There were some ghouls in Manhattan that she knew about. Weird, surgically maimed things in helmets that were hunting her like a deer. And they were lead by a female lich who could kill just by being near her.
the i spoke more something more i spoke of,he said from behind her, not even panting for breath. Well, of course, he didn't need any, and anyway she didn't know what effect breathing would have on telepathy.
it is ayaan about ayaan is it
That made her stop short. She just stared at him until he began speaking again.
lich she is dead a lich deadThe words made Sarah's head spin. Dead. Lich. Ayaan. Lich. Dead.
She couldn't make them stop. 'Shut up,' she said, to herself. He didn't respond. She couldn't make the words stop.
Ayaan was dead. Her rescue mission had failed.
When she had time she would think about that. In the meantime Sarah kept running. Ptolemy kept up with her easily. He could have run circles around her, frankly. Still, she was faster than the ghouls and that was what mattered.
Then she heard an air horn from the streets to her right and she knew that mere speed wasn't going to save her. She had been about to head in that direction, hoping to circle back to the harbor and find some way back to Governors Island. She tried to sense where the dead men were but the buildings blocked her arcane vision. She spun around in a slow circle, looking at the streets that seemed to head in every direction, searching the windows of the dead and hollow buildings as if they could tell her. 'Which way?' she asked Ptolemy, but he didn't even shrug.
Uptown again. Into the belly of the beast, and farther from safety than ever. She raced uptown and listened for horns behind her, for any sign of pursuit. When her lungs cramped and her body doubled over, unable to run another yard, she stopped. Ptolemy stared at her with his painted eyes. They never showed anything but a cool, intellectual repose. She wanted to smash in the plaster over his real face, his real skull. Wait, she thought, as breath raced in and out of her. There was something...
A dark stain had appeared across Ptolemy's facial portrait. A smoky trail of mildew curled across his cheek like a worm eating its way through his flesh. She grabbed his hands and saw spots on the linen that wrapped his finger, big colorless spots with paler rings around the edges, smaller spots like a spattering of some dark fluid.
Sarah dropped his hands and rubbed at her own fingers. A fine dusting of dark spores had come off on her skin. Her fingers started to itch and she scratched at them mercilessly. She backed away from the mummy as if he could somehow infect her, somehow make her'
SLAM!
Sarah's body spasmed with fear. She looked behind her and saw a little store with a plate glass window. What had made that noise? She couldn't see anything moving, she could only see a kind of greasy stain on the window and'
BAM!
A whip-thin ghoul in a stained white dress hit the glass face-first, hard enough to make the whole storefront shake. Her hands like bunches of twigs came up and slapped feebly at the glass, her body pressed against it. She must have been trapped inside that store for years'she had hit the glass with her face so many times her features were completely gone, smeared together into one homogeneous dark bruise. A few strands of blonde hair still stuck to her battered skull. As Sarah watched she drew her head back and launched it once more at the glass.
WHAM!
Sarah couldn't move, could barely breathe. She was too horrified.
The air horns came again, from two directions this time. Realizing she'd been paralyzed by a relatively harmless unorganized ghoul, Sarah started to hyperventilate. A handless ghoul appeared a few blocks away, half obscured behind some trees. It hadn't seen her yet. She knew, however, that it wouldn't try to recruit her. It would simply kill her without warning, without thought.
'Go,' she said. She grabbed Ptolemy's arm. 'Go! Go take that thing out!'