Yeah, we’d see Vlad’s signal now, I thought, staring at the multiple tunnels that were now revealed from the hundred-yard hole that Mencheres had torn into the mountain. Soon, we’d probably see a lot of things. The color of the quartz veining the mountain seemed to grow darker the farther down it went, so Vlad would be forcing the necromancers deeper into the mountain.

My guess was proved right moments later when an unfamiliar man ran through one of the tunnels that Mencheres’s power had exposed. He spun around in disbelief when he saw the gaping hole where the side of the mountain used to be. Then he ran right for that instead of going deeper into the mountain. I watched with frustration. How could Vlad force anyone into Mircea’s prison if there was now a huge exit they could escape through?

“Incoming!” I yelled at Mencheres, snapping out my whip.

The man was airborne long enough for me to see that he had light brown hair and tattoos snaking up the sides of his face. Then two huge chunks of rock shot up and smashed him between them. The impact was so incredible, it turned the rocks into gravel and him into nothing more than a boneless, gooey pulp.

“You double-swatted him with boulders,” I said, both admiring and disgusted as red glops started to splatter me.

Mencheres noticed and flicked them away before more hit me. “I might not be able to use my abilities directly on the necromancers, but I can use them on everything else.”

“Talk about making the best of what you’re working with,” I muttered.

I don’t know why I had my whip ready to shoot out over the next several minutes as we waited to see if anyone else would try to run out of the hole. Mencheres could more than handle them on his own, as he’d proved with his smashing-boulders trick. Still, I was too keyed up to stop the currents from building up in my right hand, so I stayed tense, ready to spring into action if anyone else tried to run for it.

All of a sudden, fire roared along the lip of the hole in the mountain. Instead of growing to curtain the open space with enough flames to prevent anyone else from using the huge hole as an exit, the flames abruptly extinguished.

Mencheres’s face darkened. “That is Vlad’s signal,” he said, going over and clasping me to him. “They need help.”

Before I could speak, he vaulted us into the air. As we flew, the fallen pieces of the mountain began to fly, too. I had a second to see them sealing over the enormous hole as if they were huge puzzle pieces being put back into place, then that view was cut off as Mencheres dropped us onto the smashed remains of the church.

To my shock, Mencheres backed away as soon as he set me on the ground. “Vlad ordered me not to go in. If I am stricken by magic, I will lose my hold on the barrier protecting Mircea. Whatever powers you have, Leila, you need to unleash them. Vlad would not have sent that signal unless the situation was dire.”

My alarm turned into barely controlled panic. They had only gone in there less than ten minutes ago! How powerful were these necromancers if things had gotten that bad, that fast?

I ran into the crumpled church, Mencheres using his power to pull aside the flaming piles of debris in front of me. With those cleared away, it didn’t take long to find the trapdoor leading to the tunnel entrance below the church, and I jumped into it while sending more currents surging to my right hand.

Chapter 47

Bodies littered the tunnel. Some had had their heads ripped off, but a few were in charred heaps, so Mencheres had been right and not everyone here was covered in grave magic. I assumed the ones that hadn’t been were average guards instead of the necromancers, not that that made me feel any better. Vlad’s fiery SOS hasn’t been sent because the fight was too easy. Something was going very, very wrong.

I kept charging my whip as I ran deeper into the tunnels, careful not to lose my footing when they sloped steeply downward. They forked once or twice, too, but it was frighteningly easy to know which way to go. I only had to follow the sounds of strange chanting and intermittent screams.

An orange glow lit the next section after I rounded a sharp corner, and my pace quickened. Fire meant Vlad. This long stretch of tunnel didn’t have any bodies, and from how the echoes grew louder, the source of the screams and the chants was at the end of it.

I sent so much voltage into my whip it was raining sparks and coiling like an angry snake when I reached the door-shaped opening at the end of the tunnel. I wanted to charge right through, especially when I realized that the screams came from Marty, but I forced myself to slow down. I might not be a pro, but I wasn’t amateur enough to run in and get ambushed on my blind sides by whatever was making Marty scream.

The last ten feet, I slid and sent my whip out in front of me. My little push for momentum plus the downward slope caused me to rocket forward and I leaned back, making myself as low as possible.

I’d been right to worry. Something big smashed through the air instead of my head as a guard hiding on the right side of the door struck. I slid right past him, snapping my whip at his legs. It cut through them and he dropped like a felled tree. I snapped my whip again when he hit the ground, aiming for his neck. It ripped his head off and sent it flying through the air, yet my first clear look into the large antechamber had me not even noticing when his head bounced like a ball as it landed.

Vlad, Maximus, Veritas, and Marty were all in the room, yet none of them seemed to notice me. Veritas was kneeling on the floor, scratching something into the stone, and the rest of them were staring at the huge, pale thing that rose up from what looked like a fire pit in the center of the room.