I picked up the chair and rushed him from behind. As I brought the chair down, the creature flung his arm backward, knocking me sideways. There was ice and power in the blow, and more-than-ordinary strength. I flew across the room and hit the wall headfirst. Stars exploded through my vision. Pain and the warm, metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I’d bitten my tongue when I hit the wall. I wiped my mouth, smearing blood across my cheek.
The room felt twenty degrees colder than it had before the Old Ones entered.
I shook the stars away. Brown Robe held Juliet like an undead groom about to whisk his bride over the threshold. But her shackle held her back, the silver chain stretched taut. The creature grabbed the chain and pulled, trying to yank it from the wall. He shrieked as a cloud of black-and-yellow smoke billowed from his hand. The creature dropped both Juliet and the chain. He spun around, clutching his hand to his chest, his bulging eyes searching the room.
His face. I’d forgotten how hideous the Old Ones were. Yellow skin stretched taut across the skull. His eyes protruded from their sockets, the whites tea colored. A hole gaped where his nose should be. But it was the fangs that made the Old Ones redefine ugly. They stretched from this Old One’s lipless mouth past his chin, ending in razor-sharp points. Saber-toothed vampires. Just what I wanted to fight without my weapons.
Brown Robe didn’t share my dilemma. Smoke still streaming from his right hand, he drew a short sword with his left. I tensed, preparing. But the Old One didn’t attack. Instead, he picked up Juliet, threw her onto the cot, and began hacking at her leg with the sword, just above the shackle.
Juliet screamed.
I rushed the Old One from the right. He tried to swat me away again, but I dodged the blow. I grabbed his sword, and we grappled for it.
The Old One’s grip was strong. His icy fingers made my joints ache. Gritting my teeth, I stuck a finger in his eye socket. Brown Robe recoiled, and I twisted my body. I got the sword away.
Immediately I thrust, but Brown Robe jumped impossibly high. Something grabbed my ankle and yanked backward. I fell, cracking my head again on the side of the cot. More stars. They filled the room, swirling over my head like the goddamn Milky Way.
When my vision cleared, I lay on my back, a weight pinning my limbs to the floor. Inches above me, the faces of two Old Ones hovered like a nightmare. The cold, stale smell of ancient death—of mold and rot and grave dust— flowed from them like an arctic wind blowing through a tomb. I struggled, but I couldn’t move. The Old Ones looked at each other. The black-robed one nodded. Brown Robe yanked his sword from my hand and rose. Immediately, Juliet’s screams began again, louder and more frantic than before.
Black Robe lowered his face to mine. A tip of black tongue poked out from between his fangs. Slowly, carefully, he licked the corner of my mouth, tasting the blood smeared there. It felt like an ice-coated slug slithering along my skin. Revulsion clenched my stomach, and I turned my head away. Mistake. Pain stabbed my neck and shoulder as the Old One sank his fangs into me. These creatures could drain a person dry in a couple of minutes. I’d seen the empty husks they left behind.
My neck ached and burned, and I could feel myself weaken as the creature sucked the life from my body. My toes and fingers were cold, going numb. I wiggled them, and my left hand brushed something. I heard a faint
Black Robe had my hand pinned to the floor, but I got my fingers around the chain. One flick, and the silver made contact with the decrepit yellow flesh. Smoke billowed. Black Robe reared back, batting at his burned hand.
The moment his weight left my arms I was up on my knees. I wrapped the chain around his neck and yanked hard. Black Robe snarled and bucked and clawed at me with both hands. I looped the chain around my own hands so I wouldn’t lose my grip on it. The silver links grew hot in my fists as smoke billowed, spewing the smell of charred, rotten meat throughout the room. The links of chain seared my palms, the backs of my hands. I clenched my teeth against the pain and kept the chain taut.
A blade sliced toward me. I dropped sideways, dragging Black Robe with me, rolling as we hit the floor. With the second strike, Brown Robe drove his blade deep into his buddy’s gut. I kicked Brown Robe’s wrist, and he dropped his sword. In my hands, the burning chain went slack as Black Robe’s head toppled from his body and rolled under the cot.
I held two lengths of chain, one in each hand. Contact with the Old One’s flesh had melted the links, breaking the chain. The Old One’s headless corpse lay at my feet. The contact hadn’t done the creature’s neck any good, either.
The length of chain attached to Juliet’s shackle was the longer of the two pieces. I lashed it like a whip at Brown Robe. The Old One jumped back, but not far enough. The chain hit his face, burning through his cheek. He shrieked and flew up to the ceiling. I whipped the chain at his legs, his feet, whatever I could reach. The smoke that choked the room showed I’d hit him more than once.
Brown Robe swooped toward me. I ducked, spinning the chain over my head like a helicopter rotor. But Brown Robe wasn’t attacking; he was running away. The Old One rocketed through the door. I let go of the silver chain, snatched up the dropped sword, and ran after him.
The hallway was empty. Cell doors hung crookedly, any inhabitants long gone. I ran toward the entrance. The metal door that sealed off the cell block had been torn from its hinges. Beside it, the guard who’d walked me down the hallway lay crumpled on the floor. I passed him, then stopped where the hallway turned right. Keeping my back against the wall, I peered around the corner.
No sign of Brown Robe—except for more bodies left behind. Two here. The receptionist who’d signed me in lay sprawled across her desk. Another guard, one I hadn’t seen before, had been tossed aside like an empty candy wrapper. All three of the dead norms had been drained of blood.
Through a half-open door, I could see the building’s surveillance center. It looked like a tornado had blown through, and then someone had taken an ax to what was left.
What a disaster. After this, Juliet wouldn’t be safe from the Goon Squad or the Old Ones. I had to get her out of here. I gathered up the knives I’d left with the receptionist and returned to the cell block.
The ruined door to Juliet’s cell lay against the far wall, where the Old Ones had hurled it. A quiet moaning issued from the open doorway.
Juliet sat on the cot, her injured leg pulled up and resting on her other thigh. The silver chain trailed from her ankle. She rocked back and forth, back and forth, cradling her leg.
I went over to her. “Let me see—”
She snarled, baring her fangs, and shoved me away. Nail marks scored my arm.
“Juliet, we have to go.”
She snarled again, her eyes flaring with rage and pain but not a spark of recognition.
“Hey, it’s me. Vicky. Come on, you know me.” I stayed out of scratching range, trying to make my voice both gentle and urgent. “We need to get out of here. Those Old Ones killed the guards. The one that got away might come back with reinforcements.”
“The Old Ones,” she whispered, and I saw a flicker of the Juliet I knew. Her forehead wrinkled, like she was considering a difficult problem. “You
I nudged the headless body with my toe. Yup. Killed it dead. Juliet stared at the corpse as if she couldn’t fathom what it was.
I tried again. “How badly are you hurt? Can you walk?”
She extended her leg toward me. The bloody wound where Brown Robe had tried to saw through her leg gaped. The bone, absurdly white, showed in the ragged cut. That wasn’t good. Juliet should have started to heal already.
“It’s the silver,” she said. “It slows healing. As long as that’s in contact with my skin . . .” She hugged herself. “And I’m so famished.”
She looked terrible. Purple crescents, so dark they were almost black, ringed her eyes. Her skin, always pale, looked dead white, like those guards who’d been drained of blood.
The guards. The one who’d let me into Juliet’s cell carried that huge ring of keys. One of them had to open Juliet’s shackle. Once the silver was off her, she’d gain strength and start to heal.
