Page 3 of The Dead Saint

Sorcha leaned away, looking around wildly for someone, anyone. There is no one left. They’re all dead. She stepped closer, kicking his shin, her soft slipper coming up against thick, studded leather.

His laugh deepened, the bite of his fingers becoming unbearable.

“Help!” she screamed, frustrated with herself for wasting precious energy. There would be no help for her now.

“Help!” The man mimicked—mocking her—the word strange in his mouth. He spoke again, accent distorting his language, but she caught it clearly enough. There is no one to save you.

And of course, he was right. She knew it.

But a flicker of movement over his shoulder stopped her heart.

A tall, ashen man walked calmly up behind her captor, eyes an unusual pale yellow, flat and dead. His face was expressionless in the flicker of firelight. Without speaking, he thrust a dagger into her captor’s back, holding Sorcha’s horrified gaze, twisting the blade with a jerk of the wrist.

Sorcha stumbled back, the dying man going with her, his weight taking her to the ground. They landed together in a heap, pain shooting through her as she was caught between the weight of the man and the cobblestones.

Her captor tried to roll, eyes wide, mouth open, his grip on her finally easing.

The stranger followed him down, plunging the blade into his back again and again, the motion frenzied even as his face remained serene.

Sorcha sat frozen, unable to move, a scream echoing through her mind even as her voice failed her.

Get up! Run!

As if the man had heard her internal voice, he turned to her. Blood speckled his cheeks and splattered his black armor, and it dripped from the hand still gripping the blade. The attacker wiped the blade on the dead man’s cloak, his eyes leaving her face for a second.

She surged to her feet and bolted, clutching the fabric of her crimson dress, desperate to avoid tripping over it. But the man was up and moving more quickly than she’d anticipated, following with an ominous creak of leather and rattle of chainmail.

Sorcha glanced around, mind racing. The buildings to either side were burning. There was nowhere to run. The flames or the man? She made the decision in an instant, cutting to the left, focused on an open doorway where fire burned beyond.

The man grabbed her, jerking her backward, away from the flames she’d been so eager to embrace.

“Don’t be a fool,” he hissed, blackened teeth flashing. “There is someone who wants to meet you.”

His accent was strange, but he spoke her language more smoothly than the last man had. Even if she hadn’t understood, his message was clear. Don’t die before I get a chance to kill you. She didn’t bother to answer, fighting his grip, twisting to dislodge his strong fingers.

He watched her, a hunter studying a rabbit caught in a snare—dispassionate and calculating.

Her skin crawled, the hair on the back of her neck rising. This man was more dangerous than the other one had been.

Without another word, he began walking, dragging her behind him with one hand tight on her wrist. He didn’t pause when she stumbled, keeping her upright through force and determination.

She gasped as her bones creaked and squeezed together, and wondered if he’d break her wrist before they reached whatever destination he had in mind.

Sorcha’s head buzzed with what-ifs, fuzzy and disconnected from the world around her as she stumbled down Ruby Road beside this stranger. Her mind spun back, returning to the temple of the Saint and her final moments there. She tried to see what was around her, ground herself to this moment, but it was just as horrible as what had already happened. The memory, the horror of it, came to her like the visions that had been a constant since her childhood.

Blood. There had been so much blood. Spreading out, reflecting the fires, reminding her she had promises to keep. The faces of her friends and family, the temple elders and fresh initiates, the people she loved.

Gone.

Tears threatened, a stone in her throat, lungs on the verge of giving way to heaving sobs.

No. She wouldn’t expose those parts of herself, her terror and sorrow, the weight that had settled so completely in her bones. Don’t think about it. She would escape this man and find her way out of the city. There was a chance, she was still alive, and there was always hope.

Turning her attention to the part of the city they were now moving through, she was surprised to see how far they’d come. They were close to the outer wall here. It towered above her, throwing deep shadows across thatched and tiled rooftops, the shade beginning to scatter and flee as the fire spread out from the city center.

The man steered her down a smaller street as yet untouched by the fire, toward one of the larger plazas near the main gate. They passed shopfronts with shattered windows, glass gleaming on the ground—reflecting firelight—splashes of blood on the walls and cobblestones. But no bodies that she could see.

In a way, that was worse. To know people had died, to see the evidence, but not the bodies. Where had they been taken? Or had they risen from death to walk the streets like the old legends described?

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