Leo turned toward her and forced a smile that trembled at the edges. Tension made the grin a thin, brittle thing. "Damn my life," he muttered, then wagged a shaking hand as if conducting an invisible orchestra. "Nice dress… especially that white rose—stained with blood. A masterpiece." The words came out half-sneer, half-prayer.
A sudden, cold tug seized him from below. Something brushed along his calves and then against his shins—hands, fingers, claws—scraping, pulling. Pain flared as claws dragged across him, shallow at first, then deeper. He staggered, breath sucked tight in his chest.
Eileen threw herself between him and the thing with the white gown. Her body struck like a battering ram; she grabbed Leo's wrist with iron resolve and hauled him clear, pulling him up and away before whatever had latched on could finish its work. He stumbled free, breath ragged, feeling the sting of fresh wounds across his back and arms. Blood darkened his shirt in ragged streaks.
Tyler stared with eyes wide .
"What happened to you?" His voice was a needle of panic in the night air.
Leo swallowed; the words came out raw. "I don't know. The moment I stepped into that pit I felt claws sink into my back. It—she—wasn't alone. She was moving the bodies in the hole, like a puppeteer. She's not a woman… not really. She's closer to a monster than anything born of flesh and law."
Eileen's hands were already at her belts. Her daggers flashed—a quick, practiced motion—and she lunged forward with a hiss of metal. But every blade she threw met nothing but air and that impossible calm. The creature in the dress took each attack as if swatting at flies. Not a single tear, not a single bleed. Eileen's strikes glanced off something harder than flesh, softer than stone; they left no mark. Her momentum spent, she fell to her knees, chest heaving. The woman in white did not bother to turn toward her.
Instead she crossed her and fixed her attention on Leo and Tyler. The two men reflexively drew their weapons and raised them with shaking hands; the gesture was more ritual than defense. With the barest flick of a finger—an elegant, contemptuous motion—the woman sent both of their weapons skittering from their grip and clatter into the mud. They spun uselessly away like toys pushed by an indifferent god.
Tyler's eyes found Eileen's for a heartbeat, and he nodded sharply. "Eileen isn't her target," he said, voice flat with calculation. "She wants us."
"Then to the gate," Leo rasped. Pain moved through him like wildfire, but thought was clearer than breath. "Maybe her power only reaches this place."
They ran. The grounds fought them: roots snagged boots, rotten earth slid away beneath their weight, tangles of wire and bone whispered and tugged at their legs. But speed was their only argument; they threw themselves toward the gate as if momentum could translate into sanctuary.
The gate banged shut behind them with a violence that was obscene in its finality—metal on metal, a sound that folded the sky. Tyler began to intone, but the enchantments that had guarded those hinges held their tongues. The gate remained stubbornly closed.
"Damn," Tyler snarled. "I think we're trapped."
The woman advanced, and in every step she dragged the hem of her white dress through the earth. She moved with the slow assurance of something that has all the time in the world. Out of the gloom came the soft scrape of her nails—long, glossy crescents that caught what little moonlight there was.
She began to speak. "Men," she intoned, voice low and reverent, "are the filth of this world. They must vanish so that the rest may finally breathe." Her words were a benediction and a curse, a poison murmured as prayer.
She moved closer. Then, with horrifying ease, she reached out and seized Tyler by the throat.
His boots scraped across the ground as she lifted him, his weight nothing to her. His face turned crimson, veins bulging as he clawed at her arm, kicking, thrashing — but her grip was unyielding.
"Let me go, you filthy whore!" he rasped between strangled gasps.
Leo, staggering on unsteady legs, his wounds still bleeding through his torn clothes, raised his weapon. He lunged forward with a broken shout, driving the blade deep into her side.
The steel sank into her flesh with a sickening sound — but she did not even flinch. No blood spilled. No breath hitched. It was as if he had struck stone disguised as skin.
Leo froze. "What… what the hell are you?"
Her expression remained empty. Then, with a single motion, she caught the shaft of the scythe, wrenched it from his grasp, and pulled. The strength of the movement tore him off balance, dragging him toward her like a child's puppet caught in invisible strings.
Now she held both of them — Tyler dangling by the neck in one hand, Leo caught by the collar in the other — her slender arms unmoving.
And then — a blur.
Eileen came crashing into her with a furious shout, slamming her shoulder into the woman's chest. The impact sent all three of them sprawling to the ground. Mud splashed up around them.
Eileen pushed herself up first. "Get up!" she hissed, grabbing both men by their wrists and hauling them away, dragging their battered bodies through the dirt.
They retreated a few paces, trying to catch their breath. Leo leaned against a gravestone, clutching his ribs; Tyler spat blood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
She began walking toward them again — slow. She knew. There was nowhere for them to run.
Tyler's breathing steadied, and he turned toward Eileen. "Eileen," he said quietly, "I need you to do something. Go—walk past her."
Eileen's head snapped toward him, disbelief twisting her features. "Are you insane? You want me to walk right past that thing? You might as well hand her my corpse now!"
Tyler's face hardened; his tone became sharp, almost commanding. "You're a member of the Black Hunters, aren't you? Don't tell me you're afraid of a mere woman." His eyes glinted with grim confidence. "Besides, I'm sure she won't touch you. And if she does—" he smirked faintly "—I'll throw Leo at her as bait."
Leo's jaw tightened. "I swear, I'm killing you after this," he muttered darkly. Then, despite himself, he looked at Eileen and managed a crooked grin. "Go on. If it helps, I'd be honored to die for you."
Eileen hesitated — just long enough for her hands to tremble — then straightened, wiped the blood from her cheek, and stepped forward. Her boots pressed softly into the wet ground as she approached the creature.
The woman did not even glance at her. Eileen passed so close that her shoulder brushed against the edge of the white gown — and nothing happened. The creature's gaze remained fixed on Leo and Tyler, as if Eileen were made of air.
Tyler gave a sharp, humorless laugh. "Well, Leo, I think this is it."
Leo's lip curled in irritation. "You pick now to say that? We were dead the moment I agreed to your stupid plan."
Tyler smirked faintly, though his eyes never left the advancing figure. "She's not just a woman," he said, voice low. "She's Jericho."
Leo frowned. "What the hell does that mean?"
Tyler's tone grew almost reverent, as if reciting an old curse. "Simply she kills man."
Leo blinked, utterly bewildered. "What?!"
"Long story," Tyler said, a bitter smile ghosting across his lips. "It's been an honor fighting beside you these last two months."
Leo rolled his eyes, grabbed Tyler by the arm, and started pulling him backward. "Damn it, not today! I'm too young to die — tell me the story while we're running!"
Tyler stumbled after him, half-laughing, half-panicked. "Run all you want, Leo — but there's no escape from her ."
Eileen struck until her arms trembled and her breath grew ragged, blades a blur of silver under the jaundiced moon. She stabbed, slashed, spun—each attack a promise of ending—yet the woman took every blow as if swatting away rain. Eileen's knives bit nothing and she fell back finally, lungs burning, only to be launched like a ragdoll. Her hand closed about her and hurled her through the air; Eileen's back struck the cold face of a gravestone with a sick crack. Pain flared sharp and white along her spine; she slumped, stunned, the taste of iron and earth in her mouth.
Leo and Tyler had run until the stones blurred. And then the ground rose its hands. Something clawed up through the sod and wrapped around their calves, fingers of soil and rot, pulling, grappling. Each time they fought free, new, slick hands slid from the graves to snag them again. It was as if the earth tried to fold them back into itself.
They staggered; exhaustion gnawed at them. Tyler glanced over a shoulder, half hoping the chase had tired of them. "Hey—" he panted, voice brittle with false bravado, "maybe she's bored now."
He finished the sentence with the wrong kind of calm. The woman was already there—silent, impossibly close—her skirts stained and dark. Before either man could draw breath, her claws sank into Leo's belly. The sound that followed was animal and wet. Leo's scream fractured the night; every muscle in his body convulsed with the violence of it.
"Leo!" Tyler's shout tore into the chaos. Fury, fear—he shoved forward, pistol spitting fire. and then her lips moved in a low, terrible mantra: "Men must die."
Tyler, hairline thread of rage, pressed the muzzle to the center of her forehead and fired. The gunshot cracked like a branch underfoot. Her head snapped back, blood blooming—but the wound closed as fast as it opened. She looked at him afterward with the same indifferent eyes.
Without warning she caught Tyler by the throat. His boots left the ground; his hands scrabbled for a grip where none existed. She lifted him high, suspension and sick calm in her posture, then slammed him down as if testing the earth's temper. He hit once. He hit twice. Each impact threw a spray of red into the cold air. Tyler's scream split into ragged pieces and was ground into a rasp as she kept raining him down, a metronome of bone and soil.
He tasted blood and the iron of things about to end. His vision smeared. He waited, braced for the one final, inevitable blow. The world narrowed to the white of her dress.
And then Leo moved.
Leo had been barely more than a shadow of himself—wounded, staggering—but something raw and ancient lit him from within. With a feral howl he drove his scythe into the woman's side. The blade sunk deep; a hiss of air and something dark spattered the earth. For the first time she staggered. Black ichor—not ordinary blood—slicked the weapon.
Tyler watched, bewilderment blooming into something more terrible. Leo's eyes had turned. Red flared in their depths, hot and hungry. His hands coarsened; nails lengthened to hooks. The scythe in his grip burned with a black flame that licked and died and licked again.
Where before the woman had shrugged off steel, now the infernal edge ate into her. She screamed—a sound like a church bell struck by stone—and tried to strike back, but this wound did not knit. Leo surged forward, a different animal entirely. He seized her throat with both transformed hands; his fangs, sudden and cruel, flashed as he leaned in. The bite was obscene—teeth tearing through throat and muscle—an act both hungry and judicial.
She howled, a sound that clawed at the ground. Black fire crawled from Leo's palms and spidered along her limbs, consuming with methodical, uncaring intent. He did not stop at the throat. His hand slid, precise and terrible, through ribs and tissue as if following a map only he could read. With one brutal wrench he pulled free a warm, collapsing heart. Blood and black ichor ran down his forearm; he lifted the organ high, a crown of wet pulp, and then—without pomp—dropped it to his mouth and bit.
Eileen, still reeling from the gravestone's kiss, dragged herself upright enough to see, Leo , the man they'd been protecting—standing over a shredded, shrieking ruin, red eyes burning like embers. Tyler, half-buried in pain and blood, stared with a terror that stripped the words from his mouth.
"What… what are you?" Eileen whispered, voice thin as cracked paper.