“You’re going to miss me after this.”
Her lips twitch. Almost as if she’s going to smile again. “I won’t even remember you.”
I scoff with a small grin. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you took your share of the loot and built a cottage right next to mine—”
A cold hand presses to my mouth, shushing me instantly. My stomach bottoms out. Instinct washes over me, brutal and frightening, and I grab the person’s wrist, twisting hard before throwing them to the floor. Baring my teeth, I move my grasp to their throat with a snarl.
Of course Stavros finds his matchnow, striking it along his jaw and revealing—
“Zeph—Zephyra,” Eos chokes from beneath me, her eyes wide and startled as she claws at my arm. “It’s me. It’s justme.”
I release her instantly, as if I’ve touched a hot stove, while Vesper lunges toward us and snarls. “What thefuck, Zephyra?”
Shit.I flick my gaze between them before hastily helping Eos to her feet. “Sorry. I… I couldn’t see you.”
I can see her now, however. This close, I can just make out the whites of her eyes in the low, golden light of Stavros’s match. I can see the split-second flash of her fear as she frowns.Shit shit shit.My mouth opens, closes, as I search for anything else to say, for any reasonable explanation that won’t divulge how supremely fucked-up I am.It’s this place, I tell myself fiercely.It’s this darkness.Every nerve in my body has pulled taut, the hair at my nape lifting, and even now, I can’t help glancing around as I search for just the right words to say.
Luckily, I don’t need to find them.
Unluckily, it’s because something in the shadows to our right…moves.
Vesper sees it too. Quick as lightning, she pulls out a knife as Eos reaches for her—my—dagger. I suck in a breath, bracing my fists in front of me, longing for a weapon of my own as my eyes adjust slowly to the silhouettes of skeletons lining the floor. Bones. Skulls. Rot. Stains of gore. It all seems normal for a crypt, yet somethingdefinitelymoved.
Vesper hisses. “Who the fuck—”
I follow her gaze, unclear what she’s seeing until it moves again. It almost looks like any other body here, skeletal and shrouded in black, except this one—my throat tightens in revulsion, my stomach twisting. This one undulates and… andslurps. Stavros lights his match higher, the firelight falling upon—
Fuck.
A wraith in a heavy robe feasts on the flesh of a fresh corpse.
Startled, Stavros drops the match. It hisses and smokes as it falls, as it drops between the ribs of an ancient skeleton and dims to a red-hot ember upon the floor.No.
Though I blink rapidly, my vision can’t clear fast enough to track the thing’s movements, and the light continues to dim.Blink.The creature seems to stand.Blink.It crosses the room.Blink.Ice-cold breath blows snowflakes at our faces, and our feet start to freeze to the floor. I wrench my own backward, stumbling into the nearest wall.No, no,no—
Eos screams.
The thing has turned its sights on her, close enough to lick her face. Although, there is no face inside its hood. Only a hollow mask of ivory porcelain. Organs dangle from the opening, snarled and bloody. It reaches up an arm. Reaches forher.
“Back the fuck away from my sister!” Vesper launches herself at it with her knife, but it dodges swiftly, and she collapses to the floor.
I react without thinking. Horrified, I kick the dying match at the creature, who veers around it with unnatural speed and now lunges towardme. Fuck. Swallowing a scream, I dive sideways as its clawed hand rakes the stone wall behind me, but thematch—it sparks against the half-eaten corpse’s robes in the next second. My eyes widen as those robes catch fire, as the creature shrieks in surprise, and the ice on the floor melts in the sudden burst of heat.
Heat.
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’sscentingme. “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 helpanyof 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 whereits 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.
