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Chapter 33: Fourth

Chapter 33: Fourth

"The day you escaped from prison?" Mara asked.

"I prefer ’left without permission.’"

"You escaped imprisonment after feeding contracted souls to Abominations." Mara said

"Details." he shrugged.

Rook made a sound of disgust and resumed walking, while Voss continued as though he had not heard it. "There wasn’t a single clean inch on her. Her clothes, her hands, her face...everything was covered in blood. Some of it had dried. Most of it hadn’t. She looked like she had climbed out of the stomach of something enormous."

Mara glanced between him and Rook. "What did she do?"

"She looked at me."

"And?"

"That was it. She knew who I was. Knew what I’d done and knew I was running. I stood there waiting for her to tear me apart, but she only smiled and walked past."

Mara considered that. "Considering you successfully escaped, I suppose she decided to let you go."

"That’s what frightens me about the damned broad." Some of the amusement left Voss’s voice. "She didn’t forgive me. She didn’t spare me. I don’t think she even considered whether I should live. She simply didn’t see me as something worth killing."

Mara stared at him. Voss’s face remained hidden beneath the cowl, yet she could hear the memory in his voice. He had faced Rook without hesitation and surrounded him with dozens of armed Reapers at the Beacon, but speaking about one smiling woman from the Eleventh had changed him.

The silence around them deepened.

Rook stopped, and everyone behind him did the same. He raised one hand, causing the Last Watch to quiet immediately.

Until that moment, distant growls and scratching movements had followed them through the eastern district. Some had come from beneath the roads, while others had travelled between the abandoned structures.

Now there was nothing.

Rook slowly turned toward the open ground ahead. "We’re close."

Voss looked past him. "How’d you know?"

"No more growls." Rook drew one of the daggers from his coffin. "This is claimed terrain."

The Reapers began taking down their supplies. Grave-thread was uncoiled, thunder charges were removed from the packs, and weapons came free of their sheaths. Whatever resentment they held toward Rook disappeared beneath the habits of people accustomed to surviving dangerous hunts.

Voss gestured toward the ruined wall. "Spread out. Keep sight of the lanterns and don’t wander into the dark alone. We’re about to fight."

The eastern gate had once opened onto a vast road leading away from the Eighty-Sixth. That road had disappeared beneath centuries of broken stone and black vegetation, leaving a broad field between the remaining walls. One gate tower had collapsed entirely, while the other leaned over the clearing, its upper floors held together by fractured beams and stubborn pieces of masonry.

No lanterns burned there, so the Reapers began changing that.

They carried the blue lights into the field and placed them upon stones, broken pillars, and iron hooks driven into the ground. The flames remained invisible to any Abomination watching them, but their glow allowed the hunting party to see one another. Gradually, the separate pools of light joined together until most of the eastern approach had been revealed.

Nothing moved.

Rook advanced several paces into the field. Voss went left while the others spread into a wide arc around them, leaving enough distance that a single attack could not catch everyone at once. Mara remained close to Rook.

She searched the illuminated ground for tracks, disturbed rubble, or any sign of something hiding beneath the ruined vegetation. The silence felt heavier now that she understood it belonged to a creature powerful enough to drive every lesser Abomination from its territory.

Something shifted beyond the farthest lantern.

The movement was so small that Mara initially mistook it for a shadow cast by the unsteady flame. Then a shape separated from the darkness and stepped into the edge of the blue light.

It stood upon two legs and rose nearly twice the height of an ordinary human. Its body possessed neither muscle nor proper flesh. A long spine formed most of its torso, surrounded by narrow ribs beneath a thin, translucent layer of skin. Each breath pulled that skin inward between the bones before stretching it tight once more.

Two arms hung from its shoulders, but neither ended in hands. The bones of the forearms extended into long, flat blades with edges thin enough to catch the blue light. There were no joints beyond the elbows, no fingers, and no sign that the appendages had ever served any purpose beyond cutting.

Its head was worse.

The upper portion resembled an owl, with enormous forward-facing eyes set inside circular folds of flesh. Beneath them extended the narrow snout of a starved wolf. Its mouth appeared closed until the jaws separated sideways, opening from the center of its face toward both ears as several rows of teeth unfolded with them.

Mara stopped breathing.

One of the Reapers to the right shifted his weapon into both hands, while another began raising a spear. Across the field, Voss remained perfectly still as he studied the creature.

The Fourth Rank looked at them.

Its owl-like eyes moved independently, examining each Reaper until both finally settled upon Mara. The sideways mouth widened slightly.

Then it disappeared.

There was no burst of speed Mara could follow. One moment, the creature stood beyond the lanterns. The next, the space it had occupied was empty.

A Reaper grunted beside her, and something struck the ground before rolling through the grass.

Mara looked down.

A head stopped near her boots. The eyes were still open. Confusion remained upon the Reaper’s face, his expression preserved so completely that he did not yet appear to understand he had been decapitated.

His body remained standing several paces away, with the Fourth Rank crouched behind it.

One bladed arm dripped blood onto the dark ground. Its sideways jaws opened wider, and when it spoke, several voices emerged at once, layered over one another as though every soul it had consumed had been forced to share the same throat.

"Fresh feed," it said as both of its enormous eyes turned toward Mara. "Good."