Slaying the Vampire Conqueror(29)

Eventually, we reached an area of strange silence. We pushed forward, tensed, waiting for more attackers.

When several minutes of stillness passed, Atrius glanced back at me, asking a silent question. I’d already found the answer, reaching out with my magic to sense movement in the threads far above us. Too distant for me to make out individual presences, but something was there.

“There are people ahead,” I said. “Lots of them.”

Atrius nodded and readied himself. The sensation grew closer as the path dipped sharply, bringing us to the apex of three tunnels… and a morass of people. A wall of them—far more than the warriors Aaves had been throwing at us so far.

Many more than our dwindling group.

Behind me, Erekkus muttered what I could only imagine was an Obitraen curse.

“We fight through them,” Atrius commanded, his sword raised in anticipation. “No hesitation.”

But my steps slowed—because something here wasn’t right.

The presences were now close enough to sense. And it was difficult to feel the emotions of such a large group, but these… they overwhelmingly reeked of fear. And these people were coming for us, yes, but it was a lurching, stumbling walk, like they were being packed into these hallways and forced down—

Just fear. Just—

I grabbed Atrius’s arm just as the crowd of people was almost upon us.

“They aren’t warriors,” I choked out. “They’re innocent. They’re civilians.”

Typical of these warlords. To use their starving, homeless populace as shields when he was starting to run out of warriors. Use them to flush us out.

Realization fell over Atrius’s face in the same moment that the wall of bodies surrounded us.

He spat a curse. For a moment, I was absolutely certain I was about to ruin my cover—because Atrius, I was sure, was about to cut through all these innocent people, and I’d have to stop him.

But to my shock, Atrius lowered his sword just as the mass closed around us, shielding its sharp edge from the flesh jammed into every crevice of the hall.

He turned back and screamed a command in Obitraen. Then he lifted his sword above his head, high enough to avoid the bodies, reached back to grab my wrist, and pulled me forward, as if to keep me from getting swept away by the sea of people.

“Hold onto Erekkus,” he told me—not that he had to, because Erekkus was already holding onto my other forearm, tethering us.

There wasn’t enough air to speak. My head pounded, a nasty side effect of being surrounded by such an overwhelming quantity of people—and emotions—in such close quarters.

Neither Atrius nor his men killed a single person.

We just fought our way past the tides, pushing through the morass of sweaty, terrified flesh until it thinned, then disappeared.

Atrius and Erekkus released my arms, and I let out a shaky breath. My headache throbbed, but subsided. Sweat plastered my clothing to my body. Distantly, I sensed that mass of innocent people continuing down the tunnels to Weaver-knew-where, blind with terror, like a herd of panicking cattle.

Atrius muttered something in Obitraen to Erekkus, who nodded. It was harder than ever to sense Atrius’s presence now, with my abilities so exhausted by the pack of people, but I glimpsed a faint whiff of disgust.

“Good to know that human kings have so much respect for life,” Atrius muttered to me, and I couldn’t help but let out a ragged laugh at that.

“I’m sure vampire kings are very kind to their subjects.”

His lips thinned. “Maybe kings are the problem,” he remarked. Then, before I could answer that, he lifted his chin down the hall. “How much farther?”

It was hard to tell how much closer, overall, we had come to the peak of Alka. The tunnels were disorienting, rising and plummeting in seemingly equal measure, twisting so frequently it was impossible to say which direction we were headed. Aaves’s sea of humans hadn’t helped that, either.

I paused, my breath coming heavy. “I need a moment,” I said. My magic was exhausted, but I reached through the threads, letting my awareness ripple out in all directions.

Nothingness around us—not a soul. We hadn’t climbed far. If anything, we were deeper than where we had started at the gates. I could sense the sea nearby, the salty brine scent stinging my nostrils.

I followed the threads up, up, up. Up to a cluster of auras far above us… to one in particular, far above them.

“He’s far,” I said.

“How far?”

My brow furrowed. The threads shivered and trembled.

I ran over them again, following them to the castle.

No, this wasn’t right. I had to have missed something.

“There’s no one for a long time,” I said.

But that didn’t make sense. Aaves had plenty of bodies to throw at us. And yet, the halls were empty.

I leaned against the wall. My palm touched wet stone.

The realization came too late.

There were many things that were very unique about Alka. The rocky terrain, its confusing tunneled construction, the many interconnected formations that made up its body.

But perhaps the most dangerous was the tide.

It was an unusually low tide the night of a full moon, revealing paths that were usually underwater.

But the tides of Alka were vicious and swift and sudden, more so than anywhere else in Glaea or, perhaps, the world.