Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(113)

The last black-eyed woman standing turned to them, the stone arms in her possession and her eyes blank.

She ran at them, her speed beguiling.

“Don’t let her get out the door!” Paloma shouted.

Unsure of what else to do, Luka ran at the woman and tackled her. He held her down by the shoulders. Just like the other monsters, she didn’t try to hurt him, but she tried to break free from his hold, wriggling and bucking beneath him.

“Where are they? Where are the hands?” Paloma stood over him, breathless. The woman didn’t have them anymore.

“I don’t know, she was just holding them when I grabbed her!”

A quick tapping sound from behind drew Luka’s attention. The stone hands were skittering on their fingers like spiders across the floor of the vault toward the door.

“You failed to mention that the hands are alive!” Luka shouted.

“They haven’t been for centuries,” Paloma shot back, her usual monotone voice clipped with annoyance. She focused on the stone hands. “Parar!” But the hands didn’t listen to the magic, didn’t freeze. They kept going. “Parar! They’re too close to the magic; it’s woken them.”

Luka had no time to ask her for clarification on that, because the hands were darting out of the vault and down the hall. Paloma made a messy gesture with her hand and a band of stone curled around the black-eyed woman’s waist. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it would keep her down. She jerked Luka away from the writhing woman and dragged him out of the vault.

“Those hands cannot get to the ballroom, do you understand?” she said as they ran, trailing behind as the hands turned a corner. Luka had thought the day that Alfie had brought the thief into the palace had been the weirdest day of his life. But chasing some stone hands down the palace halls with Paloma left that day in the dust.

With quick gestures, Paloma raised blockades of stone from the ground to corral the hands into a corner. She dove forward and landed on them.

She gripped them to her chest by their forearms, the hands stretching up toward her neck like a morbid bouquet of flowers. Luka crouched in front of her, watching them wriggle against her chest. Paloma got on her knees and opened her mouth to speak, but the hands wrapped tight around her throat like a vise. Eyes wide, Paloma choked, gasping for breath.

“Shit!” Luka cursed. He tugged at the disembodied forearms, but the fingers wouldn’t unwrap from Paloma’s neck. Luka only dragged her forward with every pull. “I’m sorry!” he said as she wheezed helplessly. Luka grabbed the fingers and with all his might, pulled each digit back one by one. Finally he pulled the hands free of her. Paloma collapsed forward, gasping for breath.

The hands fought in Luka’s arms and he could only think to say, “Bad hands! Very bad hands!”

Calling upon every ounce of his baffling strength, Luka forced the hands to knit their fingers together and held them with each of his palms pressing the hands flush against one another.

“Are you all right?” Luka asked her as he held the writhing statue.

Paloma slowly rose to her feet, her voice raspy. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to get to my quarters. I’ve got to get them far away from here, from that man in the ballroom.” Paloma’s eyes shifted to look just over Luka’s shoulder. Her face tightened.

At the far end of the hall were the three women from the vault, and they’d brought friends. A horde of black-eyed monsters stood impossibly still, staring at the statue Luka held.

“Uh-oh,” Luka said. Then the monsters were running to them at a breakneck speed. Luka dropped to his knees before Paloma. “Hop on my back!”

Paloma threw her arms around his neck and Luka took off down the hall as fast as his legs could carry him.

“Fuerza!” Paloma shouted from his back. “Parar!”

He could hear the bodies of the black-eyed falling to the ground, being thrown backward or pelted with Paloma’s stone carving. But he knew she couldn’t keep this up for long; there were too many of them and magic didn’t seem to affect them for long. The stone hands were wrestling between his palms, fighting to break free.

“Luka!” Paloma shouted. Luka looked over his shoulder just in time to see a black-eyed woman launch herself toward them. The force of the collision sent Luka rolling onto the ground. The stone hands flew out of his grasp. Luka made to run after them, but a yelp of pain drew him back. Behind him Paloma wrestled with the black-eyed woman. The due?a’s ankle was bent at an awkward angle, twisted from the fall. The woman pegged her to the ground like a cat would a mouse.

“Go!” Paloma shouted. “Get the hands! Leave me!”

Luka’s eyes darted between her and the hands scuttling farther down the hallway. He and Paloma had never quite seen eye to eye—after all, he was always pulling Alfie out of lessons and into trouble. But he couldn’t leave her in the grips of these monsters.

Her face tightened; she seemed to know what he was thinking. “Luka, do as I say!”

Luka bounded forward and knocked the black-veined woman off Paloma. With his inexplicable strength he sent the woman skipping across the corridor floor like a stone across a lake, back toward the rest of the black-eyed monsters rushing toward them. He flexed his fingers and summoned a globe of flame, readying himself for a fight. These monsters couldn’t harm him for some reason, but he could certainly harm them.