CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN #3
Too busy frowning at her, Vesper stumbled over the uneven ground. When they rounded the mass of tents, she tugged him down to a crouch behind a bush. Her breaths wheezed and she stifled a cough into her sleeve.
His brows knit together, unsure what this was. “Nef, are you—”
“Look,” she hissed.
Vesper’s world slowed as he took in what lay ahead of them, accompanied by the unmistakable reek of decay.
Bodies.
Corpses.
Piled high. Buzzing flies with engorged bellies feasted, reminiscent of the chamber that held Arborius. And across the acrid soil, in all shapes and sizes, yellowed-ivory skeletons protruded from the ground, as if they’d been half-heartedly buried or—
Were they moving?
No, fuck, they rippled.
The soil and air swirled in a mess of blood and flesh and death.
Worse, surrounding the graveyard were fifty or more cages. Made of bone. Stacked precariously atop each other, nearly to the ceiling.
What lay inside the cages made bile rise in Vesper’s throat.
Women, children, and men, all slumped against the bars, their bodies hooked up to contraptions linked with tubes. And the tubes, the crimson of lifeblood, drained their bodies.
Some contorted their limp, stringy arms at awkward angles, their hands clasped, seeking comfort in these circumstances.
Vesper stared, choked back the bile, and whispered in a broken voice, “What the everloving fuck?”
“I’ve heard of this,” Nef replied. Her breath cast in a white cloud, like the temperature dropped by the second.
“Some of the wealthy men at the Scarlet Palace would talk about how they consumed blood to speak to the gods. I think—” She swallowed hard.
“I think they’re drinking it and then resurrecting their bodies.
They’re planting them in the soil and reusing them.
It’s been enchanted.” She pointed to the strange markings in the dirt. “And look.”
Shovels littered the vast stretches of disturbed soil.
They were burying them and digging them up only to use them like some blood sucking insect.
Vesper narrowed his eyes on the strange red wisps that floated into the air, almost as if they had a mind of their own.
The strange texture, almost sticky, yet fluffy—
Fuckity fucking fuck.
That was bloodlace.
And now he realized, the bones from the cages and the colour of the houses, that distinct texture—
Gods save him, it was skin.
Vesper opened his mouth to say something but a wave of dizziness nearly took him to the ground. His mind whirled like overstirred tea. Like a fucking tidal pool. Like the earth opened up and a vast crater dumped him into the bottom of the Hollow.
He seized her arm. “We need to go. Now.”
But the desperate bruised eyes of those in the cages pleaded for freedom.
Vesper’s gaze flicked between Nef, them, and the direction his other comrades were.
But all he could think of was Arborius. How Vesper had left him to rot and Emmery had been the one to set him free.
Because even though Vesper had betrayed him, Arborius had made good on his promise and led them to their answers for the bloodlace. It wasn’t a trick after all.
Now that Emmery wasn’t here to free these people, it was up to him.
“We can’t leave them,” he hissed. “We need to set them free.”
A bony hand gripped his shoulder and Vesper spun to find another Graver with the same yellowed-skinned face.
He suppressed the yelp that rose in his throat as he looked into those empty sockets. But the Graver’s needle-toothed smile had his heart banging against his ribcage.
Several Gravers emerged from the boneyard, knives in their skeletal hands. Vesper shrank back and shoved Nef behind him. Or at least he tried to.
A Graver surged forward and seized Nef’s wrists before it yanked her to her feet and pinned them behind her back. She wheezed some impressively nasty words at it while it led her away with a blade to her throat.
Vesper shoved the Graver and reached for his sword, but it descended on him and knocked him to the ground. The air left his lungs as his back struck the tainted soil, the ground riddled with humming energy.
Whatever this magic was—
It was unholy.
The Graver’s pointed teeth snapped at Vesper’s neck like a rabid wolf as its face split in two. Its teeth grazed his flesh, enough to draw a small trickle of warm blood, but Vesper managed to roll and buck the Graver off him in one swift motion.
His mind raced as he scrambled to his feet and searched for Nef. He glanced helplessly at the cages, but the Graver rose to its feet and launched at him once more. He darted to the side and sprinted, not sure where to go.
They had to get out, but he couldn’t leave without freeing these people.
He needed to find Nef first. She must have been dragged into the bushes somewhere. His heart thrummed as he burst through the bushes they had hid in. But he stopped dead, his blood crystalized, and his heart turned to stone.
Because his friends were all there, Thorrin, Gaelin, Demitri, Nef, and Kyrith, each restrained by a Graver holding a blade to their throat.