and now they were dragging him around like—
Like a sack of potatoes, I thought, when they abruptly dropped him on the floor.
The old soldier wasn’t any happier. “Have a care!” He knocked one of the men’s hands away. “Or would ye want someone doing the same t’you?”
The vamp blinked at him, like the subject of his own possible mortality had never crossed his mind.
“Who is—was—he?” I asked, my hand in front of my face.
“Not one of mine, Lady, but no soldier should be handled like that!”
“Agreed,” Mircea said, and the look he turned on the two hapless soldiers was hot enough to burn. “It is time you started acting like an army, not a collection of individual squads. The other soldiers you see here are the only backup you are shortly going to have. Show them respect—all of them. They may save your life one day.”
He smiled slightly, and it was a little scary. “Or not.”
“Go wait outside,” the old soldier told them curtly. “We’ll call you when we need you!”
They fled, while I stared down at the crumpled remains of another life. He looked like a Spaniard or an Italian, or possibly from somewhere in the Middle East. He had olive skin and dark hair. I honestly couldn’t tell much more than that, because he also had a couple gallons of blood splattered all over him.
Unlike the others, who’d been killed in more usual ways, he looked like a wild animal had gotten to him.
Marlowe appeared in front of my vision. “He was on patrol, trying to cut down on the stupidity out there. He heard something, possibly saw something. Something he fought for a moment—long enough to draw attention to the area, anyway. But when my people arrived, they found him like this.”
Dark eyes met mine steadily. “Did he die for nothing?”
I felt my throat go tight. I knew what he was doing, and it was a dirty trick. Particularly now, with us standing over the damned body. But that didn’t make him wrong. This man had given his life trying to do his duty, while all I was being asked for was a little discomfort.
Okay, a lot of discomfort, because I really didn’t want to go in there!
But we were running out of time. If we were going to get anything at all, it had to be now. “Billy,” I said thickly, and felt him slip inside.
“Who is Billy?” I heard somebody ask, as I knelt by the side of the dead man. And then I didn’t hear anything. No wonder they call it diving, I thought, as what felt like water closed over my head.
Chapter Fifteen
There was no tent city this time.
“Okaaaay,” Billy said, looking around. “Are we too late?”
It kind of felt like it. Kind of looked like it, too. Darkness, deep and dark and cold, spread out all around us. It was quiet, but it echoed. Like we were in some vast underground cistern instead of somebody’s head. And every time I moved, every time I breathed, it came back to me, only magnified and louder.
It sounded like a whole army was breathing in here.
“Okay, that’s creepy as shit,” Billy whispered, because it was. And then we both paused, waiting for the inevitable return.
But there wasn’t one.
“Hey, why didn’t that echo?” he asked. “Helllllooooo!” he added, and we waited some more, but there was nothing. “What’s the deal?”
“I don’t know—” I began, and stopped, because it was suddenly like being inside a kettle drum.
“Don’t know. DOn’t KNow. don’T knoW,” echoed from a hundred different directions.
“Okay, weirded out now,” Billy said unevenly.
Yeah, that made two of us.
“Look, Cass, there’s nothing to see. We got here too late. Let’s just call it a—”
A light came on in the distance.
“—day?”
It was dim, almost indistinguishable against all the darkness, except it was the only light around. It was also distant, flickering somewhere off in the gloom, almost like—like a candle about to go out, I thought, as it was suddenly extinguished. I blinked in the dark, wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing.
“I vote we pretend that didn’t happen,” Billy said.
And then it happened again.
“Well, shit.”
“Come on,” I told him, and started forward—only to almost bean myself on something hidden in the darkness. I felt around, and it was sort of like a cave wall, if it had been buffed by water for years. Smooth and undulating, but weirdly spongy. “What the hell?”
“I don’t know, but it’s like a maze in here,” Billy said.
“Ghost light,” I told