Chapter 18: Dead Men Running

The bell tolled again.

Elias Thorne felt his feet hardly touch the ground as he and Selene raced through the skeletal remains of Ashen Hill Station. His lungs burned, his wrist throbbed in agony from the Hollow Mark, and the portly thrum of dread gnawed at his innards.

But none of it came close to the sound.

The bell.

It wasn't a natural sound no brass, no chime, no reverberation in air. It was deeper. Colder. As if some vast and ancient thing was pulling it out of the void, and every time it rang, it chewed just a little more of his strength, a little more of his will.

Hexley and the robed figures were closing in behind them at an unnatural speed, feet barely touching the ground. The masks did not shift with movement, and the cloaks drank up the moonlight as if they were not cloth but the absence of all material. And Hexley…

Hexley wasn't running. He sauntered, like a hunter who had come to a place to know the prey was already vanquished. His devil-wolf smile seared itself into Elias's memory.

"You can't keep it forever, Thorne."

Elias clenched the amulet in his pocket. He swore under his breath. He knew. Damn it, he knew. The thing was keeping him alive, but it was also branding him. Like lighting a lantern in a storm and expecting every unholy terror in the world won't come looking for it. And Hexley? He wasn't after Elias. He was after the amulet.

"Elias! " Selene's voice sliced through his train of thought.

He turned just in time to see her plunge her knife into one of the hooded figures that had caught up with them. The blade was way, way in, but the figure didn't drop. Its arm simply broke in two, the bones inside crunching like twigs, and it continued.

Selene drew back, terror darting through her eyes.

"Go! " Elias bellowed and crammed a round into the figure's mask. Bone shattered, but it hardly slowed. "Get to the station house! "

She didn't hesitate. Selene dashed up the steps of the decaying station house, and Elias squeezed off three more shots before turning and following her.

Hexley was still smiling.

"You're getting old, Thorne! " he called. "You know that amulet is not going to save you! "

Elias did not reply and raced up the steps.

The station house was a collapsing, skeletal ruin, an empty husk, rotten and metallic smelling. The shattered remains of a ticket counter stood on the back wall, and the ceiling had half-collapsed, letting beams of pale moonlight flood through cracks in the metal.

Selene was already tugging on the heavy wood door to barricade the entrance.

Elias threw his shoulder into it, the door groaning mostly shut simultaneously with the first of the hooded figures lolloping up the porch. It shuddered beneath the weight, an unnatural multitude of whispering moans coming from the other side of the wood.

Selene's hand shot to her knife. "They're not going to stop."

"I know." With trembling hands, Elias reloaded his revolver. His Hollow Mark was burning. "We need a plan."

"Like what? "Fighting twelve of those things with a knife and six bullets?

"Could be worse."

Selene snorted bitterly. "How? "

Elias exhaled sharply. "They could get in."

The door shuddered again. A heavy, sickly thud. Then another. And another.

Selene stepped back from the door, her eyes flashing with the cold glint of real fear. "They're coming."

Elias's mind spun. Think. Think. THINK. They needed distance. Space. Something to turn the fight. But again and again his mind returned to one terrible, gnawing truth: the amulet. It was drawing them. If he dropped it, they'd have no reason to pursue.

But if he did…

They'd both be dead.

A second thunderous crack broke through the air. The door bucked inward, rending in its hinges. Elias had seconds.

"Upstairs! " he barked. "Go! "

Selene didn't argue. She took hold of his arm and dragged him up the crumbling stairway toward the station's second floor. The steps crumbled under them, sending up billows of dust, but they kept going.

Down below, the door finally broke.

The hooded figures rushed in like floodwater. Silent. Relentless.

Elias made it to the second floor as Selene kicked open a side room. The room, formerly an office for managers, was small, with a cracked window facing the southern train tracks. No escape.

"Trapped," murmured Selene, whirled. "We're trapped."

Elias rushed to the window, scanning the colorless expanse of cracked ground. The railroad tracks had remained unscathed. If they could only access the outbound line.

"You keep running, Thorne."

Elias froze.

Hexley was in the doorway.

Blood still stained his chest from a gunshot wound earlier, but he appeared completely unbothered. His smile stretched, teeth yellow and sharp. "I told you. You can't keep that amulet. Eventually you surrender it. Or you die holding it."

Elias leveled his revolver. "Take one step closer, and I'll blow your cursed head off."

Hexley didn't flinch. All he did was hold up his hand and jerk his fingers.

Elias's Hollow Mark was being choked with pain. He fell to one knee, teeth gritted against a scream as pain coursed through his bones. Selene lunged, knife in hand.

Hexley caught her midair.

His fingers closed around her throat like iron. Selene choked, flailing, and Hexley's smile spread. "Feisty. You could have been useful to us."

"Let her go! " Elias bellowed, forcing himself to rise against the pain.

Hexley didn't even glance at him. "You still don't understand, do you, Thorne? " He spun and yanked Selene like a ragdoll toward the window. "You can't kill me. I'm not here for you. I'm here for it."

Elias's blood ran cold. "The amulet."

Hexley's grin twisted. "The House of Dust has no concern for you. It has a concern about what you stole."

Then Hexley flung Selene at the glass.

Elias was fired.

The shot struck Hexley full in the side of the head, and the man did not go down. His skull just as easily cracked sideways, bone grinding gnarledly and soundlessly as he turned his head back at a glide.

Selene barreled through the glinting window, landing roughly on the soil below.

Elias lost it.

He fired off every round he had in his revolver, pounding Hexley's chest, throat, and skull with nothing. Hexley just laughed.

"Kill me, kill me, kill me; it won't change anything, Thorne! " Hexley lunged.

Elias narrowly dodged the swing. He raced to the window, his heart racing.

Selene was still moving. Thank God. She was wobbling to her feet, blood splattered on her arms, but she was alive.

"Elias, MOVE! " she screamed.

Elias spun around just as Hexley's fist met his side with a brutal smash, cartwheeling him right through the glass.

Elias slammed to the ground, pain roaring through his body. Selene was already dragging him up, slicking her fingers with blood. "We have to move! "

Hexley hung out of the broken window. That same smile. That same vacant, dead-eyed look on his face.

"You can't run, Thorne."

Elias struggled to his feet, his throat raw. "I'll be damned if I won't try."

Hexley laughed, and then the bell rang again.

This time, it was different.

A rumble, brutish and inscrutable, filled the air. The ground rumbled. The sky above, clear minutes before, turned black. And the hooded figures, dozens of them, all turned as one to look at Elias and Selene.

"The House of Dust has taken you," Hexley whispered. "Your soul. The amulet. It all belongs to them."

Elias shunned Selene, gritting his teeth. "We make for the rail line."

Selene's eyes widened. "You're out of your damn mind."

"No choice." Elias swallowed. "They want the amulet. They don't get it."

Hexley's voice drifted. "They will tear you apart. You can't stop it."

Elias smirked.

"Then I'll die tired."

He took Selene's hand, and they ran.

The House of Dust screamed behind them.

The earth trembled beneath them.

Elias Thorne didn't stop. He couldn't. His lungs aflame, his Hollow Mark burning a white-hot brand on his wrist, the heavy iron weight of the amulet thumping in the pocket of his coat as if it knew death was coming for him.

And death was.

There, the hooded figures of the House of Dust hunted him, and with unearthly speed. They didn't falter, and didn't quit, and didn't even breathe. The bone-white masks they wore showed no sign of man, only insatiable, unending pursuit.

"We are aware," Hexley's voice called from the back, dripping with malice.

"You think you can outrun the House, Thorne? He called. His tone had the casualness of a spectator watching a pursuit. "You think you're going to keep that amulet and walk away? "

Elias didn't look back. He didn't dare.

Selene was tearing beside him, ragged breath, bloody mouth, still dripping from the fight with Venus. Her fingers clung to her knife, but Elias could see it in her eyes; they would not survive a confrontation. Not with them.

"Train tracks! " she gasped, pointing ahead. "We get to the trestle; we leap! "

"Good plan," Elias snapped, his jaw tight.

"Got a better one? "

He didn't.

And the ground below them shook. Elias looked back, and his stomach turned.

Hexley wasn't running. He was walking, boot heels sounding on the baked clay. It was the figures with the hoods who were doing the attacking like wolves set loose, but Hexley just watched, beaming his wolfish grin, the kind that sort of made you nervous. And in his hand…

He held a bone bell. Small. Cracked. Ancient.

Elias's gut twisted. He's summoning something.

"Selene! " he barked. "Run faster! "

"I'm already dying, Thorne! " she snapped. "Push through it! "

In front of me was the trestle bridge, an old, rotting span over a dry gully. Beneath it lay ragged chunks of bottom rocks and cinder-block-size pieces of old train wreckage, like skeletal remains. The bridge itself was a killing ground. If they tried crossing it.

"We jump! " Selene repeated, breathless.

Elias stifled his swearing and followed her lead.

Elias hit the trestle hard, boots thumping on rotting wood. The planks trembled below him, but he carried on. Selene led the way, zigzagging around jagged metal beams. As soon as they got past the halfway point, they'd leap.

Except the hooded figures were already at the bridge and crossing it faster than resolve could approve.

One lunged ahead, falling inches behind Elias. He heard its teeth snapping; it was not human, no way it was human—and so he pivoted around and shot his revolver point-blank.

The bullet detonated the figure's head, black ichor splattering the bridge. Its torso crumbled, but its arms continued to crawl toward Elias, skeletal fingers grasping.

"Holy," Elias fired again, twice, blasting it apart.

Selene didn't stop. "MOVE, ELIAS! "

Two more figures sprung up onto the trestle. The first sliced in Selene's direction, but she pivoted, her knife arcing around. The blade severed clean through the thing's arm, but it didn't stop. It simply kept coming.

"THEY DON'T DIE! " Selene screamed.

"NO SHIT! " Elias snapped, reloading.

The second figure lunged for Elias, the mask inches from his face. Elias snapped the revolver into its skull, shattering the mask, but the thing kept moving. It clutched his throat, the unreality of its strength.

Right as Selene's knife drove into its spine.

Elias cried out, extricating himself. "Thanks! "

"Less talking, more jumping! " Selene snarled.

Their backs were to the trestle's edge. Below, a wide gulch, broken rock, and metal rubble strewn across the bottom. It was a long drop, but Elias didn't hesitate.

"On three! " Selene shouted.

"Three! " Elias gripped her arm, and they leapt. Into the Black

The air screamed past them as they plummeted. Elias's stomach dropped as the broken ground flew to meet him with a smash.

He hit hard. Bones jarred. Air knocked from his lungs. Rocks sliced his palms.

But he was alive.

"Selene? " he groused, flipping onto his side.

"Alive! " she rasped. She was lying sprawled 10 feet away, bleeding yet thrashing.

The hooded figures crowded the edge of the trestle, peering over at them. They didn't jump. They merely stared—soulless, hollowed-out eyes drilling into Elias and Selene like cattle marching into a slaughterhouse.

Then Hexley's voice was over the edge.

"You cannot run away from us, Thorne! "

Elias's pulse hammered. He turned, grabbing Selene by the arm. "We move. Now."

"I can't disagree with that," she wheezed.

They slipped on loose rock and mangled iron to tumble down the ravine. Behind them, Hexley laughed. The bell rang again, louder and deeper, as if something was raking its way into reality.

"They're not following," Selene panted. "Why aren't they?"

Then she froze.

Elias did too.

In front of them, at the mouth of the ravine, was whatever else.

Tall. Twisted. Dressed in rotten black robes made from human flesh. Its face was not a mask, but a cavity of bone and black rot. In it, it was gripping a staff crafted from human vertebrae.

It didn't speak.

It pointed.

And his soul screamed in Elias' ears.

"What the hell is that? " Selene gasped.

Elias took a step back, his sigil aflame in pain. His throat tightened. "New player."

The figure raised its staff; the earth split.

It started crawling out from the split. Not the cloaked figures but dead things. Cadaverous monstrosities with feet that run all the way up and cavernous, vacant eye sockets. They crawled out of the dirt, their bodies wiggling awkwardly.

Selene's voice cracked. "Elias? "

"Run."

"But—"

"RUN!"

They sprinted.

Elias knew what this was now. The House of Dust wasn't only coming for the amulet; they were coming for his soul. Hexley was their herald, but that… thing that had just risen from the ground?

That was a Reclaimer.

And its arrival here meant Elias was as good as dead.

Selene stumbled beside him. "What the hell did you steal, Elias? "

Elias gritted his teeth. "A second chance."

"Second chance for what? "

"…not dying."

The Reclaimer raised its staff, and every corpse shook. They spilled out of the broken earth, a meat-and-bone tide from some nightmare, running faster than any human could ever run. The bell rang again—and Elias felt something rip inside his chest.

Selene grabbed his arm. "We can't outrun them! "

Elias ripped the amulet from his coat.

"What are you—"

"Buy us time," he gasped. He lifted the amulet over his head and screamed.

The amulet ignited. It ripped open, bursting with blinding white light that seared the ground. The nearest of the dead spasmed and fell, turning to cinders. Even the Reclaimer that faltered, shielding its face.

Selene's voice broke. "What did you do? "

Elias's vision blurred. The amulet was killing him. But it was buying time.

"Run," he gasped. "We … need to get to Hollow's Bend. Now."

Selene hauled him forward. The dead streamed behind them, but the light still kept them at bay.

But Elias knew one thing.

This wasn't over.

The House of Dust just kept on going. Hexley wouldn't stop.

And Elias Thorne?

He was running out of time.