Page 129 of Bull Moon Rising

It immediately shakes, the force of several ratling bodies flinging themselves against the door.

“Barricade,” I pant. “We need to barricade.”

Mereden immediately shoves her staff through the metal handles ofthe door, preventing them from pushing it open. I nod agreement, wrapping my belt around the handles to double the effect.

“That’ll stop them for a while,” Lark says, catching her breath. She’s still clutching her ribs, which is worrisome, but there’s nothing we can do about it right now. “We need to find a better place to hide out.”

“Where are we anyway?” Gwenna asks, wiping her brow. “Is this another wine cellar?”

I cast my light around, and my bad wrist sends a wave of pain up my arm. I ignore it, because there’s nothing to be done. This room isn’t a mess like the other one. It’s a smaller chamber with a low ceiling and looks like it’s been carved directly from stone. There’s a stone couch at the far end of the room, and several more short ones carved into the walls, all of them littered with long-rotted debris. I move toward the one at the back of the strange chamber and touch the decaying flowers across the bench. They turn to dust, and I wipe it away. As I do, I see the glyphs written across the slab and groan.

“What?” Gwenna asks, turning to me in a panic. “What now?”

“Remember how Lark said we’d landed in a graveyard?” I ask, tired. “And I said no, the Prellians buried their dead in their houses because they wanted them close by?”

“NO,” Gwenna cries, realization dawning on her. Kipp slumps, his hand on his snout.

I nod. “We found the crypt.”

The others sag with defeat. I know how they feel. It’s like we’re being hit with bad luck over and over again. The door shakes and rattles once more, and everyone looks uneasy. Lark and Kipp untie their rope leads, and I don’t blame them. I untie mine, too. We’re not going anywhere.

“We need to reinforce the door,” I point out. “I don’t think there’s another way out of here, but at least they can’t get in.”

“Yet,” Lark adds.

“All right, all right, enough sunshine from you,” Gwenna tells her. She holds the piece of shell back out to Kipp. “You can have this back. It’s caused enough trouble for us so far.”

He cradles it to his chest lovingly, stroking the hard, jagged edges.

The door jerks again.

“Reinforcements?” Mereden asks in a small voice.

“What can we use?” Gwenna looks around, frustrated. “I don’t see any furniture and this is the one place there are no fallen rocks.”

I hate myself even as I brush the dust off the bier at the end of the small crypt. “This has a stone lid. We can use it.”

We all pause, considering.

“Ugh,” Gwenna says after a moment.

“I know. I want to smack myself for even suggesting it, but I think whoever is in there would understand.” I want to wring my hands but my wrist feels like loose shards of glass. “It feels wrong, but to me it’s more wrong to let those things in.”

“Even more wrong than wrong if we let them kill us,” Mereden says. “I vote we grab it.”

“Let’s just do it and we’ll apologize to the dead later,” Gwenna says.

We five move to the side of the stone bier. The sides are high, the sarcophagus deep. The lid looks thin, barely two knuckles wide, but the weight feels near impossible. It takes all of us heaving and struggling to even lift it just enough to tilt it off to one corner. From there, we slide it to the floor and then continue to slide it over to the door. Once we lean the stone against the double doors, I collapse against it, exhausted.

Nothing’s coming in through this, that’s for damn sure.

“I could sleep for a week,” Lark says dramatically, flopping her pack down beside me.

“Even with all these dead bodies around?” Mereden asks.

“Even with.”

“Not me. I’m going to have nightmares about Magpie and Barnabus and rats,” Gwenna states as she slides down to the floor across from us. Kipp nods, still petting his shell fragment.

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