Crimson Shore

54

He held up his hands. They were red and wet. He licked them. They tasted like the bars of his cage. He looked down. The head of the Bad One lay upside down, tongue dangling, eyes open.

He smelled the air, and there were strange smells. The girl had run away.

He took his big toe and poked the head in the eye. He was looking at something far away. Very far away.

Where was the girl?

He sniffed the air. He wanted her out. This was his home. This was his territory. Not hers. He had gotten rid of the hated faces. They would come no more. This place was his now.

He walked past the altar and pinched out the light. Now it was dark. Darkness was his friend. It made others stupid and afraid.

The girl was going into the Dead Ends.

His chains were gone. The strange one had suddenly appeared, warning him of the Killing Men who were coming for him, and then broken his lock. He was free now. He could go anywhere — even to the Above Place. But he had been to the Above Place... and it was not as they had promised. They had lied. What he had dreamed about all his life was a lie. Like everything else they said. The sun, they had called it. All the pain they caused him, the Blooding Knife and the rest, they said would be made up for when, one day, they would take him to the Sun, the warm fire in the sky. Darkness gone, light everywhere.

Thinking of this, thinking of the pain, thinking of the lies, thinking of the cold blackness he had found in the Above Place, just like here, the rage came back. Stronger than ever.

He went toward the Dead Ends. After the woman.