“Help her!” Farnham pleaded helplessly. He looked around in a near panic. “Where is the healer, Pepin?” His arms were covered in what appeared to be bite marks, and his scalp had been torn, a flap of skin and hair hanging by his ear. He did not seem to notice his own wounds, but remained fixated on the woman.
Cain moved closer. The woman’s pretty face had been split from cheek to jaw. For a moment he thought it was Gillian, but this one’s figure was slimmer, more girlish. Farnham’s daughter, no more than sixteen. There were other wounds to her torso, gaping slashes as if from a cleaver. Aidan had put his hand on her face, trying to hold the flesh there together, but she twisted her head and moaned, and his fingers slipped in the blood.
Abruptly her body convulsed upward, spine arching as she began to shake. The skin of her face slid away, exposing the bone of her jaw, and fresh blood flowed down her neck. Aidan tried to hold her still again as Farnham rushed forward and Cain stepped in front of him.
“What happened,” he said, “in the tombs? You must tell me.”
Farnham shook his head. Drops of blood spattered Cain’s face. “They followed Lazarus to their doom, along with the other fools. I went down again and found my daughter alive. The rest are dead. They’re all dead. Ah, the earth is cursed; the creatures down there are abominations!”
“Who did this to you?”
“The Butcher and his blade,” Farnham said. “He slaughtered most of the people himself. I faced him again, but we managed to hide until we could escape. I’ve seen his killing room, filled with bodies and surrounded by those who still walk upright. But they are not human, Deckard.” Farnham’s bloody fingers clutched at Cain’s tunic, leaving streaks of red. “They . . . bit me.”
The girl on the ground made a gurgling, choking sound. Farnham cried out and left Cain to kneel at her side, holding her hand. Aidan stood up, his eyes telling the story: she was lost.
Cain took him aside. “She may rise again, after her soul departs,” he said quietly. “I will get Farnham away from here. You must do what is necessary to end her suffering.”
Aidan nodded. “And then I am going down into those tombs to end this,” he said. “The terror must stop now.”
An unearthly howl rose up from the direction of the cathedral, echoing across the dark, empty landscape and sending chills down Cain’s spine. The howl was followed by a shuddering thud, and the chittering laughter of the damned.
Something moved in the shadows of the woods, something large and inhuman.
Cain looked around at the abandoned town, the only home he had ever known. His own house was only a few steps from here, the same home he had grown up in with his mother, and where she had told him her stories of Jered Cain, Tal Rasha, and the Horadrim, heroes who had battled the Prime Evils to the end.
His destiny, unfulfilled. So many had died because he had refused to listen, had ignored his mother’s warnings and the books that had lain gathering dust while he pretended to pursue more intellectual pursuits. He had not believed in such things as demons, but their time had come, nevertheless. The weight of his guilt was crushing.
I have let you down, he thought. I have let you all down, and now there will be hell to pay.
The smell of smoke drifted over him. The town was burning . . .
Deckard Cain awoke with a start, the image of the dying girl still fresh in his mind. He had fallen asleep in his chair, watching over Leah; he could see her in the flickering light from the lantern, still lying motionless on the rug near the hearth.
Something was wrong. The lantern’s wick had gone out. But the smoke and the light of the flames from the dream still lingered.
Tristram didn’t burn. Not then.
Alarmed, he snapped more fully awake. The flickering light came from the hallway.
Cain stood up and moved as quickly as he could manage. Smoke was pouring from around the door to Leah’s bedroom, flames licking the dry wood like demon tongues. Already he could feel the heat on his skin. He muttered the words to release the spell he had set on the door, then edged closer, trying to reach the handle. The heat was too strong to get close enough.
He had left the other lantern burning inside the room. Somehow, it had set fire to the wood. And now Gillian was trapped.
“Gillian!” he shouted. There was no answer from within.
Smoke swirled around his head, entering his lungs and making him cough. The taste was bitter on his lips. He tried to cover his face with his sleeve, but it didn’t help, and he felt himself growing light-headed.
“What’s happening?”
Leah stood behind him, her little face white, eyes wide with fear. She had dressed and put on her shoes, and her voice held a hint of barely restrained panic.
“The house has caught fire,” Cain said. “We’re in terrible danger.”
“But my mother—”
“She is beyond our help,” he said. “The heat is too strong for me to enter the room. We must go now.”
Leah shook her head, her hands clenched at her sides. “No! We can’t leave her!”
“There’s no time to waste, Leah. Don’t be foolish.” Cain went to her and tried to direct her back to the front room, but she stood as solid as a rock. He felt the need to do something, calm her in some way in order to get her outside, but he didn’t know how. He was used to giving advice to men who were going into battle, men who were logical, reasonable, who understood something of the risks and could make a decision based on facts. What did you say to a child in this situation? Gillian is likely dead, and we will be too if we do not act quickly? How did you deal with such a horror?
A rumbling noise shook the house, and something shattered in the kitchen. Leah had squeezed her eyes shut, her body beginning to tremble. Cain felt the same strange drop in temperature he had experienced earlier in the girl’s room, when Gillian had come at her with a knife, and a charge in the air like an invisible presence prickled his skin. Wood popped and groaned all around them, and a great whooshing noise came from the closed bedroom.
Something else shattered from the direction of the fireplace, and almost immediately Cain saw the reddish light of flames dancing across the hallway walls. He rushed to the other room and found the second lantern had fallen to the floor, splashing the nearly dead embers of the fire with fuel, which had ignited. A line of flames ran across the floorboards to the table.
If they did not hurry, they would be cut off from the front door.
Cain returned to the girl. She was still standing rigidly where he’d left her, eyes closed, hands clenched. Her skin was shiny with sweat. He got the feeling she wasn’t really there anymore, as if something had swept in and carried her away, leaving her body behind.
Had she done that, knocking over the lantern? What was happening to her?
As he took her by the shoulders, he had the chance to wonder for just a moment whether it was a good idea to touch her before the shock hit him like a monstrous wave of fire, shooting up through his arms and throwing him backward. He caught a glimpse of Leah’s eyes opening, that same confused, frightened look in them that he’d seen when Gillian had attacked her in her room, and at the same time he felt something else across a vast ocean of space. A presence, Cain thought, that was not purely human, soaring overhead with huge, black wings, sensing them somewhere close, but not quite finding them.