The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [182]
“Yes. I do not believe they are following.”
Grace shut her eyes and reached out with the Touch. The shadow reared all around her, but she let it slide over her, past her. Right now there were more pressing fears than those of the past.
There. Eight—no, nine—twisted blots moved through the fabric of the Weirding. Grace felt her gorge rise in her throat. They were abominations: life that had been twisted, misused, made a mockery of what it once had been. With a gasp she let go of the thread and opened her eyes.
Travis was watching her, his expression solemn. “Are you all right, Grace?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “Come on. Vani is right—they aren’t following. Let’s get out of here and find out where they’ve taken Beltan.”
Grace started jogging down the corridor, back the way they had come.
A high, electronic wail pierced the air.
She turned around and pressed her hands to her ears, but the sound cut through flesh and bone like tissue paper.
“What is it?” she shouted.
“Some sort of alarm,” Vani called, her voice barely audible above the siren.
“That doesn’t make sense!” Travis shouted. “Why didn’t it go off on our way into this place?”
“Because they wished for us to get into the building. Not out.”
It came a second later: a boom as something struck the other side of the heavy metal door.
Again Grace reached out with the Touch, then her eyes flew open. She had seen it against the brightness of the Weirding: a black, seething knot just on the other side of the door.
“They’re trying to get out!”
Vani backed away from the door as it shook under another blow. “It seems the alarm has invoked a second command given by their master. A command to hunt us.”
For one more heartbeat the wail of the alarm paralyzed them, making it impossible to think. Then they were running.
Another boom behind them. Grace glanced back over her shoulder in time to see the surface of the metal door bulge outward. She turned back, running on Travis’s and Vani’s heels. Openings flashed by to either side. The door they had entered the building through grew in her field of vision: a rectangle of gray light.
The light turned black.
Thirty feet ahead of them, dark shapes slipped through the door. Pale eyes locked on the runners. Two hunched forms began loping down the corridor toward them.
Gorleths. Even as she watched them come, more shadows appeared.
Grace nearly ran into Vani and Travis.
“Turn,” Vani said, her words as piercing as the siren. “Run the other direction. Now!”
Thought connected with nerves and muscles. Grace spun around, and she and Travis lurched down the corridor together. Her feet felt like they were made of lead. Ahead of them, to the left, the door that held back the other gorleths deformed further with another boom. Behind Grace, masked by the sound of the alarm, came wet, popping noises, then a piteous cry that was not human in origin. A black comet seemed to streak past her, then Vani was there, running just ahead of them.
“I have removed the two gorleths,” she called over her shoulder. “But more come that way.”
Grace had no breath to respond. They had reached the door that led into the empty warehouse space. Even as Grace dashed past it, metal shrieked, parted, and a long arm punched through a gap, scrabbling for her with gleaming claws.
It would have sliced her jugular if Travis hadn’t grabbed her sweater and jerked her toward him. Her limbs tangled around his. They both nearly went down. Then Vani was there, steadying them with strong arms.
The sound of rending metal echoed behind them, merging with shrieks of hate and hunger. Grace didn’t need to look back to know that dark forms slunk through the mangled door, joined with others that loped down the corridor, and turned to pursue their fleeing prey.
The corridor ended in a door. Travis got there first. He threw himself against it, pressing the latch bar.
He stumbled back. The door was locked.
“Stand away,” Vani said.
She leaned her body against the door, hands splayed out on steel, and shut her eyes. The alarm