Bieleć was watching him through the barricade. He could feel it. He wondered if the professor knew how close he was to getting killed. Literally playing with fire.
“Unnaturalists,” he muttered under his breath.
Apart from the barricade, the hallway looked like the others, except that nearly all the lights had been smashed. One lonely lamp still glittered, just above Lukasz’s shoulder. The rest was shadow and hazy, warm air. Lukasz froze.
There it was again. The rustle.
Several office doors hung ajar, black smoke spiraling out into the hall. There were holes in the carpet, too, rimmed with glowing red. From these holes, more black smoke trailed up to the ceiling to collect in an inky fog. Giving them a wide berth, Lukasz advanced down the hallway.
God, he loved this.
He moved methodically, checking each office, enjoying the old sense of adventure. This was what he liked. He had to stoop to avoid the black smoke cloud. It was the first time in a long time that he had hunted a dragon without Franciszek’s meticulous research. It was a good feeling. It reminded him, for a moment, of that first hunt, in the cathedral, when he had killed the Faustian. There had been that same sense of the unknown.
Lukasz sidestepped a shoe.
The hall seemed to go on forever, getting murkier and smokier with every stride. The dragon chirped. Lukasz caught a flicker of movement. Feathers flashed across the doorframe and disappeared. It chirped again. From the office. Lukasz shot to the wall.
He pressed his back into the doorframe. He took a breath. The dragon chattered, inside the office next to him. On the other side of that papered wall was a real, live Apofys dragon.
He grinned to himself. Not for long.
And with that, he lunged around the door.
The office was empty.
There wasn’t even a desk. No bookshelf, no chair. No papers. Just a bare carpet and bare walls. The sun streamed through the window, making the room look somehow even emptier. Lukasz frowned.
Another chirp. Somehow still . . . behind him? In the office?
Lukasz twisted around.
The other door—!
He had been so distracted by the voice-throwing, he’d forgotten that the offices connected. Now the adjoining door swung open. Silently. It was a terrible, dreamlike suspension. Everything slowed down. Lukasz raised his sword. The dragon took shape.
It was huge, orange, covered in feathers and scales. It had a curved beak and a quizzical, birdy look in its eye. It chirped again. It threw the sound to somewhere behind Lukasz, and he felt himself sweat. It was beating its wings steadily against the doorframe. Its feathers were soft, rasping.
Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.
The dull blade of the sword filled the empty space between them. Lukasz concentrated on his heart rate, forcing it to slow down. Letting it fall into time with the wingbeats. He’d done it on every hunt since the Faustian. It worked every time.
Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.
“Come on, you feathery bastard,” he muttered. “Come on.”
Time snapped back.
The dragon hurtled out at him. Lukasz swung. It twisted midair and flashed away. Its beak clicked. Flames erupted across the office and consumed the opposite wall. Thick smoke filled the room. It was oily smelling, burning. Lukasz choked, stepped back. His vision blurred. The Apofys chirped on his right. Temporarily blinded, Lukasz swung again.
The beak clicked again. Flames from the left. Heat seared his face.
This time, it didn’t miss.
Fire engulfed Lukasz’s left arm. Yellow flames silhouetted his unprotected hand. The sword trembled and dropped. For a moment, he just stared. At his hand, his fighting hand, burning like a torch at the end of his arm.
Then, pain.
Lukasz screamed. He was on his knees, screaming. Coughing. Tears streaming down his cheeks, dripping off his chin. Black smoke pressed in on him. The only light was his own flaming skin. Pure agony.
The dragon was coming back. He didn’t have much time.
Lukasz jerked his arm out of his coat and buried his hand in the flame-resistant material. The smell of burning flesh mixed with the oily smoke. The combination of smell and pain was too much, and he vomited.
You need to get up. But he couldn’t. He was kneeling on the floor, gasping, clutching what was left of his arm to his chest. Get up. The dragon was coming back. You have to get up. He could feel his hand twist and curl in the coat, useless, charred. Get up.
Another chirp.
The sound cleared his mind. The chirp had come from the smoke overhead. He needed his sword. Desperate, terrified he might lose another hand, Lukasz scrambled across the room, searching the darkening floor. The smoke pressed in from every side. Where is the damn sword? The dragon chirped again, overhead. But there was another sound. Behind him. It was soft. So soft he’d have missed it.
Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.
Missed it if he hadn’t been listening. If he hadn’t been looking for those wingbeats to slow his heart. To calm him down. It had worked for the Faustian. It was working now.
His hand struck metal.
Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.
His right hand, his last hand, closed around the sword hilt.
Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.
Wingbeats.
He whipped around. He was ready. Wingbeats, not chirping. He wasn’t going to fall for the voice-throwing. Not this time.
The dragon dived down from the smoke, all beak and talons.
Lukasz swung.
2
TWO MONTHS LATER
AFTER SEVENTEEN YEARS IN THE forest, Ren knew all the monsters by name.
“Strzygi,” she muttered, edging out of the trees. “Why did it have to be strzygi?”
She wasn’t sure why she bothered to keep her voice down. They’d smell her long before they heard her.
But for now, the clearing was still.
The trees curled around each other like lovers, tangled overhead like beasts at war. It was as if any sunlight that found its way down here was trapped forever. Heating, baking, turning the grass to mush and giving everything this sweet, earthy smell. Heat caressed her, seeping through her bare skin. It ran damp fingers across the nape of her neck, pressed sticky palms to her cheeks.
Three shapes, shining and red, sprawled on the ground ahead. Ren took a few more cautious steps forward, earth yielding silently under her bare feet. It felt like the trees were watching her.
They probably were.
She moved through enemy territory as silently as a cat.
“It has to be you,” she said, mimicking her brother. “They’ll come for a human.”
But Ryś had a point. A strzygoń could smell a human from miles away. Maybe it was human blood. Maybe it was human fear. Such a specific, cowardly scent.
And so here she was: pathetically, nakedly human. Ren was the most powerful, the most respected creature in the whole cursed forest, and she got the pleasure—the honor—of being the bait in her big brother’s trap.
“Ryś, I’m going to kill you,” she growled under her breath.
Somewhere on the edge of the clearing, Ryś laughed. Ren rolled her eyes. Wherever he was, safe in the shadow of trees, he was probably grinning that feline smile. At least he was nearby.
The red shapes were bodies: two men and a woman. Ren cringed as her feet squelched in the bloodied mud.
The dead man still clutched part of a rifle in stiff hands, its steel barrel shorn clear through by monstrous claws. Ren recognized their clothes from the village: dark coats and vests, white shirts, and striped skirts and trousers. Now blood obliterated every color. The strzygi had been feasting on their guts.