"Sweet Sam," he said into my hair. "What in the hell is happening?"
I tried to peek out past his biceps, but I couldn't see anything. I had to grip him by the forearm and clamber out from his embrace to see anything.
The skulls. They were flying out of the carved nooks they had been stored in for centuries and launching themselves at me.
"No," I heard myself say. "Seriously. This can't be happening. Not again."
Callum's arm went around my waist as he yanked me to my feet. It seemed that whatever was after me, was completely happy to let him alone.
He gripped me by my elbow when I managed to stand, then with his other fist, deflected yet another skull. The unmistakable sound of bone cracking into pieces split the air.
"What do you mean happening again?" he said.
My calf was on fire. Enough that it staggered me and I dug my fingers into his forearms.
"The church," I gasped out. "Something happened to me."
I was vaguely aware I should be scared, that if I recalled what had happened in the church earlier in the evening, I should be running headlong down the hallway toward the crack of light I had left open as an exit sign. I should have grabbed his hand without explanation and just got myself and him the hell out of there.
But some part of me had begun to tingle. I licked my lips, feeling the electricity as though it was dancing on my skin. A strange sort of giddiness made the hairs on my arms stand up.
"It's on," I heard myself say, and it came to my ears as though I were underwater and the words were both magnified and muffled. I imagined myself as some sort of warrior sensing impending battle and wanting, no needing, to confront it.
At least that's how I felt right up until the time the remaining bones lifted from their crannies and sailed toward the skulls that owned them. One by one, they assembled into walking, chattering, rattling skeletons.
"Holy shit," I said.
I wanted to look at Callum to see if he was seeing what I was, but that was when each of them with one loud voice let out an ear-piercing shriek and then ran clattering toward us.
CHAPTER 8
My first instinct wasn't to throw up my fists and jab at whatever came for me. My instinct was run, but I ended up with no option but to duck and weave. And I did it successfully at first until there was an army of assembled skeletons filling the space all around me. The sheer mass of them became a weight that sucked all the breath from my lungs as they converged on us front and back.
Surrounded just like an ambush and there we were in the middle, jumping out of the way of whatever came at us. At least that's what I was doing and assumed it was so of Callum until I heard the sounds of grunting and bones cracking. I threw myself to the dirt, face first, and crawled over to the wall. It seemed to throw the attackers for a moment and, dazed, they stood still for a few seconds as they tried to blindly retrace my path. I shone my cell phone out into the space, hoping to find Sarah somewhere. I panned it over the walls and ahead of me. One skeleton was still rested in a cranny in the wall, its skull sitting nestled between its bones like the proverbial skull and crossbones sign. I panned left, where the worst of the noise was coming from and was met with the sight of Callum methodically kicking through whatever charged at him.
That was it. Action. I had to do something. The sight of him falling to a crouch in a roundhouse kick that swept three skeletons into a heap next to him gave me hope. Especially when they clattered to pieces beneath his strikes. It gave me enough courage to scramble to my feet and hurl myself at the nearest skeleton.
I had never fought anything but solid flesh before, and most times until Sarah had taught me, I had lost. I had always ended up using my bravado, stemming from the confidence that I could use my fists to protect myself after Sarah left. This time, I gave it what I had. Instead of punching head on and ruining my knuckles, I elbowed my way through, thinking only of getting to the other side, of getting to Sarah so we'd be together in one pack, able to face the horde.
I owed her. I couldn't just leave her here, now I'd found her. Trouble was: I couldn't see her through the horde of skeletons.
"We need to get to Sarah," I said to Callum, telling myself they were just bones after all. They couldn't exactly hurt us. I had to be rational about this. They had no weapons. They had no flesh or muscles. All we needed to do was make a path to the door.
I kept telling myself that until one of them bit down hard on my bicep. Pain lanced through the muscle and I let out a scream that sent me to my knees. I staggered onto my feet again, trying to get through, striking at what I could and wincing when I landed a blow because the bones were hard and brittle and when they broke, they jabbed into me.
"Back off," I yelled and swiped at a tumble of rib bones that struck me on top of the head. I almost made it two steps forward when a pain ripped through my shoulder. I looked frantically around me, seeing but not seeing as more pain shredded into my calves and thighs. They were biting me. From above and below, the jaws were digging into my skin. I gasped in pain, tried to strike out and felt bones connect with hard jolts to my knuckles and elbows.
I was drowning in bones except for the fiery spots of skin where they bit down on me. I flailed around and latched onto something solid but fleshy. Callum's hand reaching for mine through the crowd. My wrist found his hand and he grabbed for it. I felt myself yanked, and almost lost my footing again. Then he yanked harder and I barreled through several bony warriors all at once, breaking them to pieces. They fell to the dirt floor with a loud clatter. I swung back around, making sure they were indeed beaten.
To my horror, half of them reassembled. The other half clutched at rib bones from their comrades and aimed them at us like lances. They leaned forward in a sprinter's lunge. Back feet dug into the dirt for thrust.
"Holy hell," I said. They planned to rush us, if they had any minds at all to plan.
I realized we were facing the entirely wrong direction. Sarah was somewhere behind us and the exit was past those armed skeletons. I wondered if Callum knew that. I shot a look up at his face. The candlelight was making a grim line of his jaw and I could see beads of sweat running down his hairline.
"We are most royally screwed," I said and he muttered his agreement.
There was a collective roar of clacking as the bones rushed us. Callum yanked me hard against his chest and I spun around into it, wanting shelter no matter where I got it. We pirouetted together like dancers in perfect rhythm and for a second I thought we'd managed to avoid the rush. The smothering scent of soap and musk and the feel of a flannel shirt gave me the false hope that we were reprieved. Then I felt a hot tingle over my calf, making the muscle twitch and spasm.
I sucked in a breath. No doubt one of those things had stabbed me in the calf. They would go for my stomach next. My face. My eyes. I let go a scream but it got muffled in Callum's shirt or his arms, I wasn't sure. I only knew that in the next instant, as I tensed and prepared for a blow, a whooshing sound echoed through the cavern. My hair lifted on end and sailed around me like a flag. There was the distinct sound of pitter patting like hard rain coming down on packed ground.
But in the middle of an underground tunnel, with the quietness of a crypt long forgotten by its followers, there shouldn't have been any wind at all.
I realized in a flash that I was pressed up close to Callum, my arms around his waist and my face burrowed into his armpit.
"They're... Dead," he murmured from above my hair, and I felt everything in his shoulders relax.
The heartbeat against my cheek still thudded like thunder, but it was a heart. A heart. Thank God. Why ever I thought he was inhuman, I knew the difference now as that steady but staccato rhythm thrummed against my ear. I was glad of something solid and human even if the knowledge that I had burrowed as deep as I could into his embrace made my neck flush with heat.
I peeked up into his face, not daring to believe it was over. He waggled his charcoal eyebrows and jerked his chin in the direction
of the skeletons.
It was a foolish thing to say, to call them dead, but that's how they looked. They were still assembled, but they had fallen in postures that looked as though they had been slammed hard in the chest. Their legs were splayed wide and their arms flung up over their heads. The jaws gaped open as the skulls lay on their sides.
"What in hell was that?" I said, stooping to rub at my calf. The pain was gone but something electric still had a hold on me. There was a faint buzzing sound in my ears.
"Protection," someone said. A familiar voice.
I peeled myself from Callum's arms and turned to face Sarah. I was still too dumbfounded to register her meaning, but I was so glad to see her, I rushed forward without thinking. I stopped short just a few feet from her when I realized that just a few minutes earlier, she had been floating cross legged in the air. This particular Sarah had short blunt bangs, and black hair, and it was tied into a braid.
"You look different," I said, wary.
"Four years will do that to you," she said with a smile. "You look the same, though. Still skinny and tiny. Same flyaway red hair."
I checked Callum's face for confirmation. Yes. He saw her. He was looking straight at her, following our conversation. I relaxed just a bit.
I looked back over the room to indicate the pile of bones that had moments ago been moving and clacking things, intent on attacking us. I knew it couldn't be a hallucination because Callum had seen it too.
I pointed to them. "You call those things protection?" I said and crossed my arms over my chest. I'd seen enough oddities over the last eight hours that I wouldn't rule anything out, but neither did I want to believe everything I saw. Some of those things were just too far-fetched to be real.
"Want to tell me what's going on?"
She worried her lip for a moment as she took in Callum standing there with his fists clenched at his sides. The shadows playing across her face made her look drained. The Sarah I remembered had been hard-edged, with a look of hard, worn maturity a 14-year-old shouldn't have had. She looked even older now, these four years later, as though grit had embedded itself in her psyche.
"Who is he?" She jabbed her finger in Callum's direction.
"Protection," he said.
It took a few moments, but eventually she smiled and it transformed her face. She was more the girl I had remembered than a mistrustful and jaded woman.
"This is the girl I told you about," I said to him. "Now do you believe me?"
"I don't know what to believe at this point," he said, stealing a look over his shoulder at the dozens of fallen skeletons. He gave a quick shake of his head as though to clear it.
She waved us closer, deeper into the cavern. "Follow me," she said, waving us closer. "It's not safe here."
"No kidding," Callum muttered and I glanced at him. He pressed his lips into a tight line, but I could see the comments flit across his expression one by one.
"You coming?" Sarah urged when neither one of us moved, and I pulled in a bracing breath. I'd come to find her after all. I wasn't about to leave until I heard what she had to say.
"Both of us?" I asked, checking to be sure, and she shrugged.
"You in?" I asked Callum. "You can leave if you want."
I thought as he looked me over, he might hang back, but wanted a few seconds to formulate an excuse. I wouldn't have blamed him if he hightailed it right straight back out, but when he shot a quick look over his shoulder, it seemed to give him some resolution. He threw his shoulders back and lifted his chin.
"What kind of man would I be if I left two kids alone in a creepy crypt?"
Sarah snorted. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind next time I save your hide."
We ended up following her through another wooden door with slats joined together by iron bars. There was less rust on this one, and it pushed open easily and quietly. We stepped into a larger room that by my estimation would have been just below the altar if we were standing in the church above us.
The room was completely lit. The walls were lined with ancient looking iron sconces spaced about every three feet and someone, undoubtedly Sarah, had stuffed them with candles. Wax dripped down the walls in gobs that resembled stalactites. Ages, perhaps centuries, of wax had accumulated and built up beneath her contributions. White wax on the surface blended with dustier looking gobs until a layer of yellow beeswax at the very bottom. I spun in the room, taking it all in.
She had been here for a while, that was evident. She had placed a sleeping bag with a dozen pillows and throw cushions against the wall. They were all threadbare and faded. I got the feeling she had assembled them from a thrift store, and I imagined the only vintage store in town feeling as though it hit the jackpot when she cleared it of old blankets. It made sense. A runaway probably didn't travel with much that didn't fit on her back.
Next to her bed squatted a plastic cooler with a red top.
It was to that cooler that she went when she crossed the room. The top creaked open and she brought out a bottle of water. With a toss, it sailed across the air at me and I caught it thankfully. I twisted it open and guzzled half the bottle in one go before passing it to Callum. He guzzled the rest down and then stood there with it clenched in his hand as he took in the room.
Ignoring his rigid form, I nudged her sleeping bag with my booted toe.
"You look like you've been here a while," I said.
She nodded at me. "Almost a week and a half."
"And you only contacted me last night?" I felt a little betrayed.
"I didn't want to risk your life," she said so matter of factly, I was immediately suspicious. She was lying. Even the little buzzing in my ear paused to assess it.
I narrowed my eyes to little slits of suspicion. "My life?" I said. "Who would be trying to kill me? Is that what that protection was for? Those... Skeletons?"
She held her hand up as though in surrender. "They wouldn't have hurt you. I had them fully under control."
"What do you mean under control?"
She shrugged. "I mean exactly what I said. I spelled them to keep anyone from entering the crypt."
Callum coughed and I slid my gaze sideways to see him with that full mouth of his pressed into a tight line. He wasn't fooling me. I knew he had coughed up the word crazy into his hand, and so did Sarah by the look of her face. To be honest, I might have thought the same thing if I hadn't just seen what I'd seen.
"So it was you who made them stop?"
"Released them," she said. "Yes. That was me."
Callum threw the water bottle onto the sleeping bag and it bounced off onto the dirt floor.
"You make it sound as though they were under your orders or something. As if you didn't notice, those things, those bones, have been dead for centuries."
She nodded and eased herself down onto her sleeping bag. "Exactly." She crossed one ankle over the other with her legs stretched out. "That's the kind of thing I do."
I expected a ton of things in that moment, but I certainly didn't expect Callum to charge her and yank her by the elbow back to her feet. He gave her a shake that would have rattled my own teeth.
"I don't know what game you're playing," he said. "But it'll be morning soon and this place is going to be crawling with inspectors."
True to form, she didn't so much as break a fearful look across her face. She simply pulled away and stood with her hands on her hips.
"You think this is a game?" she said. "You think I think it is? Just goes to show how ignorant you both are. Maybe I shouldn't have involved you." She glared at me, then sent an equally hateful glower Callum's way.
"Sarah," I said, pulling her attention away from the glaring Callum. "What's going on? All of this is just –"
"Crazy?" she said and there was an almost manic gleam in her eye. Even so, I nodded. I felt pretty much like the same gleam was in my own gaze.
"Crazy," I echoed. "That's the word for it, but for what it's worth, that's not what I was going for."
&nb
sp; I thought of my time in the church above just hours earlier and my bare escape from a maniac, who by the next maniac's account, was trying to collect my soul so he could regain his wings. If she was standing in front of me admitting she was able to control long dead bones, then I had the feeling that Azrael and his silver-tipped cane had also been all too real.
I thought about the way my calf burned at the strangest of times, the way it was aching even now and I knew that if I looked at it--saw that there was a mark, I wouldn't be able to deny any longer it had really happened. Because it meant that my life was never going to be the same.
Crazy didn't even begin to contain everything I thought about what was going on. I spread my arms wide, watching her face and admitted what I was really thinking.
"It's overwhelming."
Callum snorted and I gave him a warning look. Whatever was going on, however things were changing for me, I knew one thing for certain. I needed to get her out of there.
"Listen," I said to Sarah. "Why don't you come with me? We'll go home, have a good meal--"
"I can't do that," she said, cutting into my well meaning and carefully controlled voice with a panicked note in her voice. "I can't leave here."
"But--"
"But nothing," she said. "I can't go. For the same reason I didn't dare go to your house." She crossed the space to the bundled up bunch of blankets and pillows. She sat down on the biggest cushion, cross legged, and looked up at me.
"I had to make sure I could trust you," she said.
"Of course you can trust me," I said, rushing her. "I texted you when you left, I texted you tons."
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