The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

Mausoleum

I HAD NEVER THOUGHT OF THE STRANGE HIDDEN TOWN OUTSIDE York as a mausoleum, but it made all the sense in the world. They were all dead, weren't they? Bodies laid out as if in above-ground graves, discarded and yet somehow preserved? It certainly was as creepy as a mausoleum.

I still wondered why it existed. Raven didn't seem like a dude who wanted to remember those who had opposed him. So why save the bodies of these humans, then? Why did they matter?

We stood in front of the invisible space, while Sadie made the Fateor. The last time we were here I felt excitement. We were hunting for something bigger and more interesting than anything I had hunted for before. That was even truer now, but the excitement was gone. Now the gravity of our fight was real. Now I felt fear.

"Mark," Sadie said, "you're up."

She'd taken off her scarf and extended her neck out to me. I got what we needed quickly and safely.

I hadn't tasted her blood in a while, and it was undeniably more human than it had been just months ago.

Sadie caught a look on my face. "What?"

"It tastes . . . different."

"Different how?"

"More . . ." and then, for some stupid reason I can't explain, I admitted, " . . . human." Her eyes gave away her excitement.

I shouldn't have said anything.

"Can we close her up, please?" Noah asked, straining.

After she was healed, Ben held the mixture in his hands, I put Sadie's blood into it, they read the incantation, and the town appeared just the way it had before: like someone was pulling a sheet off of it, uncovering it.

So it only took seconds to see that much had changed. "He's redecorating with a vengeance," I said. There were bigger, newer homes mixed in with those that were here before, as well as the bizarre addition of two that looked like the older, more primitive types. But there was also destruction. On one side of the town, someone had clearly set a fire that died out, destroying only a third of the homes, and leaving plenty of remnants behind. It looked like a half-assed job. Someone had probably set the fire and assumed it would catch, but fire doesn't work the way people assume it will. It can destroy an entire house in seconds just as often as it isn't in the right environment to flourish, so it fizzles out before it even begins. The rest of the town looked a bit ransacked. Doors hanging off hinges, contents of the homes in the haphazard lanes between structures. And for all the dead bodies that had been here, there was no scent of burning flesh in the air, a thing I could detect for months after. "Not like Raven to do something so ineffective. If he wanted to destroy something, it usually gets destroyed."

"He hasn't been here," Sadie said.

How the hell did she know that?

"If not him," Ben said, "then who?"

Noah growled lowly beside me. "Her."

"Sam," Sadie hissed low. There she was. Creamy mocha skin, hair as long and black and silky as Sadie's. Cleaned up, put together, and gorgeous. And staring blankly at us.

Sadie launched herself toward Sam, and we all quickly followed.

"Switched out your team, have you?" Sam asked, not recognizing Noah or Ben.

"I kept one familiar face," Sadie said and looked at me. Sam's eyes met mine, and I did my best to stare at her as coldly and viciously as I could.

She responded with charm in her stupid, stupid eyes. She had more of it than I did, traitor. I looked away.

"Why are you here, Sadie?" Sam asked.