Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(95)
Ignacio looked down at his legion of infected soldiers. A snarl unfurled from his lips. “Kill all who cannot house the dark.” His eyes met hers. “Every single one.”
The guard who was in the choke hold of a now black-eyed prisoner gave a shrill yelp. “Help me, please!”
Finn turned at the sound. The call was so pitiful that she reached for the same dagger she’d stabbed into his foot moments ago, but with a dry snap, the prisoner twisted his head sideways, breaking his neck.
When Finn turned back, Ignacio was out of sight, gone to muster his army, as if her death weren’t worth watching. As if she were worth nothing, just as he’d always said.
The prisoner gripped his bars and pulled them apart with his bare hands before turning to Finn and launching himself in a sprint toward her and the uninfected guards.
“You’ve been calling his name,” the prisoner crooned, just like the infected man in the pub. “Soon we will wake him. Soon he will answer your call.”
More were following him, breaking out of their cells and whispering of the god they would wake, their eyes trained on Finn and the uninfected guards. “Those not dark enough to carry his will within them,” an infected woman crooned, “stand against him.”
Understanding snapped in her head like a whip. Those who weren’t dark-hearted enough were turned to ash at the magic’s touch, but others were strengthened by it. And with Ignacio’s command, if they could not carry the dark magic they were marked for death.
Finn moved to run, but she was trapped. The horde of black-eyed guards and prisoners was closing in from either side of her on the circular floor.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Finn said as she pulled another dagger from her belt. She and the two guards stood back to back, turning in slow circles, made sudden allies as the fiends drew nearer and nearer. How would she get out of this?
Then one of the guards grabbed her with his meaty hand.
“Take her! Take her and let us go!”
“Are you serious?” Finn shouted as she squirmed in his grip.
“Ladies first,” the other growled as she was thrown forward, sent skidding to a halt before the horde of black-eyed monsters.
When two prisoners reached for her, the raised black veins wriggling beneath the flesh of their arms, Finn crouched down to the dead guard. She pulled the blade from his hand and swung at the infected men, chopping a hand away with a downward swipe. She could hear the guards behind her fighting the other side but could not look over her shoulder to, hopefully, watch them die after throwing her to the dogs. Finn gave another swing of the blade and a black-eyed woman gripped it in her hand, her face blank as the blade sank into her flesh. They felt nothing, knew nothing but the command to spread and discard the bodies that could not carry the magic. Finn’s stomach turned as the woman let the blade sink farther without a word. Her hands broken and bleeding, the woman wrenched the blade out of Finn’s grasp, letting it clatter to the floor. Arms swung at her, hoping to claim her as they did the dead guard at her feet.
Finn dodged and arched backward until her palms met the ground. She flipped back to stand beside the guards who had left her for dead. They started when she tapped them both on the shoulders.
“Cowards first,” she said. With a twist of her wrists, the stone of the ground rose to hold the guards by their ankles. Unable to move and dodge, they were descended on by the black-eyed men in a wave of outstretched hands and whispers of a god to come.
Finn climbed up on the banister and hung off the side, her legs swinging over the long drop to the ground floor. She needed to get out of the way as the black-eyed prisoners pulled tight around the trapped pair of guards. If she was out of sight, they wouldn’t come for her.
Finn saw a black-eyed woman grip one by the neck before plunging her hand into his chest, tearing at the skin sealed over his heart as if it were the gauzy wrapping on a gift. Blood burst out of him as he screamed and tried to push away only to find another monster behind him, pulling his arms wide, then back, as if trying to pull them from their sockets.
“Help us!” he shouted at Finn, but then both men disappeared beneath the horde and she could only see blood seeping across the floor from where they stood, as if a wellspring of red had sprouted from the ground.
Finn looked down at the ten-floor drop, her heart pounding in her throat.
She was too high to jump down and the horde before her would be finished with the guards soon enough. She needed to get out of here, and the maldito clock wouldn’t stop ticking above her head.
Wait. The clock.
Finn climbed back onto the banister and dashed farther down it to where the minute hand ticked. Her pulse pounding in her ears, she stood on the banister willing herself to jump, but her body would not move. The drop swelled beneath her, dragging her stomach up to meet her throat, but she would rather splatter on the ground than be taken by Ignacio’s minions. The faces of her parents flashed in her mind, flush with life—life that he’d snuffed out.
No, if she died it wouldn’t be at his hands, it would be at her own, and if it was this jump that delivered her from this life, so be it. At least she might see them again.
With that thought in mind, she swung her arms for momentum and leaped. For a terrifying moment, her legs pumped uselessly over the long drop down to Ignacio, her hands grasping at nothing but air. Then her fingers gripped the wide tip of the minute hand from either side. She swung her legs forward, building momentum that made the hand swing from seven to two, to the other side of the floor where there were no infected waiting. She swung her legs again and jumped from the clock, landing painfully draped over the banister, her legs hanging out over the long drop. She scrambled over it and onto safe ground. The black-eyed monsters had converged on more victims—three prisoners left in their barred cell like lambs awaiting slaughter—but she could see their eyes darting in her direction too. They would come for her. She needed to keep them occupied.