A band of ghouls came at the flatbed but Sarah was ready. She brought the heavy machine gun around and cut them to pieces before they could climb aboard.
Ayaan kept shouting even when the flow of living cultists had all but stopped. When she realized she was just wasting her breath she looked and saw that the valley was full of nothing but ghouls. They faced her like a ragged army, their helmets shading their eyes, their wicked arms held at their sides. She had stolen their prey. And yet it wasn't her they wanted. Enni stood in the midst of them. He had lost his staff somewhere. His hands lifted and swung at the air as he tried to dampen the ghouls' energy but he was clearly exhausted. He had used up everything he had, and while the Source was radiating life energy from no more than a thousand yards away he was about to collapse.
One of the ghouls came up behind him and swiped at his back. The sharpened bone of its arm tore off a strip of green cloth. Two more ghouls flanked him, coming at him from the sides. He couldn't seem to resist them in even the most basic way. They tore his robe from him in rags.
Exposed to the air his emaciated body was as white as bleached bone. He looked like something carved out of soap. He had big ears that had always been hidden before by his cowl, at least in Ayaan's experience. He had a few long strands of hair plastered to his otherwise bald head.
He turned, his body swooning backwards, to look at Ayaan. She couldn't read his eyes. Then the ghouls fell on him and tore him to pieces. Sarah fired wildly into the seething mass of bodies but there were just too many of them.
When it was over the ghouls fell back out of Sarah's range and stood in an orderly formation like soldiers in a parade. It didn't make any sense. There was no one around to control them, no lich who could command them. Yet there was no reason for them to line up like that, either, just as there had been no possible explanation why they should attack Enni.
A voice sounded from atop the scaffolding. 'The stench up here,' it intoned, its timbre watery and barely recognizable as human speech, 'is bloody awful.'
A single ghoul stood there above the twin spikes. It was one of the most horrifying creatures Sarah had ever seen. Its skin hung off of its chest in long, tattered strips that fell across its groin like a gruesome kilt. Its face was a smudge of once-human features that had been battered and burnt out of all recognition. Its legs, thick and muscular, were covered in sores and lesions. It had no arms whatsoever, just ragged ends of flayed bone that hung down like tiny, broken wings.
Monster Planet
Chapter Eighteen
'Hello, lasses,' the armless ghoul choked out. It laughed at them, a sputtering, horrible noise. 'Honestly, I am glad to see you both still with us.'
All that remained of the Tsarevich were a few lumps of indistinct meat skewered on the steel spikes, fuming and smoking as they smoldered away to black carbon.
'I want you to know that I never wanted anyone to suffer.' He staggered closer to the edge of the scaffolding. Another step and he would fall onto the spikes. Sarah was pretty sure that was exactly what he intended to do.
'Mael Mag Och, I presume,' she said.
The ghoul flexed the ragged nubbins of bone he possessed in place of arms. 'In the flesh.'
'What's going on here?' Ayaan shook Sarah's shoulder but Sarah didn't know how to answer. 'What happened to the Tsarevich? The machinery was supposed to heal him! It was supposed to make him whole again. What went wrong?'
Mael Mag Och shrugged. It made the skin of his chest split and peel. 'The machinery worked just fine, lass. I just never meant it to do any such thing.'
'You? You killed him?' Ayaan was nearly shrieking. Sarah wished she would calm down. 'How is that possible?'
'It helps to have friends on the inside.'
'Nilla,' Sarah said, getting it.