I stepped up my pace and pushed my way through, but in my haste, I scraped my arm on the jagged rock.Red lines formed along my skin.When I was free of the crack, I squared my shoulders with my hand on the hilt of my dagger, preparing for whatever came next.
But Darion simply followed me in, much more gracefully than I had managed.When he was through, he smiled.I felt foolish for my bout of panic and mistrust.The longer I spent around him, the more I questioned my judgment.
He looked at my scratched arm and cringed.“You okay?”
“Yeah, just scraped it against the rock.”There were about twenty small scrapes with tiny dots of red beading up.Dust, what a pain.
We had entered a long, narrow hallway cut directly into the bedrock.Along each wall was a series of stone shelves absolutely packed with human remains.Piles of skulls, rib cages, femurs, and every other kind of bone stretched on as far as the eye could see.As I moved from side to side, my glowing vial cast ghoulish bone shadows that danced along the walls.
Far in the distance, I heard a clamor like a group of people celebrating.Had a group of thieves decided to throw some kind of macabre party in the catacombs?
“Whatisthat racket?”I asked.
“I don’t hear anything,” Darion said flatly as he bent over to inspect some loose bones scattered about.
“Seriously?”I asked.How could he not hear it?It sounded like a whole crowd of people yelling in the distance, and it was getting louder.
Darion picked up a bone fragment with jagged scrape marks along it as if it had been chewed.
“Bone rats have been here,” he said, then pointed to my arm.“They can smell blood from a mile away.You’d better do something about that.”
The stupid bone rats again.Overblown nonsense.
Still, my armwasa mess.A hundred pinpricks of blood had bubbled up, and now it was trickling down my fingers and dripping onto the floor.I ran my hand over it, streaking the blood across my arm and making quite a gory sight.
“Okay, now Idohear something,” Darion said.
“Finally!”I said.“So you hear the voices?”
“Sounds more like squeals and chittering.”
Huh.I heard the squeals, too, but they were mere background noise compared to the voices that were now shouting outright.
My father’s voice echoed in my mind.You can hear them, too.It’s your special gift.
A horrifying realization flowed through me.The voices weren’t coming from the tunnels.They were in my head, and they were all chanting a single word over and over:
Blood.Blood.Blood.Blood.Blood.Blood.
Chapter eleven
The Catacombs
Theycameinwaves.Hundreds of them, covering every square inch of the floor, climbing over each other, headed directly toward us—a writhing mass of tangled brown hair, sharp teeth, and glowing red eyes.Some were nearly two feet long.The stench of them hit me like a sledgehammer.The chanting in my head was nearly unbearable.
Darion and I shared a glance, both knowing that getting back through the crack would take more time than we had.
“Run!”I shouted as we turned away from the swarm and raced in the other direction.
A few of the faster rats near the front of the pack were just steps away, snapping their teeth and chittering just behind us.One leapt toward my bloody arm.
Blood.Blood.Blood.
Darion drew his short sword, and after one quick strike, the rat hit the ground with a red gash across its body.I gave him a thankful nod, then took a vial from my belt and tossed it behind us.
“Watch out!”I yelled.
An inferno of orange-and-yellow flames erupted through the corridor, sending a blast of heat rippling over my skin.The chorus of squeals was both deafening and sickening.
