Page 7 of House of Dusk

YENERIS

T he walking corpse tore into the fire spinners so fast they had no time to scream.

It slammed into the man first, crumpling him.

His partner toppled from his shoulders, her torches sputtering to the stones.

A few cheers still punctuated the night.

Some of the crowd must have thought this was part of the performance.

It wasn’t. The creature hunched over the fallen fire spinner, making horrible wet slurping noises. The man’s body twitched and flopped, then fell still. His partner scrambled to her feet and began to shriek.

The cheers vanished, replaced by unsettled mutterings. People began to pull back from the steps.

“Go on.” Sinoe shoved Yeneris in the shoulder. “Stop it!”

Yeneris bared her teeth. “No. I need to get you out of here, princess.”

“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “But if you don’t stop that thing, it’s going to kill dozens. I’ve seen it.”

Yeneris stared into Sinoe’s wide brown eyes. They seemed suddenly very old, and very deep, the sort of eyes she could fall into and never escape.

Still, she tried. “Princess, my duty is—”

“ My duty is to these people, Yen,” snapped Sinoe. “I’m not leaving until they’re safe. The skotoi have to be stopped.”

Skotoi . It took her brain a heartbeat to translate the Helissoni word. Enemy . Any unclean, unnatural thing that had no place in this world.

Yeneris glanced back to the necropolis gates.

The creature appeared to have finished with its first victim.

It stood, uncoiling with an uncanny smoothness, moving in a way that human joints and limbs should not allow.

Gore spattered its dingy shroud, the wasted shreds of flesh and splinters of bone.

The glowing eyes fixed on the remaining fire spinner, who had retreated to the steps to seize one of her fallen torches. The creature gave a low, menacing hiss.

When she was a little girl, Yeneris had loved the story of mighty Akoret, who had pledged herself to the service of the Scarab, in the House of Midnight.

Akoret defended her people against all manner of enemies: manticores, river-maugs, the last of the jeweled incarnals.

And ghouls. Malevolent spirits that escaped the Labyrinth of Souls, using unclean corpses as doorways back into the mortal world.

But Akoret lived centuries ago. There were still stories of ghouls, sometimes.

If a body was neglected. If the dead soul was particularly corrupt.

That hardly seemed likely here. Surely all the dead within a necropolis in the heart of Helissa City had been properly interred, cleansed by the tomb keepers.

She could decide what to call it later. Sinoe was right.

If the thing—ghoul, skotoi, monster—wasn’t stopped, it was going to tear through this crowd as it had that poor fire spinner.

Even now she saw the corpse cracking one arm back, lengthening the skeletal limb into a whippy length of bone, something more like a tentacle.

The bone whip lashed out, smacking the woman’s hand, sending her torch flying to the side. Leaving her defenseless. The creature coiled itself to spring.

Yeneris moved. A fluid, precise movement, sweeping the hidden dagger from her thigh and sending it flying right into the monster’s face.

By the time it struck, transfixing one burning black eye, she was halfway up the steps, swords drawn. “Go!” she shouted at the woman.

The fire spinner’s gaze flicked just once to the crumpled body of her partner. Then she fled. And Yeneris turned her full attention to the enemy.

The dagger had done very little. It remained plunged into the skull of the ghoul, like some strange glittering ornament. The force of the blow had sent the corpse stumbling back. Given her time, but nothing else.

Well, at least she was no longer bored.

Grimly, Yeneris settled into a wary stance, her swords braced as she watched for an opening.

She preferred an enemy she could sneak up on and take out cleanly, quickly, silently.

Not this sort of raw, face-to-skull battle.

At least there was only one of them. She could finish this quickly, and then get Sinoe away before anyone was the wiser.

Yeneris feinted and struck, slamming her short sword into the creature’s left arm. Bone snapped, crunching. But the limb didn’t fall. Some dark, slithery stuff boiled up at the shoulder, twining down to bridge the wound.

The ghoul slashed at her, finger bones sharpened to needlelike claws. Wonderful. Damaging it made it stronger. So much for her dreams of proving herself Akoret reborn.

Honestly, it was a bit embarrassing. That fire spinner had held the creature at bay for twice as long as this with only a torch.

The next slash of razor-sharp finger bones caught her sleeve, tearing a thin slice along her right arm, leaving a fine thread of pain. Yeneris bit down, regretting nearly all of her decisions that night.

Wait. She unwound her thoughts, back to the woman with the torch. The ghoul, cringing away from her. Not attacking until it knocked the burning brand aside. Fire. It feared fire. She sheathed her swords.

With an unholy gargling cry, the ghoul lunged. Yeneris danced to the side, not bothering to strike it. Instead, she dove for the fallen torch. It was still smoldering. She lifted it just as the ghoul swung round to face her.

The creature gave a low hiss, retreating a step.

“Don’t like fire, do you?” She scanned the stones. A pile of spare torches lay over to one side of the tomb entrance, beside a clay jar and a bundle of clothing.

As her own brand began to sputter, Yeneris backed up, slowly. The ghoul followed. She caught up a second torch, lighting it from the one she carried. It blazed to life, weaving strange shadows against the stones of the tomb.

She tossed the first torch at the creature. Then lunged, slamming the fresher brand into the ghoul’s torso as it tried to escape.

Whoosh!

The tattered shroud caught, flames spreading to withered flesh and the sad fringe of hair clinging to its skull.

In a heartbeat the monster was wreathed in flame.

The slithery darkness that animated the bones writhed and shuddered.

A strange gray dust began to sift from it, clouding the air. Yeneris drew her sword again.

One swift slash, and the skull went rolling away. More greasy puffs of ash billowed from the thing. The body fell, consumed by fire. The dark gleam in the skull’s remaining eye winked out.

She stalked over to it, tearing her dagger from its eye. Then she stomped down, hard. The old bone cracked, crumpled, fell to dust.

Finally, she drew a ragged breath. It was done.

Except that Sinoe was yelling something. Shouting at her, and pointing at the tomb. “Skotoi!”

That was when Yeneris realized her mistake. A stupid mistake that might very well mean her death. Skotoi was the plural, not the singular.

A dozen burning eyes filled the necropolis gates. A waft of cloying air struck her, sweet and dusty and terrible. The scent of a great many dead things. And something else, a strange, damp smell that made her skin crawl as if a thousand spiders were marching up her spine.

“Fire!” cried Sinoe. “I saw fire! You can stop them!”

This would have been reassuring, if Yeneris happened to have a bonfire handy. Or a firebomb. All she had were the last flickers of a dying torch. Unless . . .

Yeneris sprinted back to the pile of supplies abandoned along the steps. The spare torches, and that clay jar. Fates, let it be what she hoped it was!

She bent, sniffing the mouth of the jar. A noxious, sweet scent filled her nose. Naphtha, the same flammable stuff that the torches were soaked in.

Yeneris hefted the jar, spun, then threw it straight at the broken gates, into that terrible clutch of dark gleaming eyes. Then she tossed her lit brand after it.

Fwoom! Fire exploded from the mouth of the necropolis, and with it a high, wailing chorus. The wave of hot air sent her stumbling back. One foot slid off the topmost step. She toppled; stone slammed into her side as she rolled down to the square.

“Are you hurt?” A hand gripped her arm. Someone with the strength of a kitten was trying to heave her upright.

Yeneris groaned. The princess was beside her, brown eyes crinkled with concern.

“You tell me. You’re the one with prophetic visions,” Yeneris snapped. She felt like one enormous bruise.

The girl’s mouth quirked. “I saw you stopping the skotoi. I didn’t see you falling down the steps afterward.”

“I’m fine,” Yeneris said, uneasy with the way the girl was watching her. And with the weight of other eyes. Most of the audience had fled, but there was still enough of a crowd to cause them trouble, if anyone recognized Sinoe.

Yeneris clambered to her feet, scanning the tomb above. Smoke boiled from the entrance, but there were no more gleams in the darkness. No sign of any remaining ghouls.

Shouts echoed from the far side of the square. A quick tramp of booted feet, and a glitter of bronze helms. Soldiers, finally answering the alarm.

“We need to go, princess. Unless you want your father to learn what you’ve been about this evening.”

For the first time that night, Yeneris saw actual fear—raw, self- preserving terror—flare in Sinoe’s brown eyes. She gave a violent shake of her head.

“Then come,” said Yeneris, gesturing to a smaller side alley. “Let’s get you back to the palace.”

· · ·

“This would be so much easier if you’d just let me climb up the way I came down,” said Sinoe, puffing out her cheeks in frustration. “We’d be back in my chambers by now, eating the milk candy I got last week from Ambassador Opotysi.”

“That vine isn’t strong enough, princess,” said Yeneris, leaning out again to check the hallway. Empty. Finally. She crept out, waving for Sinoe to follow. “I’d be a poor bodyguard if I let you break your neck.”