Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1) by Kathryn Kingsley (great novels to read txt) 📕

It was in one household that he found two of the creatures hunkered over a body of a man who looked as though he served in Vjo’s House of Words. But it was hard to say, since his face had already been ripped clean off. He was being devoured by two of the animated corpses.

The two corpses stood to face him, snarling, blood dripping from whatever Rxa had left of their jaws during his carnage.

The body of their victim on the ground lurched. The half-eaten man twitched. At first, Lyon thought it was simply the death throes of a body shutting down.

Then it got up.

And he deeply suspected that Under as he knew it was over.

They ran.

They ran as hard as they could.

They made it halfway there before Ember watched Maverick stagger. She caught him before he collapsed. The man nearly ate the pavement at a full run. He was shaking. She knew he wasn’t that out of shape. Something else was to blame for his collapse.

“No, no,” he wheezed. “No.”

She had seen this before.

“Ssh, ssh.” She helped him sit on the curb and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “You’re having a panic attack. That’s all. It’ll be okay.”

“No. No, it won’t.” He put his head in his hands.

It was then that she heard the screaming. Quiet and far away. But everywhere. Like nightmarish birds on a summer day, the sound of death and fear rang out through the city.

The sound of a city dying.

The sound of a city being consumed.

Fear ran down her spine like cold water. “We need to keep going, Maverick. We can’t stop here.”

The man nodded weakly. She pulled him up to his feet, and they resumed their way down the street toward the Great Hall. This time at a fast walk. He might collapse if they went much harder.

Maybe they could get to Ini in time. Maybe she could protect them. Maybe they could defeat the army of drengil together.

They rounded a corner.

And once more…all her hopes were dashed.

Ember’s stomach fell as if she had been dropped off a cliff. Maverick stopped and went rigid.

Before them were not just a few drengil, swarming through a massive courtyard that must be the city center.

There were not just a hundred.

There must have been thousands.

Maverick summed it up nicely for them in one simple word.

“Shit.”

The dead moved as one.

It was amazing to Ember how that many people could move like a wave. How that number of drengil, all at once, almost looked like liquid.

It wasn’t the first time she had seen it, although it wasn’t exactly common. Usually, people didn’t survive it once, let alone twice.

The first time had been during her training as a child, when the tutors had taken all the young ones meant to become hunters and stood them on the lip of the wall of the citadel to look down at the horde at their gates.

They were told to stare at the thousands of pawing, snarling, starving creatures that had amassed at their walls and tried, with never-ending resolve, to get inside. Clawing, scratching, moaning, crying out for flesh. For death. For them.

Several of the young ones had cried and run away. They were not chosen to become hunters. But Ember had stood her ground. Even she couldn’t quite say why. She would like to believe it had been bravery, but the more she looked back on that memory, she realized it was really curiosity. Not about the drengil, but about the construction of the walls that held so many hungry creatures at bay.

The second time she had witnessed something like this had been a few years later when that very same horde had broken through those walls.

So many people had died that day.

And now she could say she had seen a horde of drengil three times in her life.

Whether she would live to see a fourth remained to be seen. Ember gripped her spear tightly and took a reflexive step back. The surge of hungry death was coming toward them, unstoppable as the wave it resembled.

“What do we do?” Maverick asked, barely more than a whisper. “I am not equipped for this.”

“We fight. We escape. We live. But right now? We run.”

The horde was growing closer. They would be overrun in moments. Ember turned to Maverick, and together, the two of them ran. She let Maverick lead, even though he was a slower runner than she was.

They had made it only a few blocks away when things went from bad…to worse.

They came to a sudden halt in an intersection of two roads. She bumped into Maverick, who nearly toppled over. The path ahead of them was blocked by corpses coming at them.

So was the exit to the right.

So was the exit to the left.

And so was their path behind them.

Maverick sighed and loaded his gun. “Do you have any tricks up your sleeve, Ember?”

“I’m not the immortal one with magical powers!”

“My gifts are not designed for battle.” He lifted his gun and fired off a bullet into the head of one of the cadavers who had come too close. “Any ideas?”

She was impressed at how calm he was, despite how screwed they clearly were. She turned around a few times, examining her surroundings.

Live for every second.

Running to the front door of the building, she tried the knob. Locked. Damn it!

Maverick was still picking off the monsters as they drew closer. They were slow, but persistent. And killing a few of them wouldn’t stop the inevitable.

Ember hurried back to the sidewalk and picked up a trashcan from the street. Without a second thought, she hurled it through the first-floor window, shattering the glass and sending it raining down to the street.

“In and out the back.” Ember pointed at the window. “Go.”

“You first.” Maverick used the sleeve of his coat to brush away some of the broken shards.

“No. You. I’m used to fighting these things. You aren’t.”

“Ember, you’re mortal—”

“This is my job! This is what I do. I won’t go