I started to run to him, but Ben held me back. “Kitty, look.”
The objects Henry had thrown looked like jacks, a children’s toy. Studying them revealed their sharpened points, like twisted knives—caltrops. And they were silver. If one of them even scratched us, we were done. Clinging to each other, we moved back. Roman had immobilized us without even touching us.
“I hate this!” I growled.
Grace went to check on Henry, touching his face, his arm. How did you tell if a vampire was okay? Feel for a pulse? Make sure he was breathing? No and no. He looked dead—pale and cold, unmoving. Of course he looked dead, he was a vampire.
“Grace?” I said. “How is he?”
Grace rolled him onto his back, smoothed the hair away from his face, and pulled back an eyelid to check his eye. He seemed to be sleeping—except for the not-breathing part. He had to be alive, or whatever the vampire equivalent of alive was. He was still here, he hadn’t disintegrated. So that was something. His clothes hadn’t been mussed or altered—even his shirt was still in place. He’d just appeared. Or rather, he’d been shoved in here as a distraction.
“I think he’s okay,” she said, but sounded uncertain.
“Anastasia, what’s wrong with him?”
“Incoming,” Cormac called before she could answer. He held the crossbow ready, aiming at the opposite doorway from where Henry had appeared. He had a clear shot through the middle of the room.
Grace pulled Henry into a corner, and I reflected on the irony of trying to protect an undead guy who was essentially immortal. If said undead guy was unconscious and possibly injured, how would we ever know? Was there a vampire doctor we could take him to?
I was constantly astonished by the absurdity of it all.
“What are we going to do about this?” Ben said, nodding at the silver knives scattered on the floor. We braced, wolflike and ready to pounce—but away from danger, away from the silver.
All I could smell was the stupid incense, and the hallway appeared darker than it should have—my wolf eyes should have been able to make out something. Something had caught Cormac’s attention. Movement flickered in the shadows, or in my own imagination.
The thing that crept in through the doorway made no sound. At first glance, he was a man, incredibly tall, as tall as the doorway, and bulky, stout and full of muscles. He wore nothing but worn trousers and went barefoot. At second glance, however, the details became uncertain and impossible. The figure moved hunched and low, like a wrestler approaching an opponent. As if he was sizing us up. Except his eyes were sewn shut. Two rows of vertical, swollen stitches marked where eyes should have been. Black stitches also marked his nostrils, mouth, and even his ears—he didn’t really have ears, just crusted stitches crisscrossing holes on the sides of his bald head.
I didn’t know how he could sense anything—I didn’t know how he could breathe. Yet he kept on, stepping carefully, flexing his hands as if preparing to strike.
If he didn’t breathe, could we stop him?
Grace gasped as if she recognized the creature, which would have been great, because then she knew what it was and would know how to stop it. But she didn’t say anything. Maybe he was mortal, human. Maybe we could just beat him up. But that didn’t explain the ruin of his face or how he could function without four of his five senses.
The crossbow fired and a bolt whistled past me, smacking into the monster’s neck. The shaft stuck out of sickly grayish skin, quivering. Behind me, Cormac cranked back the crossbow for reloading.
Not that it would help, because the monster didn’t much notice. He grunted, swiped at the bolt, pulled it out, and tossed it away. A bare trickle of blood ran from the wound. So, he was a near-invincible kind of otherworldly monster. Check.
Cormac slung the crossbow over his shoulder and began rummaging in his coat pockets.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Not going to waste ammo I’m going to need for the vampire,” he said.
Anastasia stared at it with awe and doubt.
“What is it? Who is it?” I shot at her.
“Hundun,” she murmured. “God of chaos.”
Of course he was; we had to get one of those in the mix.
“I don’t know—I thought the guy was dead,” Sun said.
“Wait a minute—if he’s a god how could he be dead?” I called out.
“Oh, gods die all the time.”
I would have to parse that later. “That means we can kill him, right?”
He didn’t answer.
Common sense—Wolf’s common sense—told me that I didn’t know enough about this enemy to be able to fight him. He wasn’t prey, and this wasn’t a hunt. We weren’t cornered—we could escape through the doorway behind us, avoiding the silver caltrops. We could run. We ought to run. That was common sense. But I couldn’t leave the others. And I couldn’t help.
The creature had paused a moment, seeming to look at each of us in turn, noting us, marking us. Then he almost nodded, a single tip of his head, which he swung around to focus on Sun Wukong as if identifying him as the most dangerous among us.
With what seemed to be a sense of a joy, Sun took a running start and leapt forward, meeting the blinded monster head-on. Holding his staff with both hands, he jabbed upward, aiming for the creature’s chin—but the thing, this strange god of chaos, sidestepped and whirled to slam his fists into Sun’s back. The creature’s speed belied his size and apparent lack of senses. Maybe the thing really could see, somehow, and all the stitches were there for horrifying effect.
My common sense was failing me.
Struck hard, Sun stumbled forward, but was able to quickly spin to once again face his opponent, and in
