Chapter 27
The mud was slippery and squelched as Sarah suppressed a shudder. Even Tom seemed spooked.
And he yipped as something crackled loudly under his foot: it had been something brittle. Stepping sideways as the mud slanted beneath his feet. Sarah grabbed him only just in time, hauling him to safety. His eyes rolled white for a second and he fought to get his balance back, humiliated.
Roseclear laughed. Anthony's eyes glinted brightly in the darkness. Then Roseclear crouched and picked up a shard of something white; the thing that Tom had stepped on. It was a large fragment of skull.
She tossed it at Tom who froze like a deer in the headlights. Sarah defiantly snatched it from the air and dropped it back to the ground.
Roseclear smiled, startled and carried on walking as though suddenly uncertain on how to react. Sarah was startled too that it had unsettled Roseclear so much.
Tom kept his head bowed, embarrassed.
"I hope Kierlan's okay," Sarah whispered, not knowing what to say to Tom to heal his ego.
"He'll be fine," Tom mumbled unconvincingly.
The tunnel was rough hewn mud like the surface of something's mouth. Water trickled like thick silver down the sides. There was an old smell of flesh here but the glints of white bone were so old that she found herself examining the mud as she walked for a telltale sign of ripped flesh, perhaps hidden beneath the slippery mud.
The ground rose the further they walked; becoming strangely firmer. The smell was rising until Sarah gagged, realising that they were walking on corpses. One thing felt…furry. So at least one Nightworld creature had been slaughtered here too. It was nearly comforting to know that it wasn't just her own species being murdered and slung here.
A pinprick of light glowed in the distance. Roseclear kept a severely slow pace to make it look as though she was enjoying this walk through the flesh tunnel until Sarah could have screamed, fighting not to clamp her hand over her nose.
A buzzing sound was rising, slow and monotonous like a badly tuned radio. It was flies, wreathing a half-rotted corpse nearer the pinprick of light. The flies stirred, disturbed by the four of them and even Roseclear was a bit emotional, angrily swatting the flies away and speeding up her pace, hurrying past the corpse which had a cut open arm stretching out pathetically, nearly touching Sarah's trainer until she sidestepped uneasily and hurried on after Roseclear. Tom kept his head down and brown-black eyes trained on the mud the other side of the tunnel.
"Here we are," Roseclear said softly and Anthony strode forward ahead of them with a swift stride, into the pinprick of light that had enlarged to the exit of the tunnel.
Someone had been expecting them: the door had been slung open, golden light slanting across the mud.
Heart thudding with fear, Sarah emerged, slowly blinking in a disoriented way at the people who'd been waiting for Roseclear and her prisoners.