Page 214 of Empire of Shadows

“What in the name of—” she began, but Adam cut her off by pressing a hand to her mouth.

Ellie started to protest, but he only shook his head. His expression was uncharacteristically serious. He put a finger to his lips, and then pointed up.

Her stomach knotted. The ceiling of the cave was covered in hanging bodies with brown fur and thick, leathery skin.

They were bats—terrifyingly large bats.

Ellie estimated that the animals were roughly four feet in length with wingspans broader than a man’s outstretched arms. They clung to the roof of the cave with massive black claws. As she watched, one of them yawned lazily, revealing an array of pale, knife-like fangs.

She could hear the animals around her. The sound was easy to overlook—just the subtle breathing and rustling of a hundred sleeping monsters.

Adam yanked her back into the tunnel. They crouched there together.

“What the hell are those?” he demanded in a whisper.

“I…” Ellie’s hands were shaking from the sight of the impossible, living nightmares. “I think they’re Camazotz.”

Adam ran a hand over his face. He was so filthy that the gesture only smeared the dirt.

“Bat Guy,” he muttered unhappily. “Bat Guy is real. Great.”

“How could they have survived down here all this time?” Ellie protested.

“They must have a way out to feed,” Adam replied.

Feed.

The horror of it swept over her. She thought of the slaughter back on the trail—the wild eyes of the dying man on the ground before her. The holes in his partner’s skull. The blood all over the leaves. The ravaged jaguar the day before.

Salió de la noche.

It had come out of the night.

The creatures responsible for that violence were sleeping in legions over her head.

Padre Kuyoc hadn’t been lying back in Santa Dolores when he’d warned Adam about monsters. They were here, and they were real enough that Ellie could have reached out and touched them—if the very notion of it didn’t make her blood run cold with terror.

She took a breath. Going faint from panic wasn’t going to help their situation. She had tothink.

“How did those twins of yours get past these guys?” Adam demanded.

“I am… not strictly certain that they did,” Ellie admitted uncomfortably.

“Fantastic,” Adam grumbled. He eyed the entrance to the cavern with obvious reluctance. “How about we try for ‘very damned quietly?’”

They crept back out into the sighing, rustling horror of the cavern. Ellie’s boots crunched over small bones in the thick slime of guano that covered the floor.

Sometimes the bones were larger.

She winced against every crackle, exquisitely aware of the mass of horrible brown bodies suspended over her head. Adam’s low-burning torch seemed painfully bright, but moving in the utter darkness they would face without the torch was even more terrifying.

Ellie let her eyes adjust as the light worked its way into the farther reaches of the room.

The cavern was easily the largest that they had encountered so far. Rock formations dotted the floor and ceiling, though they were closer and less profuse here than they had been in the House of Razors.

To her right, the cavern’s expanse was broken by a shelf of stone that rose to within fifteen or so feet of the ceiling. It looked like part of some other cavern that had partially collapsed long ago to merge with this one. The edge of the platform broke off just beneath a ragged hole in the roof that opened to a glimpse of wind-tossed trees and dark sky.

That had to be the way the bats were getting out. The notion made her stomach lurch.

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