It was a haunting image she’d placed in their minds, of a place just waiting for its people to come home. “Fifty residents, right?” he said.
It was Aodhan who answered. “I checked with the scholar who did the headcount for our records—he puts the exact number at fifty-one. The woman you found? She told Rii her name is Fei. If she’s from the hamlet, that means we’re missing fifty. Thirty-nine mortals, eleven vampires.”
“High percentage of vamps. Unless they were getting blood shipped in before everything went to hell, each of the adult mortals would have to be a regular donor.”
“Yes.” Vetra took another bite, swallowed it down after a cursory chew. “I planned to look into that on my return but . . .”
She put down her sandwich, deep grooves in her forehead and lines flaring out from her eyes. “I looked for tracks, for burial places, didn’t find any. But there’s a lot of forest and I couldn’t do an in-depth search. If they’ve been dumped at the bottom of even a shallow ravine and covered with foliage, they’d be invisible from the air.”
She looked at the curved wall of windows at the front of the generous space in which they sat, beyond which lay the main courtyard. “Soon, the snow will come.”
Burying the dead in their forgotten grave.
A bleak and sad image that would haunt Illium until he found these lost people.
But though he and Aodhan spoke to Vetra for another quarter of an hour, she had precious little to add to what she’d already told them.
“It infuriates me that I’m so in the dark.” Her hand tightened on the tumbler. “I left the task unfinished, secrets hidden. More than that, I didn’t assign anyone to keep an eye on the place from the start, check regularly on the residents.”
“You have but a small team, Vetra,” Aodhan murmured, his deep voice soothing. “And the hamlet appeared well-established, its residents happy to stay outside the borders of the stronghold—you had no reason to expect a mass vanishing.”
“I should have,” Vetra muttered, her eyes like flint. “This is still Lijuan’s land.”
“No.” Aodhan’s tone was unbending. “She may have left behind some echoes, but it’s Suyin’s land now.”
A pink flush under the tanned gold of her skin, Vetra dropped her head. “You’re right. I’m just frustrated. How can fifty people vanish without a trace? Even when the black fog erupts out of the earth like pus ejected from a rank wound, it leaves behind shriveled bodies, bones.”
That was another horror of which Illium had become aware—that every so often, remnants of the black fog seeped out of the earth. As if it had been trapped in some pocket.
“None of it makes sense.” Vetra shoved both hands through her hair, then looked from Aodhan to Illium and back again. “I need you two to solve this. I must go with my archangel, but I won’t sleep easy until I know what could’ve possibly happened to so totally erase fifty living, breathing people.”
* * *
*
The vast majority of both immortals and mortals were in a deep sleep, and pack-up was complete but for odds and ends. It was one of the latter that currently held Aodhan’s interest: he was helping a human resident tie their belongings to the roof of their vehicle. The man had already done it, then woken up unable to sleep, decided it was badly arranged and restarted.
Aodhan understood needing to do something, anything to keep the nightmares at bay, so he’d said nothing about the unnecessary work, just stepped in to assist. He didn’t need to sleep tonight, and—with Illium—was part of the crew on night watch. He and the young mortal were almost done when Suyin’s voice entered his mind.
Aodhan, please find Illium, then meet me at the edge of the settlement—near the sleeping hazel tree.
I just saw him. We’ll be there soon.
The mortal’s belongings secured, he rose up into the sky in the direction he’d spotted Illium.
Illium turned at almost the same instant, as if he’d sensed Aodhan.
Their awareness of one another was part of what made them such great partners in battle. It was nothing mystical, rather the result of centuries of friendship and knowledge of each other.
Not mystical but . . . special.
Waving for the other man to wait, he headed over and told Illium of Suyin’s request.
Illium frowned even as they turned to fly toward the tree devoid of blooms or leaves, a bleak sight that would’ve blended in with the night sky if not for the portable “street light” that stood close to it. Those lights would usually be dotted heavily throughout the settlement, for Zhangjiajie was otherwise a cool darkness after nightfall.