60. Subterranean
CHAPTER SIXTY
SUBTERRANEAN
Saya Claymore
My boots step on thick red that coats the floor.
Vacant eyes stare up at me, and shadows sink into flesh, as if their souls were being drained.
I move to the children first. As I crouch before them, they flinch.
Understanding their hesitance, I rise, eye the door across from them, and open it.
No one is inside. “Come, children. You will be safe in here,” I say, as if my words will do any good after witnessing the horror Serun just unleashed.
To my surprise, they rise. Tears prick their eyes, but they nod. Hand in hand, they walk past me when the younger boy, likely four years old—at least around there—stops and stares at me, a shimmer in his blue eyes. “Mother?”
I reach out, touching his cheek and saying, “Where is she? I will protect her from harm.”
The older boy says, “Our mums are dead, but a pregnant lady looks after us. She is in room two-zero-two. Please don’t hurt her.”
I nod firmly. “I won’t. Promise.”
“Kamai.” Serun appears beside me. “We’re on a time limit.” The children don’t flinch as he pushes them by the backs until they are in the room. “Other children will be hiding. When this is all over, I need you two to be strong for them.”
They nod, and I wonder if they’re being lured, but they don’t have the same look Olivia had when Serun used his powers on her.
Do they trust us?
Serun closes the door, then turns to me. “We can explore adopting children later. Come, kamai.”
Fluorescent light gleams down on the glistening mess, and sparks of static zap in the corner of the narrow hallway. Likely a security camera that Serun destroyed before they could find out what we are doing.
What are we doing?
Another door opens into a room with silver chairs and tables. A white coat hides behind it, but as they reach for their pocket, Serun’s shadow shoots out, slamming his body against the steel wall. Blood splatters from his head, cracked open by the forceful impact.
Serun doesn’t care. No remorse or empathy for killing. His mind is elsewhere, and I need to do the same. He leaves the other two unharmed, even though all they do is huddle in the corner. With a shake of my head, I tear my gaze from the dead white coat and keep moving forward.
“I sense him…” he says as his shadow opens another door. I guide four more children from the open into the room. They listen to us, which makes me wonder what their lives were like here to accept monsters. “My brother’s scent suffocates these very walls.”
Stepping over another corpse, I reach the end of the hallway, and Serun turns into smoke and disappears again. The door ahead bursts open, and a man with a raised stake suddenly floats in the air as his shadow attacks him.
Serun appears, dead red eyes fixed on the slayer, sword poised. As the slayer crashes to the ground, black tar ripples through the slick red. The slayer collapses in a mess of flesh, and Serun rises, sword dripping with blood before it vanishes.
The door to my right flies open. Magik stirs in my bones, and I raise my hands, saying, “Fink, hon.” A ball of light swirls in my hands, and as it pulses out, everyone in the room turns to dust. Every slayer, every white coat, even the furniture in the room becomes nothing.
Wiped out of existence.
I stare at my hands, magik tingling my fingertips. It’s dormant again, but with one surge of power I cleared out an entire room without batting an eyelash.
This can’t be my vegodian powers, can it?
To erase.