House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(68)

“What – what is it?” The sound can’t be coming from Jannik; even Isidro is not that callous.

“Garret calls it the Lark,” Jannik says, and relief sweeps through me, leaving my legs trembling. “Just – just make it stop.” He sounds weary, his voice too husky.

I pull the gap wider, bricks tumbling down and shattering on the stone floor, until I have made a hole wide enough to crawl through. The darkness doesn’t reveal much. I am in a room that smells sickly sweet, of blood and pain, burned skin. Two shapes are slumped against the wall, their heads bowed and resting against each other. One raises its face to look at me.

“Jannik!” I am breathless. His name is lost under the screaming. I need to quiet whatever it is. I half-turn. It’s there – naked and crouched on all fours, eyes wide, mouth open as it screeches. An iron chain holds it straining in place as if it were a dragon dog trained to guard duty.

“Just kill the f*cking thing,” Isidro shouts over the noise.

I can’t. It’s a vampire. A child vampire.

Instead I take another deep pinch of scriv, shore up my sound barrier, and use the surge of magic to pull the iron cuffs on the vampires apart as easily as if they were made of woven grass.

Hunger cramps through my stomach. I double over clutching myself, just as Isidro lurches past me and grabs the screaming vampire by the throat and smashes its head against the wall. The screaming cuts off with a sickening thunk.

“What–” Before I can move, Jannik is up and holding me tightly against him. I push him back. “Don’t – scriv.”

“I know.” Reluctantly he steps back. His coat is gone and his white shirt is ripped in several places. I can smell the blood on him. And now with the iron gone – I can feel things – his hunger, his tiredness, his rising panic. His happiness that I’m here. Alive and well.

A solid thump comes from behind me and I turn to see Isidro kick the boy vampire again. “It’s still alive.” He kicks again and this time I hear a rib snap.

“Stop it!” I scream, and Isidro whirls around to face me, his eyes wide.

His shirt is gone, his trousers torn at the knees. He is barefoot. His perfect face is a mess of bruising, hair ragged and uncombed. Isidro looks like a wild thing caught in an iron-jawed trap. “Kill it,” he says to me, and takes a step back. “Or I will. Go on – suffocate it or whatever you War-Singers like best.”

“I am not going to kill it – him. He’s a child.”

“Not really,” Jannik says. “He’s probably about fifteen.”

I look again at the body. The boy is naked, thinner than a starving Hob, and as stunted. Its pale skin is unearthly, like a cave cricket.

“Isidro’s right.” Jannik sighs, and winces. “It would be a kindness to put it out of its misery.”

“What?” I look from one to the other, my ears ringing. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this – he’s one of you and you want me to what – snap its neck as if it were a pigeon.”

“This thing is nothing like me,” Isidro spits.

The air in the room is getting faint and hot, prickly and heavy with hunger. Jannik is holding himself away from me now and Isidro is so far gone he’s shivering. “We need to get out of here,” I say slowly. I am beginning to feel rather like a rabbit locked in kennel full of dragon dogs. “I am not killing him.”

“You’re going to leave it here as a witness?” Isidro stalks toward me and I can’t help but take a nervous step away from him. “Are you insane – forget your sentimental–”

“No.” I look around the room for something we can use to bind the child. There’s a tattered pile of rags in one corner that might be its nest. “Jannik, tie him up, gag him, and then cover him as best you can.” If I am going to be sneaking out of House Eline with two stolen vampires and a body, I suppose it will look only slightly less suspicious if the body isn’t naked.

“You’re taking it with?” Isidro is shrieking now. “We don’t have time for this, Felicita. And since when have you had a sympathetic heart, or are you trying to make up for your brother–”

“Shut up!” I yell. In the sudden startled silence I can hear Isidro wheezing, Jannik shuffling to his knees to bind the boy fast. “One more word, Isidro, and I swear I will strangle you instead.”

I need to get us out of here – not least of all before Garret and Carien return. There is also the more immediate problem of being locked in a room with two starving vampires.

There, on the far side of the room, a door. I breathe a small sigh of relief. At least I don’t have to smash a larger way out for the three of us. The lock clicks and tumbles open under my magic. “Isidro,” I say. “Open the door.” I need to keep him occupied.

Thankfully he does as I ask, and the door opens onto a short white passage leading to a small set of stairs. Jannik slings the unconscious body, wrapped now in discoloured rags, up onto his shoulder. The boy must weigh nothing more than a sack of feathers. We creep out, me in the lead, Jannik behind me and Isidro in the rear. Jannik’s terror is scraping all over me, and their combined hunger and pain is needling; pins poked through my organs and up out of my skin. I look down, half-expecting to see points of blood all over my arms.