With a shiver, I turned away. As I did, I heard a faint clacking. It came from the direction of the head. I turned, more instinct than intent, swinging the light-ball that way. The head of a dark-haired man lay there, blue eyes staring at me, blank and unseeing. Then he blinked.

“Jesus fucking—!” I yelped, jumping back.

The man’s eyes focused and his mouth opened wide, as if to scream, showing a bloodless stump where his tongue had been. He clacked his teeth together. Beneath his neck, something long and white snapped against the dirt—his spine, the only thing still attached to his head, twisting and jerking like a macabre tail.

I ran out of that room faster than I’d ever run from anything in my life. Once back in the tunnel, I leaned against the wall and rubbed my face, trying to rub the image from my mind. I couldn’t, of course, no more than I could stop my brain from churning through the implications of that image. I should have known he was still alive. He was a ghost. He couldn’t die. The true horror of that hadn’t struck me until now. If you couldn’t die, but you could feel pain, you could be ripped apart and still live.

With a growl, I shook the picture from my head. I had to concentrate on staying hidden and safe, not on what they could do to me if I failed.

I looked along the tunnel. Staying in that room was out of the question. I needed to go deeper, find a better place to—

A noise cut my thoughts short. Even as I glanced back toward that room, I knew it hadn’t come from there. The sound came again, a dull thump. Then a harsh whisper, like something being dragged through the dirt. Another thump, and another drag.

Without thinking, I wheeled around the corner, back into the room. As I moved, my brain screamed for me to stop, stay where I was, and cast a cover spell. Whatever happened, I did not want to be stuck in the same room as that thing. But it was too late. By the time I ducked into the room, the noise in the tunnel was too close for me to risk going back out. Time to cast a cover—Shit! The light-ball. I dowsed it, then cast my cover spell.

As I recited the incantation, I could feel it watching me. Was it watching? Could it still think, feel, a full consciousness trapped within—

Goddamn it, stop that! He’s a fucking psychopath. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been down here. I’d do the same to the rest if I could. But it wasn’t him I was worried about; it was the thought of him, what it could portend for me. When the Fates said I was in danger, I sure as hell never thought—