“Wallovik,” Clem said quietly. “That thing around its neck is the family’s sigil. I recognize it from the research I did.”
“Watch my back,” I said to my friends as I stepped forward. “There’s something in its eyes. I’ll check it out, then we’re leaving.”
Clem put her hand on my arm to stop me. “It’s not worth it. There’s something evil about this thing. Let’s go.”
She wasn’t wrong. The mostly empty room was colder than winter’s breath, and the display on its far end emanated waves of spiritual darkness that urged me to turn around and leave all this behind. I’d seen a lot of ugliness in my life, but few bore the same hallmarks of cruelty and malice. Whoever had tortured Wallovik to death had meant it as a horrifying punishment for the cultivator, and a warning to anyone who saw his corpse.
“I know,” I said. “But I can’t leave any stone unturned. You know that.”
The mess on the pillar became grislier with every step I took. The dangling jawbone wasn’t hanging at an odd angle like I’d first thought. The mandible had been cracked in half and spread wide like a pair of ossified wings beneath the fractured dome of Wallovik’s skull. The copper wires that held it in place were laced through narrow holes that pierced the bone just below the nose. Those holes weren’t jagged, they were smooth and worn. That nightmarish mutilation had taken place while Wallovik was still alive, and he’d stayed that way until the wounds had healed. Similar holes pierced the sternum and ribs, and chunks of jagged metal hung like bizarre ornaments from silver chains threaded through those piercings. It had taken a very long time for Wallovik to die. I couldn’t help but imagine how horrible his final days must have been.
I forced myself to look away from the skeleton’s many wounds and focus on why I’d dared to approach it. A pair of crescent-like shards, one silver and one crimson, were nestled in the hollows of its eye sockets. They were perfect matches for the pair in my robes’ pocket. All I had to do was reach out and take them, and we’d have all four pieces of the Heart of Eternity.
It took me long seconds to cycle enough fear aspects out of my aura to reach for those shards. My hands trembled and my breath caught in my throat as visions of old horrors danced through my thoughts on spiked feet. An old man, his legs broken with a mallet. A dark shadow blotting out the sun. The sound of wires screaming with tension as they were twisted, tighter and tighter as bones snapped like twigs. A giant clad in rotten furs, its teeth gleaming like chrome as they clicked out a rattling rhythm.
“Enough,” I barked. All that had happened centuries ago. Memories couldn’t hurt me.
I grabbed both shards, one in each hand, and clenched my fists around them. “Abi,” I called over my shoulder, “get that gate open.”
The power I’d felt in the tower coiled around me like a serpent about to strike. A rasping voice grated from the skeleton’s misshapen jaw, syllables that clattered and smashed together in a senseless avalanche. I’d taken half a step when words emerged from that dark rattle.
“You are no son of Meriwa,” the dead thing called out. “The Heart of Eternity is not a shortcut for the weak. Its power is only for those who have earned it. You. Have. Not.”
Each of the last three words was punctuated by the sharp whine of snapping wires. Stone shattered behind me, and a bitter blast of arctic cold slammed into my back and sent me stumbling forward.
I groaned in pain as the sudden movement jarred my wound and unleashed a new stream of hot, sticky blood. The crimson fluid soaked through my robes and splashed on the stone floor, where it instantly froze into icy scabs.
“Jace!” Eric shouted and raised his burning hands. “Down!”
My friend hardly waited for me to follow his command before he unleashed a jet of blazing air. The attack passed over my shoulder with inches to spare and singed my hair before I could drop away from its path. A second attack followed the first a split second later, and something behind me unleashed a horrible screech of pain and rage. A choking cloud of decay rolled over me, and its stink coated my nose and throat as my knees hit the stone floor.
“Abi, gate!” I shouted and scrambled toward my friends. The look of horror on Clem’s face told me we were all in terrible trouble. Our only hope of survival was to get back to the School.
A fist of ice closed around my ankle and dragged me into the air. My vision swung wildly as Wallovik’s tortured skeleton hoisted me high into the air and held me above its gaping jaws. The creature shook me, and I cried out as my gunshot wound flared with another blast of pain. My blood dripped through my robes, drops of it bouncing off my chin before they splashed onto the undead monstrosity. I watched in horror as the red fluid flowed into shallow runes carved into the creature’s forehead. One by one, those markings glowed an infernal red, and rotting flesh spread across the thing’s face like a multiplying fungus.
“She bound us,” the thing groaned, and a scabrous tongue uncoiled from the throat that had sprouted around its spine. “She shattered the Heart and fed on the blood of kings. Her power will not be denied. Her curse will echo through the ages.”
More of my blood splashed past the misshapen lips that had grown from the ruin of Wallovik’s face. Its canines had grown long and sharp as knife blades.
Vampires didn’t seem so far-fetched anymore.
With a roar, I summoned my fusion blade and swung it through the rotten flesh and brittle bones of the blood-drinker’s bicep. The limb came apart with
