Page 50 of Silver in the Bone

A head, hairless and slick with sludge, rose from the putrid depths. Its eyes gleamed silver as they caught the light of a head lamp.

And then it wasn’t one, but many. The filmy water bubbled as they emerged from the dark depths and floated toward us.

Cabell grabbed my shoulder, drawing me closer to his side as he held out my axe. “What the hell do we do?”

I shook my head, choking on words that wouldn’t come. There was no way back to the barges. No way forward.

There was only the slick crackle of flesh rent from bone and the helpless screams as one by one the lights vanished and the mist devoured us whole.

A long, icy hand clamped around my ankle and I screamed.

Emrys lunged forward with a cry, severing its gray arm with one axe blow. The creature howled and screeched, sinking back into a hole in the ground.

I kicked the hand free from my leg, shuddering. And then we were running, all of us, running harder than I thought my body could ever manage, even lit by fear.

The forest blurred around us, the hollowed trees toppling as the creatures leapt from one to the next, keeping pace. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Septimus weaving through the stalks of dead grass and bramble. Blood, so dark it was nearly black, sprayed through the air as he battered the creatures with his axe. The two Hollowers who flanked him vanished, tackled to the ground and torn to bloody ribbons of flesh that turned the mist a revolting pink.

“What are they?” Cabell gasped out.

“Revenants?” Emrys suggested.

Gods, I hoped not. The living dead couldn’t be killed by mortal weapons, and would only continue to rise again, no matter how many parts we cut off.

My memory tore through all the thousands of books it had consumed, but nothing matched the description of these creatures—no etchings, no brief passages in compendiums and bestiaries, nothing.

Without knowing what they were, we wouldn’t know how to kill them. Wounding them with blades was only slowing them down.

“We need to drop the bags!” Cabell shouted.

“No!” The creatures’ claws kept snagging the leather, but I would be dead and damned before I lost the last of our supplies.

Pulling out the small pocketknife, I slashed blindly through the air as creatures leapt down from the trees, trying to trap one of us beneath the cage of their bodies.

“Tamsin, duck!” Emrys shouted. As I did, he swung his axe over my head, lodging it in the side of one of their soft skulls. Cabell led us through the diseased trees, deeper into the heart of the isle.

It was a moment more before I realized the screaming from the other Hollowers had stopped.

They’re all dead, my mind taunted.

All that was left now was us. The creatures, strings of saliva seeping between their teeth, turned toward us in unison, realizing the same.

I glanced at the sorceress, and the plea must have been etched into my expression.

“I can’t cast while running,” Neve said between gasping breaths. “I need to carve the sigils—”

One creature dove for her, grasping with two front claws, and I ripped her away. Emrys followed up with his axe, bringing it down and severing one of the limbs.

The other clawed his arm, tearing through the layers of fabric and into his flesh. He stumbled with a curse, nearly dropping the axe. I lunged and jammed my knife into one of the creature’s lidless eyes.

“Come on!” I told Emrys, taking his arm.

“My hero,” he managed to get out.

“I don’t have time to think of an annoyed comeback!” I panted. “Just—”

As they had before with Neve, the creatures swung their hungering faces toward Emrys—toward the wound weeping blood on his arm.

The hag’s words came back to me like a nightmare. They, too, delight in blood and burn in light.

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