“Dying?” the creature said, in a plaintive voice that wrenched at my chest. Why was I feeling for this creature? All we shared was our blood. I owed it nothing, not even sympathy.
“I’m sorry.” Diaz nodded, his eyes lowered, his mouth drawn. “Before you go. Who made you?”
“White Mother,” it answered, its eyes glazed with a mix of fright and reverence. “White Mother tells us where to go. What to take.” It blinked again, its eyes flitting about the room, the ceiling, as if searching for something. “White Mother sends us again and again. She sends so many brothers tonight.”
Many brothers? Tonight?
“Where are they now?” Diaz asked, his voice so soft that I nearly missed how it was trembling.
The homunculus writhed and twitched on the table, as if wracked by some hideous agony. It was in the throes of death. Its head slammed against the table as its neck bent back. Then, like a rubber band released, the tension left the thing’s body, and it collapsed against the table again, soft, loose, languid. It smiled, then it whispered.
“They’re here.”
Diaz stepped back, his face a mask of shock, and Asher yelled as he tore his hands away, the necromantic energy receding into his fingers. The homunculus screamed as its body dissolved into goo, its skin and meat and bones sloughing and dripping to the ground. I watched as the Heartstopper rolled off the table and clattered into a puddle of gore.
Then the door burst open. Heads spun as we turned to face our attackers. My heart pounded like war drums, and the tension caught in my throat.
First five, then ten, then at least two dozen men who looked just like me poured into the room, each wearing the same gleeful leer, each mouth locked in an expression of demonic ferocity. They tore through Nirvana, savaging the human thralls, breaking bones and faces with makeshift clubs, planks of wood, lengths of pipe. The homunculi fought with inhuman brutality, and with terrifying precision, expertly singling out every mortal in the room, prioritizing their injuries and deaths.
We scattered. The vampires leapt into the fray, tearing into the homunculi with fists and fangs, and springing back when they found that the creatures were equipped with strength that far surpassed human bounds. Diaz shouted as he flung spells across the room, scarlet beams of energy blasting homunculi off their feet.
Sterling, Asher, and I stuck together in our own unit, our backs towards each other for protection. I knew I heard Sterling attempting to strategize, but it was hard to make anything out over the roar and clamor of battle.
More of the homunculi were pouring into the room with each passing minute, replacing those slain by the might of the coven. I glanced at my palm, then the door, waiting for the right moment to tear my wound open, to pay the blood price I needed to give in exchange for the magnified eldritch power of the Dark Room.
Between studying and waiting for an opening, I somehow picked it out. A single homunculi had stayed out of the thick of battle. Now it strode confidently for the center of the room, something at its throat pulsating like a distant star.
It was a gem. A shining, white opal.
“No,” I said, the dreadful realization prickling at my skin. “Diaz. Get your coven out of here. Now.”
I could tell he heard from the way his eyes bore into me for the fraction of a second, but he turned back to the battle, forging on in fury. I tugged on Sterling’s jacket.
“Sterling, you need to get the fuck out of here.”
“I can help,” he said. “No way I’m leaving. These are my kind, and – ”
“Asher,” I shouted. “Your pendant. Use it on him.”
Asher clutched Carver’s amulet, scanning the room, and found exactly what I saw: the homunculus, its jewel glowing rhythmically, like the timer on a bomb.
“Oh shit,” Asher said. He ripped the necklace off his neck, wrenched Sterling by the collar, then smashed the jewel into his forehead. It shattered, issuing a tiny puff of smoke.
Sterling clutched at his brow, his teeth bared. “The fuck are you doing, Mayhew? If you think for a second that – ”
Sterling vanished before he could finish his sentence, teleported instantly to the Boneyard through the smashed jewel’s enchantment. Asher stepped to my side, clinging to my arm.
“You did the right thing,” I said.
“It’s happening.” He pointed at the homunculus. “Look.”
“Diaz,” I screamed.
Too late.
The gem at the homunculus’s throat shone stronger, brighter, until it flooded the entire room with the force of its brilliance. But this wasn’t the smothering light that Thea had once used to blanket the entire city of Valero in a shroud of white. This was something more natural, and more dangerous.
Sunlight.