55. Acquisition
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
ACQUISITION
Saya Claymore
Avianna ducks beneath the low-hanging ceiling. Glaciers of rock flow down like thin streams from the faucet. Repositioning the sword, I crouch behind her, the sound of my shoes leaving echoing thumps.
Olivia keeps her distance. Though seeping blood cakes her wound, it slows and congeals thickly. I bite my lower lip and turn ahead. Avianna rises, and after a few more steps, I do the same. We hide in a small, circular cavern with no way out except the way we came.
With no threat, I slide the blade back into the sheath and step aside to make room for Olivia to enter. Her right eye is completely closed, crusted with dry blood.
Avianna crouches the furthest away from me, her dilated red eyes fixed on my neck, while mine are on hers before I glance away. Turning to the bag Olivia still carries on her back, I reach out to her. She flinches, looking at me like I am an alien.
Like I assumed every nightwalker would.
“The blood,” I say, pointing to what she carries. Olivia shrugs the bag off her back and hands it to me. I open the pack and take out the blood bottles Serun prepared after he slaughtered the slayers. I toss one to Avianna, then the other to Olivia. “Drink. Both of you. It might help.”
Olivia curls her lip but takes a swig. Avianna, however, makes no move to grab it. “I’d rather starve than taste slayer’s blood.”
Looking at Olivia again, my fingers twitch. I want to heal her, but the way she looks at me makes my fingers curl into fists. We all lapse into silence, as if we are waiting for Serun to appear.
Without knowing what to do, I pick at the skin around my fingernail, tasting the bite of pain. Avianna watches, her demeanour unchanged from when we were last together.
“Fuck…” Olivia mutters as she flicks bits of flesh from her face.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
Her eyes narrow to slits. She looks back at her bloodstained, dirt-covered hands. “No. It doesn’t hurt, but I feel what’s happening.”
“I can help,” I say, and her shoulders jerk. “I often tended to my wounds, as well as my brother’s.”
“Was it as bad as this?”
Avianna looks between us but seems uninterested in the conversation.
“No…”
“Then it isn’t your concern, Lady Consort.”
I want to think it’s because she’s a nightwalker that she’s being stubborn, but it’s not. She’s afraid of me. The only friend I have left after the deaths of my other friends.
I reach up, clutching the pendant—a painful reminder of all I lost in Darkovish Feeding Ground. No matter where I go, a nightmare follows me. It makes me wonder whether my Blessed is tormenting me enough to break and find my way home to accept my destiny as his.
Sighing, I find a spot far from them, unbuckle the straps holding the sword, and lean against the orange stone. The howls from the echoes fade, and a deafening silence stings like an irritable bug buzzing near my sensitive ears.
Avianna runs the back of her hand under her nose and sniffs.
The torch she stabbed into the ground illuminates the grains of dirt and the dry blood that stains her clothes and skin in violent patterns.
She has aged. In a way, she reminds me of the nightwalker from the private room.
A starved, deprived look comes over her.
“Fucking kahazen.” I pull my attention away from Avianna and to Serun appearing in the middle of the cavern. Shadows flare around him, devouring the warm flame. “Peryo pa opa a be?”
“You’re speaking in Daryun,” Avianna says.
Serun spits on the ground, blood splattering the rocks. “Why are they here, Avianna? Where is my brother?”
“Are you wounded?” I suddenly ask, rising to my feet to help.
“Theirs,” he says, raising his clawed hand. Shimmering blood trickles down his forearm, dripping onto the ground. “They bothered me enough to kill everyone in the vicinity.” Serun’s eyes narrow. “My back aches.”
As I take his hand, my thumb glides along his palm, slick with blood. His other clawed hand reaches for my cheek, pinching my chin. A moment, sweet as lemongrass, gives way to concern as we face Avianna and wait for her answer.
“We were on our way to Mire when Reyes picked up a stronger scent of your Lady Consort’s brother.
It led us to Padbury, but by the time we arrived, the sun was about to rise, so we entered this cavern and rested with the topside nightwalkers, who welcomed us but were weary. Reyes didn’t trust them.”
As she rises, struggling to keep herself steady, Avianna drags her back up against the wall. Nearby, Olivia slumps, her open eye glazed over, and she looks worse by the minute.
“Something happened before we could leave the next night. A creature—not an echo. They were more human… Translucent, with soulless red, hollow eyes, and vicious. They howled, and the weak nightwalkers in the cavern transformed into echoes, slaughtering the rest as if they were immortal and we were the humans!”
A chill shudders through the stillness, unbroken by wind. It’s pure fear as my hands fall away from Serun’s. “It is that monster. The one who tried to kill Cole,” I seethe, anger blooming inside me like a silent disease.
Serun scratches at his chest, and his shadows tense, thickening.
“We headed there to eliminate it because they were controlling the echoes,” Avianna says, her lip curling and her ears flattening back. “But as soon as we left the cavern, they ambushed us. Another creature was waiting there—a mutation of some sort, for I have never seen such a creature before.”
“What did it look like?”
She nudges her head back the way we came.
“It’s likely still rotting outside the cavern.
We tried to fight both the mutation and the creature, but it proved too much for me.
” Pricks of tears shimmer in her eyes, but they don’t fall.
“I was merely in Reyes’ way. His weakness, and my foolish, idiotic husband, saved me. ”
Serun’s eyes grow wild, and his shadows collapse like crashing waves. “Is he dead?”
Avianna shakes her head. “No. To save me, he crucified himself. He abused his magik to aid my escape, and I ran back into the cave and found this spot. The last I saw of him, he was on the ground, blood pouring from his severed arm, and those slayers took him into the back of their van. The creature didn’t follow me, so I assume it went with them. ”
“I will kill them all,” Serun says, his voice smooth as silk.
“They’re in the prayer sanctuary. I wanted to follow, but the echoes made it their home. They were waiting for me to leave, as if that creature knew I was still here.” She laughs bitterly. “I even accepted my death.”
Serun mutters something in Daryun before saying, “And what of Saya’s brother?”
“We suspect he’s at the prayer sanctuary too.” She wipes under her nose. “Reyes told me that was where the scent was heading. The thin line he could see entered there instead of their compound or a settlement in the city.”
“We can’t go there,” Olivia says, her eyes now closed. “Their light is too strong. Purifying. One touch of Mother’s light and we will perish.”
With a slow blink, I say, “Not me. I can enter.”
“Kamai…”
My hands clench around his. “I can put up my human glamour and—”
“If your not-lover is there and sees you, he will see through it. Your hair and eyes may change, but your face will always be the same.”
“I will be careful. I need to be for my brother. I will find them and bring them back.”
His focus shifts from one eye to the other.
A battle rages in his mind, torn between denying me and accepting my words.
Either way, I will do what I want. If he refuses, I will enter the Prayer Sanctuary while they sleep and find my brother.
I did not get this far just to wait for a plan that might not work.
Serun closes his hands over mine, brushing the backs of mine against his lips. “You aren’t going to get your brother.”
My eyes widen, and feral rage flushes my cheeks.
He leans in and says, “You are going to the top of their tower and destroying Mother’s light so I can enter. That is all you will do.”
“You can destroy it?”
“It’s a crystal,” Avianna says. She grabs the bottle of blood. “And they use it to project an aura of light around the prayer sanctuary, protecting their precious slayers and white coats.”
Serun’s eyes soften, and his mouth brushes against my knuckles.
Something cold and smooth slips into the palm of my hand as he closes my fingers around the orb.
“If you’re in trouble, use it. If you don’t, so help me, Saya, I will kill every man, woman and fucking child in that place if it means getting you out of there alive. ”
Clutching the orb, I breathe, “I will, nightwalker.”
“I’ll stay here with your near-dead servant,” Avianna says, with a slight tilt of her chin. “I doubt I’d be much use anyway. I’d just get in your way…”
Serun steps away from me, and we overlook Olivia. She looks as if she is about to fall asleep. “Olivia’s wounds will heal better with human blood. While Saya and I do this tomorrow night, find her a human to feed on. There are no more echoes. You can hunt.”
Avianna bites her lip and, with a quick glance away, whispers, “When you see my husband, tell him he is a fool.”
“Tell him yourself,” Serun says dismissively, crouching low in front of the torch. “He would enjoy it more if it came from you.”
“Ah…” She smiles, catching me off guard. “He would.”
Serun lures me closer, his eyes smouldering red. “Come, my kamai. The sun will rise soon, but you need to rest.”
I look to Olivia. She is slumped against the wall. Tension swells in my throat at the horror etched across her face. She won’t let me help her. Not while night is still upon us.