“I think it will be sufficient for me to return at a later date. Thank you anyway.”
With their target gone, Clement had no intention of sticking around. He turned and left, trying not to betray any unnecessary haste in his movements. None of their plans had accounted for her absence. He needed to get back to Gertrude and find out what had happened.
He definitely did not want to stick around while there was a pillar wandering the school grounds.
Not without his armor.
— — —
Eva snapped to a sitting position in her bed, pushing the nausea to the back of her mind.
“Sawyer knows,” she said.
Nel jumped to her feet. “W-what do you mean?”
The augur’s heartbeat had been constantly elevated during their little road trip. Every time she glanced in Serena’s direction, it jumped a bit more before settling back down. If Eva hadn’t known better, she might have guessed that the augur had feelings for the vampire.
Feelings other than fear, that was.
The moment the words left her mouth, Nel’s heart went into overdrive. She ran to the door and peeked out the peephole as if Sawyer was right outside at this very moment.
A groan came out from under the covers of the other bed.
Serena could keep herself awake through the day without much trouble. Younger vampires apparently had issues with that. At a half century old, Serena was hardly young. However, with all of the fighting that would be likely be happening in the next few days, she had elected to get some beauty sleep.
And she obviously needed it.
Serena pushed the covers off her with another groan, looking like the risen dead that she was. Her eyes were half lidded and there was a certain stiffness in her movements. With her hair unkempt in a halo around her head, she sat up and groggily glanced around the room. A stark contrast to her normally chipper and well-groomed appearance.
Eva, however, was barely paying attention. She was focused on Sawyer and his reading of the text message that they had sent. “He took one look at the message and realized that something was wrong.”
Eva jumped out of bed and ran to her backpack, fighting off the sensory nausea. She had to get everything ready. All of the demon blood and bloodstones, Basila and an engorgement potion, a certain cursed dagger, and her blood that she was going to use to bribe the vampires with. She would have to skip over one ritual that she had wanted to perform on herself.
The movements were making her sick. Sawyer’s agitated state didn’t help much either.
“They must have had some sort of pass phrase that we didn’t include.”
“Calm down,” Serena said slowly, her words transforming into a long yawn partway through. “He doesn’t know that it is you, does he?”
Eva paused her frantic movements, thinking about and watching what Sawyer was up to.
Sawyer had spent the remainder of the day making skeletons with Des. An hour after nightfall, he headed back to the graveyard and started looking through corpses, just as he had the night before. He spent some time sorting through a number of caskets and sending them either to the warehouse or the field. Once finished, he had gone to the field himself.
After he had his hands elbow deep inside the second casket of the night, Eva had sent off her text message.
A simple note about how ‘the boss’ was having him do a few tasks and the vampire might be out of contact for a time.
As Eva had hoped, Sawyer didn’t check his phone immediately. As before, he had forgotten about it until noon. Or maybe he had been deliberately not responding. Either way, he hadn’t looked at the message for several hours.
That was when everything had gone awry.
His eyes had roamed over the words. With an unnatural calm, Sawyer turned off the phone and slipped it into his pocket. He moved back into the room where Des was still slaving away with the skeletons.
“Des,” he had said, “if you would be so kind, we need to prepare for guests.”
The girl had looked up and raised the stitches that made up her right eyebrow.
“No, no,” Sawyer had said with a chuckle. “I imagine these guests are not the sort we want to set tea out for. Set all skeletons on alert and ensure that they are armed. I shall see if I can’t do something more about what may be occurring.”
Focusing herself on her surroundings as Sawyer wandered off, Eva shook her head.
“Sawyer doesn’t know that it is me. He just thinks that something is going to be attacking.”
Serena gave a light hum as she brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Is he fleeing?”
“No,” Eva said with a shake of her head. “He’s preparing defenses.”
“Then we still have time,” she said with another yawn.
Why vampires needed to yawn, Eva couldn’t quite understand.
But, at the end of her yawn, Serena pulled the covers of her bed up over her head, leaving only a few strands of curly blond hair peeking out at the top.
Eva stared for a moment at the unmoving lump beneath the blankets before shaking her head. Serena was right. There was no need to run into things right away. Sawyer had obviously invested a great deal of time into setting up his ritual. He wouldn’t just abandon it without a fight.
And there definitely would be a fight now.
Sawyer was pacing through his warehouse. Somewhere along the way, he had gained four enigmas and four skeletons at his back. One room that he passed through had a summoning circle set up inside.
Oddly enough, there were no shackles anywhere to be seen. It was a wonder that he was still alive.
Then again, perhaps he had found a way to specifically target the enigmas. Eva hadn’t seen any demons wandering around. Not even the demon hybrids that he had used to attack the academy. However he had managed to tame the enigmas, it probably worked instantly. Similar to Devon dominating demons. He would have no need of protection between himself and his summonings.
Unfortunately for Eva’s curiosity, he didn’t actually stop to summon more enigmas. He went outside the warehouse and into a smaller building that might have been offices at one point in time. It was dark inside; the windows had all been boarded up. The sunlight coming in from the door didn’t reach very far beyond the entryway.
Walking through the corridors made from cubicles, Sawyer eventually came to a small room deep inside. There were no windows at all, not even boarded up ones. Maybe a custodial closet of some sort.
Pulling on a string that led to an overhead lamp, incandescent light from a fading bulb washed the small room in an orange glow.
“Hello Amelia,” he said.
Eva just stared. Not that she could do much else, at least on Sawyer’s end of her senses. But Sawyer was definitely doing something stare-worthy at the moment.
‘Amelia’ was a corpse. And Sawyer was talking to it.
Its jaw hung wide open. With its lips rotted away to reveal the teeth, it looked like it was screaming in horror. Gaping holes and the back of a skull were all that remained of its eyes. Its skin was tight and gaunt around its bones. Both hands were frozen, clawed across its chest as if she had died while eating something upsetting. Its bony legs were pressed together, crossing right at the ankles. Rope had been strung around the ankles to suspend the entire corpse upside down in the small room.
Oddly enough, there was no smell. Not like the other corpses. Eva was mostly certain that she hadn’t just grown used to it.
The decay was different as well. All of the skin was a tan color with a leathery texture–she could tell when Sawyer reached forward to brush against the thing’s arm. Its stomach and chest were so sunken in that there couldn’t be anything left inside.
Which probably helped the smell, now that Eva thought about it.
“My dear Amelia. I might be having guests soon. Unwanted guests. Vampires, most likely. I don’t suppose that you might be able to do anything about them?”