They filed out of the guard barracks one after the other, drawn by the blood, all of them in various states of decay, all of them scenting the air. Soon there were ten, twenty, thirty of them in the arena. They outnumbered the Hands Foldrey had mustered. They nearly outnumbered the remaining Skra.

All of them were hungry, and all of them were unchained.

The fighting slowed. Bodies lay all around, dead or dying, but in the face of those monsters the arbitrary lines between the factions vanished.

There were only the living, and the living dead.

Predator, and prey.

Ranka turned then, not to Ongrum but to every other soul gathered there, and bellowed, “Run! Run for your lives!”

There was a moment before the change was complete—when Ongrum stood there, the image of a blood-witch in power, of a woman with the deadliest magic on the continent in her veins eating any scrap of pain—when her eyes cleared. The white vanished, restored to that gentle winter-sky gray.

Reality finally seemed to hit her in full. She looked at Ranka then, and in her eyes Ranka saw it: terror.

And then the sores appeared.

They burst from her skin in massive, tangerine-sized purple cysts that cracked in the center and spilled pus down her limbs. Her teeth elongated into fangs; her gums split open. The hair dropped from her head in clumps as sores erupted across her scalp. The stench of decay gushed from Ongrum’s mouth. Ongrum moaned, and the last bit of humanity in her eyes winked out as they turned white again. She swayed, panting, her clawed hands hanging loosely at her sides. She was a mistake, a horror of science and magic that never should have existed, a caution against what it meant to push the limits of power too far.

And she was hungry.

Ranka took a shaky step backward.

The woman’s head swiveled at an unnatural speed, her chin tilting upward as she scented the air in two long, slow pants—and licked her lips.

“Ongrum,” Ranka pleaded. “Mama—”

The creature that had once been Ongrum gurgled—and lunged.

71

RANKA WAS GOING TO DIE.

Ongrum hurtled toward her, spittle flying from her lips, teeth bared as the sores on her skin pulsed.

Ongrum collided with Ranka and hurled her to the ground, clambering on top of her, and wrapped a hand around Ranka’s throat. Ranka gagged, fighting against the pressure, spots swimming in front of her eyes. Suddenly she was back in the forest, watching a sick witch barrel toward her with a gold pin in her fist.

“Ongrum,” Ranka wheezed, clawing at the woman’s hand. “Please.”

Ongrum squeezed harder. There was no recognition in her wild stare, only an animal hunger. She bared her teeth and leaned forward to bite down—and wind cleaved the sky.