Endless Knight(42)

Spotlights flared down, blinding us. By the time my eyes adjusted, we were surrounded, armed cannibals spilling out of a nearby trap door in the ground.

Like ants.

17


Hell was a cannibal mine, and its entrance was just as we expected—torchlit, foggy, littered with bones.

Ten guards surrounded us, forcing us closer. They had spiky teeth and sickly skin. Their bodies were gaunt, starving.

Each had milky white, clouded eyes, a sign of the Hierophant’s enthrallment.

Seven of the men leveled rifles at Selena, Lark, Matthew, and me, even though we were bound, stripped of gear and weapons.

Neither Jack nor Finn had awakened, filling me with even more panic. One guard dragged Finn by an ankle. Two more hauled Jack by his arms. Matthew seemed not to register any of this, just kept murmuring, “The three. Water. The three.”


With dread, I realized the Hierophant’s call was getting louder. “He’s down there,” I whispered to Selena.

She nodded, her eyes a little wild. “Just stay calm. Your glyphs are dark. Every second we can survive, you recharge from the Bagger attack.”


“Recharge? In a mine?” My stomach roiled, my steps halting. I glanced over my shoulder, saw Lark’s eyes fill with tears. She was too young for this. We were all too young. She’d lost her beloved wolves, and we’d still been captured.

At the threshold, the lead guard collected a torch. His filed teeth were blackened. Like the others, his eyes were clouded. Sores bubbled around his lips, pus glistening in the firelight. His mouth looked like one you’d see on a meth addict’s mug shot. Meth-mouth.

On the long and jarring truck ride here, he’d lamented that he and his men couldn’t eat one of our “boys” for the road; they were starving, you see. But they obeyed the boss absolutely.

As we stepped into their underground lair, panic took root. Only my concern for the others kept me from resisting. My empty claws ached to sink into flesh.

Our captors forced us to descend deeper. Human bones and skulls were strewn throughout the mine. Rainwater seeped from the rock walls, gathering in streams at the sides of the shaft; it frothed over those bones, snagging them, tumbling them ever lower.

Oh, God, the stench was unimaginable—rot, mold, decomposition. I couldn’t get enough air, as if my lungs were constricting.

Selena said, “Easy, girl, we’ll get out of this.” But with every step deeper, she started to look as freaked out as I was.

Farther in, men were digging ditches to divert the water. From what?

Meth-mouth informed us, “Your arrival came at a perfect time. We were gettin’ mighty low on stores.” On bodies. “Just been nibbling here and there.”


Nibbling? I shuddered.

“We’ve about done starved, you see. Been conserving—but no longer! Tonight we’re gonna celebrate our catch with a feast from the pantry.”


Pantry?

“Why don’t you eat your own fallen?” Selena said with hardly a tremble.

“We’d never eat one of our own,” he said, adding ruefully, “no tougher meat than a cannibal’s.”


They all laughed like this was one of those everyday, regrettable truths, as if he’d just said, “Toast always lands butter-side down.”


When he saw me staring at his filed teeth, he snapped them at me. “The better to eat you with, my pretty.”


Their cackles echoed off the walls.

I tasted blood, realized I’d been biting the inside of my cheek. I was almost glad Jack was knocked out rather than have him witness this.

We entered what looked like their central gathering hub, a cavern that split into more shafts, like the spokes of a wheel. Too few wall torches fought with the dark. Dirty faces peered out from the shadows. Some smiled with excitement, flashing those eerie teeth.

The area was shaped like an amphitheater. The highest level was a raised dais, with a thronelike chair and a bloodstained dining table. A second level had tables and benches, the ground littered with more bones. In the center of the cavern was a depression that looked as if it were filled with oil. But when I saw meat hooks dangling from the high ceiling, I realized the oil was . . . blood.

I gazed around at the people impatiently waiting for a body to be hung there. They don’t even grill. My skin crawled, the hair on my nape standing up.

We passed a dug-out room filled with piles of clothes and packs. No, not piles, hills. The Teeth must’ve captured an entire town’s worth of people. Two of the guards chucked our things—bug-out bags, weapons, coats—in there as well.

Selena was gazing longingly at her beloved bow when I muttered, “Be on the watch for the Hierophant. And be careful not to look him in the eye, or you’ll end up like these people.”


She nodded.

The guards steered us into one of those split-off shafts, a murkier corridor. The ceiling was lower, the air colder and more ominous.

The end of the shaft had been remodeled as a jail with iron bars—and plenty of shackles, just like in Arthur’s dungeon. A single torch burned outside, casting flickering shadows over the occupants within.

“Welcome to the pantry,” Meth-mouth said as he and his men forced us inside.

Six prisoners were already fettered, all in various stages of starvation—and mutilation. They were “the stores” the Teeth had been conserving, the ones they’d been nibbling on.