ran, sticking together, giving them a single meal in one place, just a little out of reach. They ripped each other apart to get to us first, giving us a chance to escape. And–and if we can find a body of water, they can’t swim.”
He didn’t need to know that neither could I, or that Ada plunging us into that submerged shrine had been a last desperate act. There’d been no way out, and the ghouls had just waited for us to get out and be eaten, or choose to die by drowning.
If it hadn’t been for outside intervention—represented in Cora, Cyrus, and Ayman, that wraith-like man Cherine Nazaryan had insisted was a ghoul, but who’d turned out to be Ada’s half-brother—neither of us would be alive today.
Not that I was alive today.
“No chance of water here,” Robin shouted as he cracked a ghoul’s neck with a vicious kick of his booted foot. “But we can do the one-meal thing. If we gather to block the tunnel, there will only be one direction for them to attack. Then we retreat until we’re out of here.”
He shouted his strategy to the others, but each was too preoccupied with their own mindless attackers.
Will, with blades blurring in both hands, furiously slashed at every ghoul that grabbed at his horse or his legs, screaming increasingly filthy expletives at them. Alan had unsheathed a massive sword I hadn’t seen before, was arcing it in sweeps that lopped off the heads and hands of the monsters in his way, while his reindeer stomped on those crawling across the ground. Little Jon gave up impaling them with his spear, resorting to sheer force, more efficiently smashing them against the walls.
As the stench of the ghouls’ black blood filled the area, all I could do was scream warnings at Agnë and Meira as ghouls snatched at them. Being unarmed, they were at the most disadvantage.
As if realizing this, Will shouted, “Meira, catch!” and flung a knife our way.
Meira threw up a hand, but instead of catching the blade, she halted it inches from her palm! Her glowing palm!
Then she ripped it from the air, and with ferocious screams, she alternated between hurling ghouls away with brisk gestures, and stabbing those who jumped at her horse.
I hadn’t had time to reel at what I was seeing, when Agnë’s own hands filled with what looked like smoldering snowballs. She hurled them at the ghouls who came too close, eliciting teeth-gnashing screeches as the ice somehow burned through their fetid flesh.
This was it—the explanation for all those little weird things about them.
They were witches!
All these years, those closest to me had been the one thing I hated most in the world—after fairies, at least.
But whatever their reasons were for being in my service in the first place, and for being here now, that could wait.
We had to survive first. They had to.
But soon, Agnë and Meira started to tire, their magic flagging, and ghouls kept coming. They were starting to surround us when Amabel gave a piercing neigh and kicked a few back. She reared up and landed on the rest, crushing some with her hooves, and spearing others with her horn.
“Good girl!” I cheered her on as she continued destroying any ghouls who escaped Agnë and Meira. “Best girl!”
“This is how we can implement our retreat,” Robin shouted as he pulled an arrow out of his latest kill’s throat, and stuck it in a new attacker’s face. “If we can get the horses to attack like Amabel.”
“Good luck convincing them of that!” Will yelled from up ahead as he lopped the heads of two incoming ghouls with his swirling knives. “They’re scared witless, and won’t budge!”
“On it!” Alan leaped off his reindeer, so inhumanly high, there was no doubt he was part fairy. If there was any left, it was laid to rest as he zigzagged between the tunnel walls above us, literally bouncing off them, before landing behind us.
He proceeded to smack every steed’s rear hard, scaring them enough to overcome their dread of the ghouls. They launched ahead, their mass and speed overwhelming the majority of the ghouls in our path.
“Regroup ahead, everyone,” Robin thundered. “Block the tunnel!”
As we started to obey his order, Agnë swung around, and screamed Little Jon’s name. I looked back in time to see him being buried under two dozen ghouls.
Just as Robin started to gallop back to his friend’s aid, Little Jon exploded up from the pile of ghouls with a