Gregori shook his head. “Nothing.”
“I go look,” Rajiv offered.
“I’ll go with you.” J.L. started downhill with the were-tiger.
The closer they came to the village, the more anxious Abigail became. Something was seriously wrong.
J.L. and Rajiv reached the edge of the village and stopped. J.L. called out in Mandarin Chinese.
No answer.
Rajiv shouted in the Bai language.
No response.
Abigail’s uneasy feeling spiked into alarm. She sprinted down the hill.
“Abby!” Gregori followed her.
She reached the valley and turned on her flashlight. Gregori stopped beside her. She moved the beam of light around. Chickens pecked in the grass. A few cows were gathered in a pen.
They joined J.L. and Rajiv at the edge of the village. The main street was empty. No sound came from any of the buildings. Tables lined the street, covered with fruit and vegetables. A market with no buyers or sellers.
J.L. gave her a worried look. “I’m not sure if it’s safe for us to investigate.”
She aimed her flashlight beam at one of the tables and gasped. The food was rotting.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, stepping back. “Don’t touch anything.”
“You think people sick?” Rajiv pointed at the insects buzzing around the food. “The bugs okay.”
The cows and chickens were all right, too. And she couldn’t detect the odor of decaying bodies, so that was an encouraging sign. “The villagers could still be extremely ill. Or for some reason, they all ran away.”
“And left everything behind?” Gregori asked softly.
She winced. J.L.’s warning about the Demon Herb flitted through her mind. Those who go looking for it are never seen again.
“I could look around,” Rajiv offered. “I would be okay. I have seven more lives.”
She stiffened. “What?”
He grinned. “Were-cats have nine lives. I still have eight more. I be okay.”
Stunned, she watched him head for the first building. “He has nine lives?”
“Eight,” J.L. corrected her. “He lost one, so he’s what you call a level two cat shifter, which means he can shift whenever he likes.”
“Oh. Okay.” She forced her mind to wrap around that strange bit of information. Good Lord, less than a week ago she wouldn’t have believed any of this. Yet here she was in China with vampires and shape shifters, and something seriously bad going down in this village.
“Don’t touch anything,” she reminded Rajiv.
He nodded and kicked the door in. He looked inside.
“What do you see?” J.L. shouted.
“People,” he called back, then stepped inside.
She held her T-shirt over her mouth and nose, waiting for him to return. A feeling of doom settled over her.
Rajiv came out and waved at them. Then he went into the next building, checked it out, and ran back to them.
“They all asleep,” he reported. “They even lay on floors, sleeping.”
“Like a death-sleep?” Gregori asked.
Rajiv shook his head. “No. I poke them with my shoe, and they groan. They still alive. Just sleeping.”
Abigail swallowed hard. She’d come here to discover a way to help her mother. What if she brought back a terrible disease? “Did they look ill? Were they pale or sweaty? Was there any sign of vomiting?”
Rajiv shook his head. “They look fine to me.”
She took a deep breath. “I’ll have to examine them.”
“No,” Gregori said sharply. “You’ll do nothing to risk yourself.”
“They need help,” she insisted.
“We’ll find a way to alert the authorities,” J.L. said. “For now, our top priority is keeping you safe.”
“Let’s go.” Gregori grabbed her and teleported back to the top of the hill.
J.L. and Rajiv materialized beside them.
“Well?” Russell asked.
“They all asleep,” Rajiv said.
She shook her head. “It’s not normal. I’m afraid it’s some kind of disease. And we’ve all been exposed.”
“Did you see anything else that was unusual?” J.L. asked Rajiv.
Rajiv shook his head. “They look fine. But they all have tattoo on arm.” He pointed to the inside of his right wrist. “It was something in Chinese.”
Russell stiffened. “What did it say?”
Rajiv shrugged. “I don’t read Chinese.”
Russell pulled back the jacket on his right wrist. “Did it look like this?”
Abigail shone her flashlight on it.
“Yes!” Rajiv said. “That’s it.”
J.L. sucked in a breath. “It means slave. It marks the people who belong to Master Han.”