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People in black tactical gear rush into the room, and it’s not a stretch to guess they’re traders or the crew’s security. It’s not just the weapons or the fact they’re here.
It’s the misty spirits hovering above and around them, thrashing like trapped birds that can’t break free.
The tactical team levels their guns at me, and the one in the lead shouts, “Get on the ground now!”
Sure.
I smile as I sink to the cold concrete, buying time, and when I speak, Creepy’s singsong rattle carries through my voice. “Dead around those I see. Kill the killers and be set free.”
Magic shivers through my veins.
Screams break out in the room. I press myself fully to the floor as bullets rake the chairs and walls, fired wildly by the tactical team at the attackers they can’t see.
The gunfire trails off. The room stills.
I shove to my feet. My arms are speckled with blood, and my hair is too. Ordinarily, Creepy flickers in and out of view to avoid that, I recall. I should figure out if I can do that too.
But first…
I veer around the pooled blood and the bodies as I head into the hallway. Most of the doors are closed, giving me no clue whether my men are inside.
The ghosts nearest to me glance at each other, and I get the strangest sense they’re communicating. But before I can ask, the girl with the heart-shaped face flashes me another smile.
And then they all scatter, drifting through the doors and returning a moment later.
“No one,” the girl says.
The other ghosts echo her response.
I thank them and keep moving. More doors turn up nothing, until I round the corner at the end of the hall and hear a scream come from somewhere farther on.
Zeb. I swear that sounded like Zeb.
I run. The ghosts race ahead of me, whipping through doors and then back out, shaking their heads quickly, over and over. I dart past another corner, and then another, running onward through a maze-like building that never seems to end.
Panic starts to grip me. Was this a trick? Were the screams a recording or some other ploy to torment me, when really my men are anywhere but here?
At the end of the hall, the ghost girl dives through and then reappears quickly, her enormous eyes wide. “Here!” She points.
In a blast of pink lightning, my magic takes out the lock. I burst past the door.
It’s a large room. Cement floor. Drains every few feet to catch the blood. Industrial lights blaze down, offering nowhere to hide. A truck loading dock is at one end, and a semi has been backed into place with its trailer door open and standing ready.
My men are here too. They’re trapped in square cages, but smaller than the one I was held inside and not bolted to the ground either. Cages for transport.
For killing.
Puck is in one, snarling and throwing himself against bars that flare like electric firecrackers every time he makes contact with them. Blood-stained bandages haphazardly cover his bullet wounds like someone only half-heartedly tried to stop the bleeding. Burn marks score his pale skin from head to toe, evidence of how many times he’s flung himself into the walls of the cage.
Beastly is wounded too, burns on his sides and chunks of fur missing. He stands in another cage, snarling as he turns this way and that like he’s looking for an escape, but he’s surrounded by traders with cattle prods in their fists. They’re rolling his cage toward the truck.
Ghastly’s cage is off to one side. He lies on the ground, not moving. A savage cut mars one of his legs, torn straight through his pants like someone wanted to test how well he handled being sliced and diced. His tentacles lie limp on the cage floor around him, burned in places like they were scorched by electricity.
But one tentacle is missing. The stump seeps black blood where the appendage was sliced away, coating his back in the dark liquid. Dressed in butcher’s smocks, three of the traders have his severed tentacle trapped between them. It thrashes of its own accord, but still they carry it toward a glass case like a science experiment they intend to put on display.
I scream.
The dead with me race at the traders, while the ghosts hovering around the bastards pause.
