The Smilers trailed after us, didn’t seem to have it in them to get too close. Rosha looked about ready to throw up and hung back out of our sight.
I stopped, my gaze sliding past the opportunistic bastards like a reaper calmly surveying a field of wheat. My brush with such a mass of vileness had affected me and it was a struggle to remain calm. If I hadn’t been sickened by what I had just done I think I might have killed the rest too.
“Fuck off,” I said. “Or I’ll kill you all.”
The mob burst apart like a flock of startled sparrows and the burning doors of Charra’s Place swung open to disgorge a fully armed and armoured host, Layla at the head. The hulking forms of Grant and Nevin flanked her as she approached us, both of the big hairy clansmen gits bloodied and battered. Layla’s clothes were bloodstained but it didn’t look like hers. She ignored the twitching mindless bodies behind me. “Where is my mother?”
I swallowed. “She’s safe. The Arcanum has her, but I’ll get her back.” It grew dark as a bank of thick smoke rolled over us, making it more akin to night than day.
Realisation suddenly crapped on me from a great height. Idiot. You bloody fool! In my worry over Cillian and Layla I had forgotten something vital, life and death even. I was covered in sweat and blood and I’d just used an enormous amount of my magic out in the open for any fool to sense – or any daemon. I shoved Cillian into Layla’s arms. “Get her to the Arcanum alive and you’ll get your mother back.”
Cillian gasped for breath. “Edrin, what are–”
I didn’t hear the rest, was too busy fleeing as fast as abused muscles could carry me. A sudden churning in my gut and a glimpse of luminous green eyes through the smoke warned me that my idiocy had paid off.
Chapter 26
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck…
I sprinted towards the Seth faster than I’d ever run in my life, feet barely seeming to touch the stone. They had caught my scent and I now had exactly one chance to live. I bolted towards the turgid roar of the river dead ahead.
A shadow cat the size of a horse padded from the smoke into the street right in front of me. It was Burn, scarred muzzle sniffing this way and that. My senses were befuddled by the smoke but it seemed she was affected just as badly. I slowed and circled right, trying to be quiet as I padded towards a side alley.
Matte black wisps of fur writhed across her body as her great head swung in my direction. Her shining eyes snapped to me and burned with hatred. It hissed, revealing obsidian incisors the length of my hand. Somewhere nearby yet more claws clicked on stone.
Cockrot.
Claws scrabbled behind me as I vaulted a low wall and leapt right. The shadow cat skidded past, sliding into an abandoned goods cart. The expected crash didn’t come, instead a twisting racked my guts as she vanished into the shadows beneath the cartwheels – only to slide from a darkened doorway further ahead.
I lurched from the alley, trying to make it to the river before the rest of the pack arrived. I was so close. Barefoot, I could feel the roar of water thrumming through the ground. A gust of wind thinned smoke to reveal the black bulk of cats stalking me on either side. It was pointless to try to fight.
Up ahead – the hazy forms of weather-worn statues lining the riverbank. I ran for my life. The tang of raw sewage and running water cut through the smoke. So near, but so damn far. Claws click-click-clacked, gaining with every step I took. My wounded leg was about to give out. Come on, not yet, not yet… A pitted statue coalesced from the smog. I panicked, dived blindly past it, hands up to cover my head. For a sickening moment I thought I’d misjudged, was about to smack face-first into the ground, but instead I plunged through smoke towards the river.
A great paw caught the back of my coat, jerking me to a stop. I dangled from Burn’s claws like a fish on a hook, flailing to break free. The beast growled, slowly hauling me up to its fangs. I swung both feet up, planted them against the stone banking and shoved with all my strength.
I swung out towards the river and desperately tried to shrug off my coat. Something tore and I fell. Air gusted across the back of my neck as another paw swiped out, barely missing. The thing yowled and scrabbled for balance, failed.
I hit the Seth, a hard belly-slap that exploded the air from my lungs. Coughing and spluttering, I surfaced just in time to see a thrashing mass of shadow and claw plunging towards my head. I dived. The beast hit the water, shockwave and heavy weight on my back pushing me deeper until my feet scraped the mud. Water churned as the creature struggled to the surface. I clamped a hand over the wound in my leg and played dead, letting the flow carry me downstream. A swarm of pale and bony corpse-fish surrounded me, tasting my blood in the water, then as one they swarmed the struggling shadow cat. Horrors lived in the Seth, and things canny enough to survive centuries of eradication attempts by the Arcanum wouldn’t have any hesitation in chowing down on my bones – if they didn’t have something bigger and meatier to attract their attention.
I drifted up with desperate slowness. When my face finally broke the surface the shadow cat’s screeches filled my heart with savage joy. After all these years I’d finally finished the damned fleabag off. Darkness steamed from Burn’s exposed insides and the water around her writhed with fish more teeth than tail. My toes instinctively curled up and my balls attempted to retreat into my body. I loathed swimming, hated not knowing what was lurking beneath me – I couldn’t help but imagine things with too many teeth eyeing up my toes like fat and juicy worms. I muffled a yelp as something big and spongy brushed past my dangling feet. The corpse-fish scattered. A second later something pulled the shadow cat under. Burn didn’t resurface.
I forced myself to stay still and waited to be carried down to Sethgate Bridge where I could use the steps to climb back up to street level. Flapping tails and snapping teeth churned the water to froth upstream as scavengers fought over titbits of daemon flesh and magic. Once they’d finished devouring the cat I would be next. As soon as the steps below the bridge came into reach I flailed for the bank and heaved myself up onto solid stone, crawling until my toes were well out of reach.
I lay on my back panting and looking up at the smoke-filled sky, letting my heartbeat slow and the fear drain from my body. Patchy blue and sunbeams struggled through smoke and cloud. “Not dead yet,” I said. My face felt strangely numb. I probed with a finger, finding something soft and squidgy attached to my cheek.
“Ew, ew, ew.” I pried the fat black leech from my skin by sliding a fingernail under its suckers and then tossed it back into the river, wiping blood from my cheek.
I pried two more from my arms. And then something twitched inside my trousers. I shuddered, feeling sick as I undid my belt and whipped them down to my ankles. Horror stabbed me as something pale and cock-sized plopped out and rolled free across the ground. I cackled in relief – just a baby barrel eel.
I smiled at my crotch. “Still safe and sound, eh, old pal.”
“What a disconcerting sight,” Shadea said from the bridge above. “Just what are you doing, Edrin Walker?”
I groaned and looked up from my cock to see that old crone leaning out over the side of the bridge, eyebrows raised. Eva joined her, now dressed in full battle plate with a bastard sword strapped to her back. Both women were dusty, dishevelled and bruised but otherwise looked fine. I was glad that Eva had escaped the Boneyards alive but my feelings on Shadea’s survival were conflicted.