“What is it?” he whispered.
Karril breathed in sharply, for once without a pat rejoinder. “Damned if I know.”
With a wrenching sensation in his gut he realized that the living blanket was parting, ever so slowly. Limbs contracted to draw the nearer bodies out of their path; their motion was crablike and horrible, not at all human. What is this place? he thought desperately. A narrow path was forming, flanked by twitching limbs. It was just wide enough for them to walk single file, if they watched where they were going. Just narrow enough to make him feel sick at the thought of such a passage.
But ...
That was the path, without question; he didn’t need Karril to tell him that. Tarrant’s own fear had marked it for them. How many miles did this horror stretch onward, glazed eyes staring out of undead faces as spider-fingers struggled to clear the way? His stomach churned at the thought that one wrong step might put him in contact with those gruesomely contorted bodies, but a hissing behind him, like steam off approaching lava, warned him that to stay where he was might prove an even worse alternative.
There’s no other choice, he told himself grimly. Not unless we want to go back the way we came. And that was out of the question.
“All right,” he muttered. “Let’s do it.”
He went first, moving toward the narrow path the bodies had made for them. On both sides the mounds of flesh still twitched and writhed, and periodically a leg or a hand would be flung across their path, a gruesome reminder that their new-made road might disappear as quickly as it had begun. The thought made hot bile rise in his throat, but still he forced himself forward. There’s no other way, he told himself, repeating the words over and over again, a mantra of endurance. Behind him he could hear the hiss of lava as it flowed down the rocky slope and enveloped the nearest bodies, and the stink of burnt flesh filled the air like a choking perfume. He could see details of the bodies now, faces and breasts and buttocks made waxen and distorted by death, undead eyes gazing out of hollowed sockets as if facing some unseen horror. The movements of their limbs were not random, he could see now, but each body twitched as if running, or striving to run, while the weight of all its neighbors trapped it in place and turned the motion into a mockery of flight.
His foot landed close to the head of one, then by the clutching hand of another. It took almost balletic skill to avoid coming in contact with them, a trial his burned and aching body was no longer up to. It seemed to him that every step must surely be his last, and only the sheer horror of the bodies surrounding him gave him the strength to keep going. Karril followed silently behind him, wrapped in her own Iezu thoughts. Were these unalive creatures human enough to disturb her? Did they give off waves of pain of their own, or some other, more virulent suffering? He glanced back now and then to check on the demon, but though Kami’s expression was grim her short nod told Damien that all was well with her. For the moment.
And then he stopped and stared, as one human fragment among many caught his eye. A dark arm atop the paler ones. Thick hair, as black as night. Eyes that he knew, staring into the sky like eyes of the dead even as the dark limbs twitched in a mockery of life.
“Sisa,” he whispered.
He heard the Iezu curse softly as she, too, realized who this body belonged to. Tarrant’s latest victim, strewn atop this lake of human remains like so much garbage. How many others here were his victims, or at least vivid simulacra of the same? He looked out upon the acres and acres of twitching flesh and shuddered. They were all women, and from what he could see they were all within a narrow age range. Mostly pale, as befit the Hunter’s taste in victims. Doubtless attractive during their lives, although now that quality made them seem doubly gruesome.
Then: “Move!” the demon hissed from behind him, and he did so without thought, trusting Kami’s warning. Fingers scratched his ankle as he moved just beyond the reach of something, and for a moment a wave of fear surged through his blood with such force that his limbs bound up like a frozen motor. Frightened, he struggled to keep moving. From behind him the demon hissed sharply as if in pain, but when he stopped to turn around, a hand shoved him from behind as if to say, I’m fine! Keep going! Glancing down at the ground before his feet, trying to locate the safest ground, he saw with horror that human limbs were closing in on the path from both sides. Arms grasped at him as he lurched past, some closing on air behind him, some coming close enough to scrape his boots. For some reason that sight made him more afraid than all of Tarrant’s lava hell combined, and he broke into a run. Forcing his way past the grasping arms, whose fingers sent waves of terror coursing through his soul whenever they made contact. Where was the end of this path? he thought desperately. How many bodies were there? He found it impossible to believe that so many women could have fallen victim to one man’s hunger, but what did he really know about the Hunter? How many numberless atrocities had the man indulged in, in the years before his semi-retirement in the Forest?
And then one of the arms grabbed his ankle and held it. His own weight sent him plunging forward and down, into the hands and the arms and the legs that were waiting for him, and—
—running. Tree branches spreading across the path like spider silk, dark webs catching her as she runs, she struggles, she convulses madly, desperately, as the black thing that has chased her for three days and nights closes in—
—running while the ground comes alive, crawly things oozing out of the very pores of the earth to trip at her ankles, sending her facedown into a bed of hungry worms—
—running from the thing that has chased her for days, manlike but demon-strong, whose hunger licks at her flesh as she stumbles, as she feels sharp talons piercing her skin, setting hot blood to flow free—
Strong hands took hold of his hair and his collar and yanked upward; it was the pain more than anything which made the visions scatter, allowing him one precious instant in which he could gasp for breath. The hands about his ankles shifted grip, and the visions began to close in once more-but the demon dragged him forward, hard enough and fast enough for them to be thrown lose. Left behind.
Shuddering, he gasped, “Tarrant’s victims—”
“I know,” Karril said grimly. “Keep moving!” He knew in that moment, as he struggled to his feet once more, that the demon had experienced those awful visions through him. And he knew with dread certainty that if he should fall again, if those bodies should overwhelm him, the demon would be trapped alongside him in an endless hell of suffering, reliving the last moments of each of the Hunter’s victims over and over and over again....
He ran. Fast enough that the hands couldn’t take hold of him, or so he prayed. Hard enough that any which did would be shaken loose by his momentum, before the memories they stored within their flesh could take hold. One arm lashed out across the path and he landed on it, crushing its dead flesh into the rock ground beneath; a spear of memory burned up through his leg and he felt cold teeth bite into his throat, the hot wound of despair as his lifeblood gushed out. It took everything he had not to stumble, but terror lent him a strength that cold logic could never have inspired, and he managed to stay on his feet. There were moans all about him now, and while some were echoes of pain and fear, others seemed to be sounds of hunger. Were the bodies aware of him? Did they think he was Tarrant? Ahead of him the path was closing up now, and he realized in horror that to get beyond this region he was going to have to wade through a sea of bodies, each of which had the power to send him spiraling down into unending nightmare. Panic assailed him, and he glanced back over his shoulder-stumbling as he did so-to assess the odds of retreat. There were none. The path in the distance was already gone, and as they ran forward, a wave of flesh came at them from behind, threatening to submerge them utterly. And then he reached the wall of limbs and he surged into it, knowing even as he did so that no human velocity could possibly overwhelm such an obstacle, that a realm which had been designed to overwhelm the great Gerald Tarrant could easily overcome a mere human like himself—