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They’re going after him.
Of course. They recognize me as one of them. They’re targeting the one fully human person in the hall.
They’re coming faster now, more of them flooding the hall. I exchange the wide swings of my scythe for short slashes, holding the staff near the blade. They’re only momentarily halted by the cut of steel.
This one silver stake. That’s all I have. But more come, attacking us from all sides.
But there’s no time to mourn them, and my broken heart doesn’t even flutter. They’re lost anyway, worse than dead. I let their blood stain my hands. I let my feet slide on the blood-soaked floor. Lonan shouts in pain, and terror rips through me. I turn to see him holding his shoulder with one hand and fighting with his other.
They will not take him. He cannot become what I am, what Galvin is.
Lonan’s shadows flood the floor, curl up the walls around us. I grab him around the shoulders, and with all my strength I push him into the wall, pressing my back into him to fight off the assault. There are so, so many of them. The harder I fight, the more come at us. I can’t protect every side at once. They drown me, coming at me from before, behind, beside, all teeth and talons, willing to rip themselves to shreds for a chance at Lonan’s blood. I stumble when I feel a sharp stab of pain in the back of my thigh. They’re tearing through me to get to him.
Limbs and teeth and eyes white as the moon.
This will end us.
We cannot make it out.
We cannot make it out.
There are too many.
One of them launches toward me, catching my arm with its teeth. I cry out, tears forming in my eyes as I stumble. There are bodies all around me, touching me everywhere. Fingernails. Teeth. Lonan. Lonan. Screeching and hissing. Piling atop one another to devour us like ants.
There is nowhere to flee. The glow of Lonan’s sword has been drowned out by the tangle of bodies. I hold my scythe tight, desperate not to lose it again as they block out my vision, tear at my dress, rip at my limbs. I clench my eyes shut, curling in on myself.
No one is coming to save you.
I want to breathe.
I want to scream.
I want to disappear into the floor.
No one is coming.
You have to save yourself.
“Let us loose,” Cavendish croaks from the rafters above. “Set us free. You need our help. Let us do our worst.”
I can’t do that. I haven’t set them free in so long.
“What are you hiding from?” Caldwell rasps in my other ear. “The dead don’t feel. We’ll let the boy be. Trust us.”
I shouldn’t. But I can’t fight anymore. My body is pressed into the carpet. Pain slices through me as the siphons tear through my skin. Teeth and talons rip at my arms. Their animalistic hissing and screeching fills my ears.
“Vesper,” Lonan breathes, and his voice is soft and desperate, as sacred as a prayer, as hopeful as a promise.
“Say the words,” both my ravens whisper.
And finally, I relent and grab my timepiece.
Wings of midnight
Claws of dread
Guardians of the living
