Chapter Two Zephyra #3
The pieces click into place before I fully grasp the implication, and I scramble toward Stavros as the creature turns to follow with a horrible, rattling sound.
As if it’s breathing deeply. As if it’s—it’s scenting me.
“Stavros!” My cry rends the chamber—too loud, far too loud—as Vesper hurls her knife at the thing, and the blade sinks deep into its chest. It doesn’t hesitate, however.
It simply slides the blade out again—no blood, no reaction whatsoever—before flicking it back at Vesper in a single fluid movement.
She can’t dodge it fast enough. Indeed, her own movements appear as if in slow motion, as if she’s been caught in thick mud, when the dagger impales her left foot.
Her scream nearly drowns out my voice as I seize Stavros’s arm and shake it, holding him back from lunging at the creature.
“Boom!” I tell him frantically.
He tears his furious gaze from Vesper, from the creature stalking toward her with hungry, rattling breaths. “Boom?”
“Yes, Stavros. If there was ever a time for it—boom!” I snatch Eos’s cloak as she too races forward to help her sister. Because the only way to help her now—to help any of us—is to kill this fucking thing and flee. “Boom.”
With a swift nod, Stavros tries to light another match, struggling as I push Eos behind me.
I bend and pick up a skull, hurling it toward the creature to catch its attention.
The skull hits where its head should be, and the creature hisses anew, turning a strange ivory mask toward me.
It inhales again. A long, deep inhalation that sends a skitter of true panic down my spine. “Now, Stavros!”
Cursing under his breath, he fumbles, drops the match, and—and we’ve run out of time. Without asking permission, I seize his satchel of gunpowder and hurl it behind the creature, aiming at the burning, half-eaten corpse.
The tomb explodes.
Stavros forces Eos and me to the floor as rocks and debris rain down on our heads before diving to land atop Vesper, protecting her as best he can.
Heat grazes my cheek from the flames. The tip of one of Eos’s silver braids catches fire, but I smother it hastily, searching her face for any sign of injury amidst the wreckage.
A cut at her forehead bleeds freely, but other than that, she appears fine.
Better than fine. Alive. Wincing at a sharp pain in my side, I struggle to sit up, my ears ringing as I call out, “Is everyone all right?”
“I’m wonderful,” Vesper says through clenched teeth, swearing viciously when Stavros yanks the knife from her foot. She wrenches her arm out from beneath a particularly heavy stone. Then—“Please say we killed it.”
As one, we all turn our gazes to the dark shape behind her, its robe coated in dust from the explosion.
It does not move. It does not rise. Even so, no one seems keen to approach it, so I exhale a harsh breath and force myself to crawl closer, praying to Vila that it’s dead.
Please let it be fucking dead. Eos and Stavros creep up behind me, and together, we stare down at the remains of the creature.
Except nothing remains at all.
Nothing except its robe, which lies empty beside its ivory mask. There is no body, no blood, no bones, and that feeling of dread only deepens as realization washes over me. The creature isn’t dead. It’s simply… gone. As if it never existed at all.
With trembling fingers, I pick up its mask and examine it closer.
It doesn’t seem to have the usual animalistic qualities of the typical Mortia masqueraders.
Actually, it doesn’t have any qualities.
It’s hollow. Plain in an unnerving, empty way.
A sudden chill racks my shoulders. “What are the odds no one heard that?”
“The guards rotate in two,” Stavros says, pulling violently on his ears. Probably to dispel the ringing. “The odds are very little.”
“We’re fucked,” Vesper whispers.
Eos shivers behind me, unable to move. To blink. She just stares down at the empty robe as if imagining the creature rearing out of it once more, determined to devour us. For all we know, it could.
The thought congeals in my stomach, and I drop the mask instantly, turning instead to the nearest corpse—a woman with a bloody wolf’s mask pulled to the top of her cracked skull.
A gouged hole in her bloated cheek. Bile rises again, but I ignore it, snatching an emerald necklace from her throat.
A moonstone bracelet from her wrist. We came down here for a reason, and I’ll be damned if a cannibalistic skeleton steals it away from me. Not when we’re so close to freedom.
“Everything is fine,” I say, though it feels anything but.
Stuffing my loot into my tool belt, I move on to a man whose eyes have been plucked from his skull.
Goddess. For all the pain humans have inflicted, the merrow have returned it in kind.
But this isn’t the time for a philosophical debate.
This is the time to finish the job and leave.
“We’ve gotten ourselves out of worse situations.
Remember the sewers? Covered in shit and piss, soldiers on our tail, and we still managed to make it home unscathed.
” I search for Eos’s gaze, imploring her to smile again.
To breathe. Or perhaps I’m imploring myself.
I can’t shake this skittering feeling across my skin, and every instinct in my body is screaming to flee.
“We’re going to be just fine. Steal what you can, and then… ”
“And then?” Vesper asks, glancing at me with horror filling her navy gaze. I’ve never seen her like this before. I’ve never seen any of them like this before—truly frightened, and looking to someone else for guidance. Looking to me.
Unable to meet their eyes, I snatch a silver diadem from another corpse’s head.
“Run,” I say at last. “Steal what you can, and then run.”