Chapter 34 · The Seal

"You stupid girl," Edith says.

She's twisting in my grip, thirty feet down and falling fast. The spike's still warm in my hand. Below us the gorge is all shadow and jagged rock, and somewhere at the bottom is the thing we're supposed to seal.

The thing that used to be men.

"It has to be both of us," she hisses. Her eyes are cigarette-ash gray and they've seen a hundred years I haven't. "Your blood and mine. That's the seal."

"I know."

"You'll be stuck down here."

"I know."

She stares at me. Really stares. "You gave that child your blood."

"I told her not to bite."

"Doesn't matter. She'll remember the taste. She'll come looking."

"Then you make sure she doesn't find me."

We hit the bottom.

The impact should break bones. It doesn't. I roll, come up with the spike still in my fist, and Edith's already moving toward the crack. It's wide as a railcar, cut deep into the stone, and something's moving inside. Something that pulses. The smell comes up in waves—old blood, sick with rot and rage.

The thing knows we're here.

It surges up—not a shape, not a body, just wrongness with teeth.