Page 36 of Raven's Dawn

“Hm.” Yeah, guessed that did make sense. “How do you do it? The meditation thing.”

“We’ll work on it. Just remember, when shit hits the fan, breathe before you lose your shit on an ally.” He nodded to the ground. “And might wanna rehearse what you’re gonna say to the two of them once we land.”

With a skip of my heart, I felt it. A sudden rush of safe, familiar energy. Their energy.

After scurrying onto my knees, I rushed to the edge of the dragon’s back. I gripped the edge of the saddle, careful to avoid its sharp scales, and peered over the edge.

Hundreds of feet below, four arms waved in an open field. A quick glance into the twilight realm revealed their hues of rose pink and shimmering gold.

Rain and Ezra.

I couldn’t wait the ten or twenty minutes it’d take the dragon to land.

I grabbed the edge of the saddle, lifted my leg over the side, and leaped.

14

RAIN

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ezra said.

I wasn’t sure what shocked me more. Hearing Ezra curse like that, or the sight before me.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I was looking at. I knew these people were horrible, evil, but I had expected war. War like the ones I’d seen in movies. Like the kind Graham had described to me. Like the battle half an hour ago.

I hadn’t expected… this.

This part of the cave was circular, framed with benches and wooden chairs. Two lanterns hung on the rock walls, one on my right, and one a dozen feet ahead on my left. In the center sat a fire. Above it, perched between two metal forks, a piece of meat roasted. Almost like a pig at a luau.

The smell was odd. Like pork, but somehow… off.

But why? The meat looked fine. Edging closer, I noticed something by the second lantern. Straight ahead, strung up on the wall, the source of the smell hung lifelessly.

It took staring for a solid ten seconds to understand. At first, it looked just like any other piece of meat. An animal tied upside down by its legs to drain the blood. After all, that was all that remained. Only the legs. The rest of the body had already been butchered.

My gaze titled higher, and bile rose up my esophagus.

Feet. Not hooves. Not paws. Feet.

Human feet. Human feet, attached to human ankles, attached to human thighs, ending at a mutilated groin.

They were male. They had to have been, because a large patch of blood-covered flesh would’ve been plain skin on my body.

I gagged.

Using a spell to chop a few dozen people in half? That I could handle. This? A man strung up by his feet, bled like cattle, only his lower half remaining without so much as his genitals intact?

No, this I could not take with a calm stomach.

When I looked back at the fire, at that piece of meat they were roasting over it, I couldn’t keep it in. I veered to the right, avoiding Ezra, and emptied all of last night’s dinner onto the cave floor.

A second later, Ezra was doing the same.

Supposed cannibals were a stretch, even for a Vampire.

We left everything exactly how it was. My spell had killed them all, we hoped, so our next priority was getting out of the cave. It wasn’t too difficult. Ezra followed the scent of tree sap. Since trees couldn’t grow in caves, he knew that scent would lead us back to civilization.

Once outside, we sat on pine dusted boulders. Back-to-back, of course, as we had been instructed to yesterday. After all, that advice had saved us.