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Chapter 26: Wrapped Nightmare

Chapter 26: Wrapped Nightmare

They had barely taken a dozen steps away from the lantern trail before Mara looked back.

The lights remained where they had found them, forming an inviting path between the collapsed buildings. From this angle, there was nothing obviously threatening about the route. Each pool of blue light revealed enough of the road to guide a traveler forward while leaving the surrounding ruins concealed.

Mara raised the lantern toward the grooves carved high into the walls. "Someone must have deliberately moved them."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because some Reapers passing through the Eighty-Sixth are too dangerous to rob."

She glanced at Rook. "So the Last Watch helps them avoid one another?"

"They lead them into the dark. Toward the monsters."

Mara looked toward the false path again. The final lantern burned near the entrance of the narrow street, while everything beyond it remained concealed between the leaning structures. "What do they gain from that?"

"Fewer confrontations. If the traveler survives, he leaves without troubling them. If he dies, then that’s one less worry. If he struggles, they finish him off and rob him themselves."

Disgust tightened her expression. "That’s vile."

"As usual."

A piece of rubble shifted somewhere beyond the final lantern, and both of them fell silent.

The sound did not repeat, but Rook no longer believed whatever waited inside the passage had been responsible. The noise had been too small, more like a loose stone disturbed by something moving elsewhere through the ruins.

Something watching them, perhaps.

Mara lowered the lantern until its light no longer reached as far into the surrounding buildings. "So what do we do? Because that path looks like it ends inside something’s stomach."

"We need a guide."

"And where are we supposed to find someone willing to guide us through this place?"

Rook turned toward the road behind them. "No one said anything about willing."

Then he stopped.

The lanterns behind them no longer formed the path they had followed. Several had disappeared entirely, while others now burned within narrow streets Rook knew they had never crossed. The archway they had passed beneath only moments ago remained visible, but the lantern beyond it had been carried into the ruins and placed at the entrance of another road.

Someone had altered the route while they were speaking.

"The lanterns leading back..." Mara began.

"They changed those too."

Worry entered her expression without becoming panic. She turned slowly, searching the windows and broken rooftops surrounding them. "Surely you don’t have that many enemies who want us gone."

Rook studied the same windows. A piece of cloth disappeared behind one of them.

"I can’t promise that."

Mara opened her mouth to respond, but a tremor passed beneath their feet.

It was faint enough that the lantern’s flame barely moved, though dust slipped from the nearest walls. Several loose stones rolled from the rubble inside the false route and clicked across the road.

Rook’s useful hand settled against the coffin. They had remained in one place for too long.

The tremor came again, this time traveling through the buildings rather than the ground. Stone grated somewhere above them, followed by the rapid scrape of something hard moving across a wall.

Mara raised the lantern, and its glow reached the grooves surrounding the narrow passage.

A hooked limb curled over the edge of a roof.

It was too long to belong to anything human. Three black joints bent in different directions before ending in a curved point driven deep into the stone. A second limb appeared beside it, followed by a third farther along the wall.

"Don’t run yet," Rook said.

The creature pulled itself over the roof. Its body was long enough to stretch across the remains of two buildings. Pale plates covered its underside, while its back had hardened into a layer of black growth almost indistinguishable from the stone around it. Dozens of hooked limbs extended from either side, allowing it to cling to the ruins like an enormous centipede. Several of those limbs had broken or grown at crooked angles, yet each point sank easily into the walls.

There was no visible head. Instead, the front of its body split vertically, revealing a narrow mouth extending between the plates. Inside, several hooked jaws folded over one another, opening and closing as the creature tasted the vibrations traveling through the ruins.

Mara’s voice fell to a whisper. "Second Rank?"

"Probably."

"Probably?"

"I haven’t seen this one before."

"That is not reassuring."

"It wasn’t meant to be."

The creature remained above the false road, its jaws flexing while its hooked legs scratched lightly against the stone.

Rook could fight it. Under ordinary circumstances, he could destroy enough of its limbs to bring it down, open its body, and continue cutting until it temporarily stopped moving. The absence of a Death Imprint meant he could not Cull it, but mutilating the body would still buy them time.

These were not ordinary circumstances.

His poisoned arm hung uselessly beside him. The coffin restricted his movement, and bringing the creature down would require a long, loud fight. Steel striking stone would carry across the ruins, while thunder charges would carry even farther.

The Last Watch would hear them, and so would anything else living beneath the Eighty-Sixth.

Mara looked toward the dark street beside them. "Can we get around it?"

"Maybe."

The creature shifted.

Half its limbs released the roof at once, and it dropped behind them. Its body struck the road with enough force to break several paving stones and throw dust across the surrounding buildings. The long torso folded upon itself before straightening, its hooked legs spreading across the street and climbing both walls. Its vertical mouth faced Rook and Mara, opening until the front plates separated.

The obvious route back disappeared behind it.

Mara stepped closer to Rook. "I’m assuming that changed the answer."

"Yep."

The Abomination dragged itself forward as Rook unfastened one of the chains securing the coffin. Working with a single hand made the process slower than he liked. His numb fingers remained curled against his side, utterly indifferent to the danger approaching them.

He pulled the chain loose and opened a narrow compartment near the coffin’s base.

"What are you doing?" Mara asked.

"Trying not to fight it."

"That thing looks committed to fighting us."

"Then we disappoint it."

Rook tore a coil of gray cord from the compartment and shoved one end into Mara’s hands. The material appeared thin enough to be used as ordinary rope, but its surface felt dry and rough beneath her fingers. Small iron hooks had been braided into both ends.

"Run around that pillar."

"What?"

"The large object directly in front of you."

"I know what a pillar is!"

"Then impress me."

The Abomination lunged, and Rook moved first. He pulled the grave-thread from the coil as he ran toward the opposite side of the road. Mara swore and sprinted toward the broken pillar. The cord unspooled between them, sinking into the dust until its gray length became nearly invisible against the stone.

The creature followed Rook. Its front limbs hammered into the road while the others caught the surrounding walls, pulling its body forward in violent bursts. Each impact left another groove in the stone.

Rook reached a collapsed archway and passed around its remaining support.

Across the street, Mara reached the pillar.

"Go around it!" Rook shouted.

"I got this!"

She circled the stone, dragging her end behind her. The thread pulled tight between the separate pieces of ruin, stretching across the road slightly above the ground.

Mara found the small iron hook woven into her end. There was no time to tie a knot, so she wrapped the thread around the pillar twice and drove the hook through one of its own braided loops.

"Done!"

Rook secured his end around the collapsed arch and threw his weight against it.

The Abomination charged into the thread.

For an instant, nothing happened. The grave-thread was too thin to see clearly against the creature’s body. It disappeared beneath the hardened growth covering its front limbs, and Mara feared it had simply snapped.

Then the cord tightened.

It cut through the first limb and caught against the second, forcing both to curl inward.

The Abomination’s momentum carried the rest of its body forward. Its bound limbs folded beneath it, and the creature struck the road hard enough to split the paving stones. Its long body rolled, smashing through the wall of a nearby building and dragging several of its own limbs beneath it. Stone collapsed across its back as dust burst into the street, swallowing the nearest lanterns.

Rook tightened his grip upon the thread. "Move!"

Mara released her end and ran.

They crossed the road as the Abomination tried untangling itself. Its hooked legs clawed through stone and rubble, but each attempt to rise pulled the grave-thread deeper into its flesh. The more violently it moved, the tighter its front limbs twisted together.

One of its jaws snapped at the empty air, while another caught the cord.

Grave-thread resisted dead flesh far better than ordinary rope, but it would not hold forever. Thin strands had already begun stretching where the hooked limbs rubbed against them.

Mara reached Rook and looked back. "How long will that keep it there?"

"A minute."

"That’s all?"

"If it calms down."

The Abomination wrenched half its body free of the collapsed wall. Several limbs twisted tighter around the cord, and a snapping sound passed through the street.

"It doesn’t appear calm," Mara said.

"Then less. So we’re better off not finding out while we’re this close."