Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(36)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

My stomach cramped with the fetid smell of the mist, but there was nothing in it to throw up. I didn’t see Cabell through the wall of pale air until I’d nearly collided with his back.

 

He was shaking.

 

“Tamsin,” Cabell breathed out, his lips barely moving. “Don’t move.”

 

My eyes slid left, following his line of sight, until, finally, I saw it too. A shifting shadow among the trees.

 

There was no moonlight to illuminate its form, but my sight had adjusted to the darkness, and even our distance couldn’t disguise the cold savagery of the creature tearing at the carcass of what had once been a horse.

 

The creature had the near shape of a man, but stretched and bent, its joints all harsh, unforgiving angles. The hairless limbs were overly long and spindly, the way a spider’s might be. For one terrible moment, I couldn’t tell if it was filthy rags or tattered flesh hanging from them.

 

What the hell is that?

 

Emrys and Neve came up behind us, their footsteps soft as they moved over the diseased lichen and unsteady ground. I held out both my arms, stopping them. Emrys sent me a questioning look, but I only pointed to his head lamp.

 

I knew the moment he saw the creature too. His body turned rigid. Holding his breath, he reached up slowly and clicked the light off.

 

The creature’s head shot up, blood and stringy muscle dripping from its mouth. Disgust and terror flooded my body, and any instincts I had to run, to fight, to do anything other than stand there, vanished like breath in the air.

 

The creature’s face was sunken with decay, leaving a void of flesh and color, save for the white of its glowing eyes, and its bloodstained teeth. Teeth it had used to rip the flesh and muscle and innards of the horse away, reducing it to clean-picked bones in a pool of the animal’s own blood.

 

The creature rose, dropping the leg from its mouth. Its limbs unfolded like an insect’s, awakening some deep, primal fear in me. The mist rolled between us, but when it thinned again, the creature was gone.

 

“Where did it go?” Cabell whispered, breathing heavily.

 

“What the hell is that?” one of the Hollowers shouted. “What is it doing—?”

 

A piercing bark answered, not half as terrible as the ones that answered back from the darkness that surrounded us on all sides.

 

There was a soul-curdling scream. The Hollower’s head lamp beam vanished. Then another.

 

And another.

 

“Get back to the boats!” Septimus bellowed. “Now!”

 

Cabell and Neve rushed forward first, their feet slapping through puddles of water and sludge. Emrys stood stock-still, staring at the spot where the creature had been, rooted so firmly in place I had to grab his arm and yank with all my might to get him moving again.

 

Another head lamp gone. Another.

 

The mist swirled around us in chaotic patterns as the party rushed in every direction. I slammed into Neve, who had turned back at the water’s edge. I craned my neck around, following her terrified gaze.

 

A head, hairless and slick with sludge, rose from the putrid depths. Its eyes gleamed silver as they caught the light of a head lamp.

 

And then it wasn’t one, but many. The filmy water bubbled as they emerged from the dark depths and floated toward us.

 

Cabell grabbed my shoulder, drawing me closer to his side as he held out my axe. “What the hell do we do?”

 

I shook my head, choking on words that wouldn’t come. There was no way back to the barges. No way forward.

 

There was only the slick crackle of flesh rent from bone and the helpless screams as one by one the lights vanished and the mist devoured us whole.

 

 

 

 

 

A long, icy hand clamped around my ankle and I screamed.

 

Emrys lunged forward with a cry, severing its gray arm with one axe blow. The creature howled and screeched, sinking back into a hole in the ground.

 

I kicked the hand free from my leg, shuddering. And then we were running, all of us, running harder than I thought my body could ever manage, even lit by fear.

 

The forest blurred around us, the hollowed trees toppling as the creatures leapt from one to the next, keeping pace. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Septimus weaving through the stalks of dead grass and bramble. Blood, so dark it was nearly black, sprayed through the air as he battered the creatures with his axe. The two Hollowers who flanked him vanished, tackled to the ground and torn to bloody ribbons of flesh that turned the mist a revolting pink.

 

“What are they?” Cabell gasped out.

 

“Revenants?” Emrys suggested.

 

Gods, I hoped not. The living dead couldn’t be killed by mortal weapons, and would only continue to rise again, no matter how many parts we cut off.

 

My memory tore through all the thousands of books it had consumed, but nothing matched the description of these creatures—no etchings, no brief passages in compendiums and bestiaries, nothing.

 

Without knowing what they were, we wouldn’t know how to kill them. Wounding them with blades was only slowing them down.

 

“We need to drop the bags!” Cabell shouted.

 

“No!” The creatures’ claws kept snagging the leather, but I would be dead and damned before I lost the last of our supplies.

 

Pulling out the small pocketknife, I slashed blindly through the air as creatures leapt down from the trees, trying to trap one of us beneath the cage of their bodies.

 

“Tamsin, duck!” Emrys shouted. As I did, he swung his axe over my head, lodging it in the side of one of their soft skulls. Cabell led us through the diseased trees, deeper into the heart of the isle.

 

It was a moment more before I realized the screaming from the other Hollowers had stopped.

 

They’re all dead, my mind taunted.

 

All that was left now was us. The creatures, strings of saliva seeping between their teeth, turned toward us in unison, realizing the same.

 

I glanced at the sorceress, and the plea must have been etched into my expression.

 

“I can’t cast while running,” Neve said between gasping breaths. “I need to carve the sigils—”

 

One creature dove for her, grasping with two front claws, and I ripped her away. Emrys followed up with his axe, bringing it down and severing one of the limbs.

 

The other clawed his arm, tearing through the layers of fabric and into his flesh. He stumbled with a curse, nearly dropping the axe. I lunged and jammed my knife into one of the creature’s lidless eyes.