Page 154 of Red Ruin

Sacrifices?

Were those…inthe jars?

A wave of nausea starts to pull me home to my body. The memory rattles.

Remy whispers in wisps of smoke.

His determination drags me back to finish the show.

We follow the man in the cape.

He marches like he knows he’s important.

Red eyes glow above the muzzle that covers him from nose to chin, but the mask can’t hide his identity. You won’t find a history book without a portrait of Azrid Supreme.

I never would’ve guessed his relationship to Remy. His features aren’t as sharp or refined. Azrid Supreme looks like the grizzled, frontline warrior he was before he became a vampire.

Remy wasbornan eldritch prince.

My vampire inherited the better genes.

“Cunning monster,” the legend mutters. “Add more bodies. It can’t be allowed to escape.”

“Yes, Father,” Remy answers military-sharp, without a hint of his smoky, vampire-may-care drawl.

“Supreme,” the man snaps. “My children are human.”

“Yes, Supreme,” Remy replies with no emotion.

Asshole.

I fully understand the state of the world after the first spawn—all monsters, no Guides, no hope—but it’s sickening watching the sacrifices first-hand.

Human lives can’t be treated likenothing.

If they are, we’re no better than the monsters.

The scene shifts again.

Remy, Azrid Supreme, and other hazy military figures stand at the rim of a pit, somewhere dark and underground.

The thing chained at the bottom isn’t human.

Its face is face-shaped, vaguely like a human man’s, but it has the feel of a mask or plastic shell—a predator concealing itself to lull its prey.

The disguise must’ve worked better before its skin started cracking and boiling under the weight of the thickest chains I’ve ever seen.

They burn with golden light, but the monster doesn’t flail like the lesser undead we saw before.

Its sightless gaze rolls to me.

The eyes are only whites. Bloodshot, with no pupil.

Its warped mouth is mostly hidden behind chains, but the thing half smiles in its human suit.

Remy froze then, and I freeze now.

It can’t possibly see me.