of a number of rules, but it’s up there as the most important of them.
“There’s no one in here,” Mason says quietly. “We should go in.”
I don’t want to. I trust Mason’s telling me the truth, I do, but I have the distinct feeling we’re being watched. I sense a thousand eyes on my skin, and I don’t like that at all.
Mason places a hand on the centre of my back. He doesn’t push, just rests it there, and with my next breath, I have enough courage to walk inside.
He’s right. There’s nothing here. No one. Hesitant footsteps take me to Otto’s war hammer, and I lift it with a faint grunt.
Fuck, it’s heavy. Clean, too, so he didn’t kill anything or anyone with it while he was out here.
Mason crosses the room and opens another door at the back. He ducks inside, then out again, still frowning.
“Who could have done this?” I ask, eyeing the bag. Something in the back of my mind is screaming at me not to open it. “We both know it can’t be zombies.”
“I know.”
“Mason, who? You know this town. You know these people. You have to have some idea—”
“I don’t know!”
Frustration propels him to pace the floor in front of me. I look at the bag again, then shake my head and put Otto’s war hammer back down before I crouch.
“If a survivor had come here, we would know. The zombies wouldn’t—They can’t—” He growls, shaking his head, then comes to a sudden stop. “You’re certain they wouldn’t both leave?”
“No! Otto wanted to go back. We talked about it yesterday.”
“You’re sure?”
“Mason, please!” I’ve partly unzipped the bag, but my hands still, gaze jerking up to him. There’s a note of fear in my voice and when his head snaps up, I know he hears it. “What do you think is going on?”
“I honestly don’t know.” He sighs and approaches me slowly, but I move my gaze back down to the bag. “I don’t know. I worry whoever this is, they’re going to take you next.”
My heart leaps into my throat, but I shake my head all the same. “We won’t let—”
I choke on the words as I finally get the bag open and reveal the horrors inside. I fall back, hitting the ground hard, and Mason reaches for me but freezes partway, mouth twisted in fear.
“That—” My stomach rolls, the world twisting sideways. “Mason, please , tell me that’s not—”
He jerks the zip on the bag shut again. I know what I saw.
Otto’s head.
Otto’s head is in that bag and I—
I stumble to my feet and make it to the corner before I throw up the little I’ve eaten today. Sweat rolls down my spine, fear making me shake all over.
“Isaac…” Mason approaches slowly, and I let out a ragged sob when his hand falls gently between my shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
“He’s—Who would do that?” Zombies wouldn’t do that. They can’t. And as far as I saw, I don’t think zombies were involved at all.
“I really don’t know,” Mason says, and it sounds honest. He sounds scared, too, which I’ve not heard from him yet. “We would know if there were survivors here. And the zombies couldn’t have done it.”
“Couldn’t?” I lift my head and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “I don’t understand.”
“You know how it all started, don’t you?”
“A virus. An outbreak. Everyone knows about that.”
“No, that’s not it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that’s not how it started. It started here.”
“I—What?”
“I told you, we have magic. It’s in the land, has been for centuries. Someone here, they tried…” He sighs. “They tried to bring back someone they lost. Raise them from the dead.”
I shake my head. It doesn’t sound real, but I’ve seen Mason’s magic.
My eyes dart back to the bag, still sitting in the centre of the room, and when my legs shake, Mason wraps an arm around my middle.
I saw Otto’s shoulder. They didn’t bring him back from the dead, but they stopped him from creeping closer to that edge.
“What happened?”
“The ritual backfired. Spread. Brought back all the dead here, brought back magic from deep in the earth, and carried the curse out into the rest of the world.”
“But we—” I shake my head. “We didn’t have people bursting out of their graves. I know that for sure.”
“No, no. They pulled it back. As much as they could, but by then… the damage had been done. Pulling back the ritual split the curse from the source, leaving a crumb of it in all the newly awoken dead.” His eyes dart to the bag just like mine did a few seconds ago.
“It’s why we can cure it and ensure they won’t turn.
Once the curse is gone, a person dies and stays dead. ”
“How do you know this?”
“We all know it. We all know it started here.”
“And this—the necromancer?”
“Gone. Long gone.”
“So they couldn’t have taken Dane? They couldn’t have done that —” I gesture at the bag.
Mason shakes his head.
I want to sit down, but there’s nothing here to sit on. And Mason is suddenly animated. He snatches up the bag and slings it over one shoulder, though he’s careful about it, before he grabs Otto’s hammer, too.
“Why wouldn’t you—Why didn’t we know this all along?” I ask.
Except, maybe Dane knew something. He was the first of us to bring up that it might not be a virus. That something here wasn’t right.
“Come on,” Mason says. “We’ve searched all we can. Let’s go back.”