I stepped aside so Nigellus wouldn’t plow into my back when he emerged. A second later, I sensed his presence at my side.
“Come,” he said, taking my arm.
A fresh round of disorientation swept over me, and this time when it passed, I found myself in the titheling village, standing next to Nigellus in front of a very familiar hut. It was night in Hell, but the realm’s three moons provided us with some illumination. Around us, people were emerging from nearby huts. A few carried torches. All looked upset.
“What’s happening?” asked a man who looked vaguely familiar, but whose name I didn’t know. “We heard screaming—”
“Stay back, all of you,” Nigellus ordered, his voice cracking like a whip. “Send someone for one of the elders.”
“Li Wei,” I said quickly. “Get Li Wei. And Sharalynn!”
Maybe it was irrational, but I was suddenly desperate to have someone present that I trusted. The people around us had heard screaming. If anything had happened to Dad...
“You should stay back as well,” Nigellus said, moving toward the front door of the hut.
I realized an instant later that he was speaking to me, and lunged after him. “The fuck I’m staying back!” I growled, reaching him just as he opened the door.
The inside of the structure was dark, but I was met by a smell that made my stomach turn. Metallic and sickly sweet—the smell of the abattoir. Nigellus snapped his fingers sharply, and flames burst to life in the hearth, illuminating the scene.
“Oh, god,” I breathed faintly, my mind desperate to reject the grisly tableau of rent flesh and bone in front of me.
ELEVEN
BODY PARTS LAY scattered around the hut’s main room. Panic seized me, and the resulting massive adrenaline dump was the only thing that kept me from fainting on the spot.
My gaze skittered over a lump of... something... with tufts of blood-soaked white hair sticking up, only to seize a moment later on movement in the far corner of the room. A figure huddled at the base of the wall, in the gap between the unlit cookstove and the heavy butcher-block table used for food preparation.
“Dad?” I croaked, frozen in the doorway.
Nigellus skirted the carnage and dragged my father upright by the arm, pulling him around the edge of the room and shoving him toward me.
“Get him out of here,” he snapped, “and keep everyone else away.”
I steadied my father just in time for the door to swing shut in our faces. He was shaking... or maybe we both were. I couldn’t make out his features properly in the flickering dance of light and shadows from the torches. I wanted to run my hands over him... to fall into his arms and start crying hysterically. But I just stood there, my fingers digging into his shoulders.
“Zorah?” a familiar and very welcome feminine voice called. “Is that you? What’s going on?”
Sharalynn hurried up, her partner Finn a step or two behind her with a torch held aloft to light the way. One of her hands clasped my shoulder, and the other one clasped Dad’s.
“Sharalynn,” I said in a wavering voice, “something awful happened...”
“Are either of you hurt?” she asked practically.
“Not me,” I managed. “Dad? Are you all right?”
I wasn’t sure what I expected, but all I got in return was blank silence as my father blinked at me dazedly in the torchlight.
“Come on, both of you,” Sharalynn said in a no-nonsense tone. “Let’s get you two somewhere quieter.”
I looked from her to the closed door of the hut, where a sweet elderly man lay torn to pieces like grisly roadkill. “No, not me. I need to—”
“You need to sit down before you fall down,” Sharalynn said firmly.
But I shook my head. “I need to keep anyone else from going in there.”
Sharalynn turned to catch Finn’s eyes. “Stay here and stop anyone from going inside, okay? Oh, and if Li Wei or Fatima shows up, send them on to our hut.”
Finn nodded, grim-faced.
Sharalynn slung one of Dad’s arms over her shoulders. Fortunately, she was short enough to make a decent human crutch, and strong enough to take some of his weight. “Hope you can walk on your own, Zorah,” she said. “Now get those feet moving, all right?”
I stumbled along on my father’s other side, still in a daze—my hand clamped around his upper arm as though I needed the constant reminder that he was alive... that it wasn’t his blood decorating the walls of the modest two-room hut we’d just left. I could feel hysteria pushing at the walls of my mind, threatening to swamp me.
Sharalynn’s home was a welcome refuge. I’d been here a handful of times during my stay in the titheling village, and it was the same warm, welcoming space I remembered. The hut’s owner ushered us inside and deposited Dad on a comfortable chair before stirring up the hearthfire and lighting some candles.
“You’re sure you’re all right, hon?” she asked, running a critical eye over me.
I nodded, mute, already turning my father toward the light and running my hands over his shoulders and chest. Sharalynn urged him to lean forward in the chair and did the same to his back.
“I don’t see anything wrong,” she said. “There are a few blood spatters on his clothing, but... I don’t think they’re his.”
My gorge rose, and I had to swallow hard to keep my stomach contents from making an unwanted appearance. She was right, though—I couldn’t see any evidence of injuries either.
“Zorah. C’mon, talk to me. What happened?” Sharalynn asked.
“I don’t know, exactly.” My voice was a painful croak. “A demon I know agreed to send Edward here to help look after Dad...”
“I met
