River of Shadows (Underworld Gods #1)(38)

“You don’t feel betrayed?”

It’s like he’s trying to get a reaction from me, but the truth is I don’t care. Okay, I do a little. Rasmus could have been honest with me from the start, but then he didn’t know if I’d go through with it. It’s one thing to say you’ll do anything, it’s another to follow through. Just as Vellamo had said.

“What are you going to do when you find him?” I ask warily. Despite Rasmus having an ulterior motive, I don’t want anything bad to happen to the guy.

“Oh, I haven’t given it much thought.”

“Did you really torture him? He seemed fine to me.”

I swear I can tell Death is smiling. “There are different types of torture, little bird.”

Suddenly he stops and puts his arm out, the cloak flowing over me as I still. “Listen,” he says, voice lowered.

I concentrate, listening.

Then I hear it. A long wailing sound, the same sound I briefly heard when Tellervo and I first came to the desert. It rises in tone, totally eerie and inhuman, and feels like nails on a chalkboard, making my nerves shake and twist.

“Wh-what is that?” I manage to say, the sound making me stutter.

“The Liekki?,” he says. “Spirits of murdered children.”

I stare at him aghast.

He glances at me. “I didn’t murder them, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says testily. “They are relics from the Old Gods. Like many relics here, they cling on through the ages, impossible to get rid of, like fleas on a bonerat.”

The wailing gets louder, enough that I have to put my hands over my ears, the sound tearing me apart from the inside. “Fucking hell. Make it stop!” I yell.

“Can’t do much about them,” Death says, or at least I think he says it. I can’t tell anymore, all I hear is the terrifying, persistent noise. “There they are now.” He raises his arm and points in a dramatic fashion.

In front of us, flames emerge from the mist, giving off a black smoke that mixes with the orange, creating a sort of smog that fills the air. The flames come lurching forward and it’s only then that I notice the bodies. The walking bones of children, mouths open in that punishing scream.

“This all used to be forest at one point,” Death says, somehow his voice getting through to me. “But the Liekki? burned it down with their rage. The Hiisi managed to put a ward up to protect this side of the forest, as Tapio the Forest God wasn’t able to stop them. That’s why the Gods let the Hiisi share the forest.”

I can’t keep my eyes off the horrific sight, both terribly sad because these are clearly children, or were once, and terribly frightening because they won’t stop screaming, won’t stop staggering forward with their tiny, outstretched flaming hands and their snapping jaws.

Death steps in front of me, as if to be my shield. “They bite,” he warns. “Little vampires. They won’t get through my armor, but you’re made of the softest flesh and bone.”

I’m aware I’m his prisoner and he has an iron collar around my damn neck, but even so, I’m momentarily grateful for his presence. I move my head around the breadth of him to see the flaming murdered children come closer and closer, an awful stench filling the air.

Suddenly the flames are fanned as a burst of cold wind flows through us and a shadow is cast from above. I look up in time to see Sarvi in flight, huge black leathery wings, like a bat, blotting out the sun.

The unicorn swoops down, my hair blown back by the wingbeats, then dives with its horn aimed at the flames. It spears its horn through the skull of one of the children, then whips its head back, its long black mane flowing majestically, as the skeleton child goes flying through the air, landing in a heap of broken bones. The unicorn quickly does the same to the other children, spearing them in the skull and tossing them, until the flaming pile of skeletons are far from us.

“Are they…dead…dead?” I ask Death.

“No, they’re immune,” he grumbles. “They’ll get up in a few minutes. You don’t want to be here when they do.” He strolls toward the unicorn, who is waving its head around, snorting hot air, one white eye on one side of its face, on the other an empty socket. “In the nick of time, Sarvi,” he says to it.

Then Death yanks the chain and I nearly fall to my knees again. “Ow!” I cry out.

“I’ll happily leave you behind if that’s what you want,” Death says, leaning against the unicorn’s shoulder. “You already talk too much.”

“We had a deal,” I say stiffly, trying to gain what dignity I can with an iron dog collar around my neck.

“That we do,” he says with a sigh. “So then, you better get yourself over here.”

I walk toward him, the chain clanking and then he’s grabbing me, his hands completely circling my waist, and throwing me up onto the unicorn’s back.

“Make a fist in the mane,” Death says as he swings himself up and I find myself lodged between the unicorn’s thick, partially skeletonized neck and Death’s armored body. “You’ll want to hold on for your pointless little life. Pull as much as you like. Sarvi can’t feel anything.”

Once again, sir, that’s not exactly true, a placid voice with a quasi-British accent says, seemingly from out of nowhere.