Earth's Requiem(12)
“Aye. What’s it to you?” One of the men stepped forward. Even dead, with flesh peeling off him in strips and a caved-in place where it looked like someone had buried an axe in his skull, it was obvious he’d been a big, powerfully built man.
Aislinn met his dead, brown gaze. “I read your journal. I’m sorry about your wife.” She hesitated. “I know what it is to lose someone you love.”
“Do you now?” he snarled. Half-eaten away lips drew back from teeth with exposed roots.
“Yes,” she said simply. “Both my parents were killed. And all my friends.”
The man stepped closer to her. Raising a hand, he ran it down her arm. Then, more familiarly, cupped a breast. “Warm,” he breathed, showering her with rancid breath. “So warm.” His hand tightened on her, pulling her close.
Swallowing revulsion, Aislinn laid a hand over his. “Don’t you want to see your wife again?”
He tossed his shaggy head. Long, gray-flecked dark hair crawling with maggots swatted against her body. “Stupid girl,” he brayed. “If you’re going to give me some prattle about heaven, don’t waste your breath. Stopped believin’ when Betty died.”
“Doesn’t matter what you believe.” Aislinn met his gaze. “Spirits of the dead live on, but you have to pass the light to know that.”
He was kneading her breast now, rubbing the exposed bone of his fingertips over her nipple. “And how would you know, missy?”
She wasn’t certain, but Aislinn thought she saw hope flicker behind his dead eyes. “Because I have to believe I’ll see my parents again one day. Either I’ll be killed in battle, or after I’m through fighting for the Lemurians.”
He dropped her breast as if it burned him. A hissing sibilance passed his lips, spraying her with spittle. “You’re one of them. Turned by the other side.”
Outraged shrieks battered her ears. The dead closed in on her.
“Grab her,” one of them shouted.
“We need her.”
“She’s warm.”
“Lemurian magic might bring us back.”
“Oh no, it won’t,” Aislinn countered, swallowing pity and fear. “They’re the ones who killed most of you. Remember?” She hurried on. “If you keep on killing the few of us who are left, who will avenge your deaths?”
The remains of a plump woman sidled close. She stroked Aislinn’s hair, sending ice chips into her guts. “Warm,” she mumbled. “I remember what it was to be warm.”
The miner shoved his body between them. “Go,” he hissed at Aislinn. “You do devil’s work. We will let you leave, but you must make me a promise.”
“What?” Aislinn wondered if she’d have to lie.
“Fight those who killed us. I want revenge.”
We all do. Sucking in a deep breath, and letting it out, she decided to take a chance, hoping the Lemurians weren’t in her head to listen. “Once the dark are defeated, if that’s even possible, I give you my word that I will do what I can to see that the Old Ones return to Taltos and remain there.”
The man turned to the rest of the ghost army. Aislinn hadn’t been paying attention, but when she looked, it seemed most of them had crowded into the miner’s shack. Bodies merged into bodies in one stinking, gelatinous mass. “What do you think?” he demanded.
“She spoke true,” one ventured.
“Aye, I thought she’d lie to save her sorry hide,” another spat.
Realizing that her jaws were clamped together so hard they ached, Aislinn opened her mouth. Some of the dead were determined to keep her, while others argued one more life couldn’t possibly help them. She reached for her magic again, inhaling sharply when she didn’t sense the barrier anymore.
May as well be ready, she reasoned and started the spell to take her away from this place.
The miner grasped her wrist. “We did not release you.”
A wry smile split her face. “You let me access my magic. It’s pretty much the same thing.” She held her breath.
He smiled back at her, ghoulish with almost non-existent lips and snagly teeth. “Maybe it is. Go, human. Never forget what you are.” He made shooing motions toward the door.
Aislinn didn’t wait to be asked again. Swallowing down bile, she raced outside, hungry for air not tainted with the reek of dead meat. What the hell? She stopped in her tracks as soon as she’d cleared the lintel. Sitting on its haunches, staring at her with amber eyes, was the most intelligent-looking wolf she’d ever seen. It cocked its head to one side. Gray fur, streaked with silver and black, gleamed in the sun.