Chapter 3
Pedro didn't make it past the third day.
Before he died, his hands and feet were tied up with ropes, and they stuffed a cloth in his mouth.
It wasn't because he'd gone mad.
It was because every night, after dusk, he'd wake up, grab anyone who got close, and try to bite their wrist.
Martin wrote that after that day, the people in the camp stopped seeing the Nightbloods as just wild animals.
They started to suspect that the creature's mouth did more than drink blood.
It also left a strange hunger in them.
The priest said it was the taint of the devil.
The surgeon said it was a fever.
The old man said they were all wrong.
He said the real horror wasn't those little creatures latched onto people's necks.
The real horror was that they never came alone.
"They're scouts for the things above," he said.
Martin asked what he meant by "the things above."
The old man didn't answer.
He just looked up at the mountains behind the mangroves.
During the day, huge birds circled above the mountains.
At first, the settlers thought they were eagles.
But on the evening of the fifth day, the water crew disappeared in the ravine.
Six people were lost.
That included two soldiers, three porters, and the young interpreter.
They'd set out with four water buckets, two axes, and a musket.
By nightfall, only a single bucket made its way back.
It drifted down the stream, a strand of hair caught on its rim.
It wasn't black human hair.
It was light, curly hair.
Hair like that of a noblewoman.
The camp immediately sent a search party along the stream.
Martin was among them.
They found the first body at the entrance to the ravine.
One of the porters was sprawled across a rock, his shirt ripped into strips across his back.
The wound ran from his shoulder blade all the way down to his waist.
It wasn't a knife wound.
And it sure wasn't from some beast's claws, either.
It looked more like something had dropped down from above and ripped him open with both feet at once.
The second body was hanging from a tree.
Vines had twisted around his ankles, and his head dangled lifelessly in the air.
His eyes were gouged out by birds.
But a white flower had been placed on his chest.
Martin said that kind of flower was rare there.
The petals were spotless, not a drop of blood on them.
It was as if someone had deliberately set it there.
The priest fell to his knees, praying on the spot.
The soldiers raised their muskets, their hands trembling as the barrels wavered.
From deep within the ravine, a woman's laughter echoed.
Everyone heard it.
The laughter was so close.
It was as if someone was standing just behind the trees, watching them tremble.
One of the soldiers cursed and fired his musket in the direction of the sound.
The shot echoed through the valley.
Something stirred in the treetops.
A few feathers drifted down.
They were huge.
The edges were dark gray, but the centers were streaked with pale gold.
Martin tucked one of them into his journal.
By the time I flipped to that page, the feather was long gone.
All that remained were two faint indentations.
Underneath, a single line was scribbled in tiny handwriting.
"It wasn't a bird. It was more like a woman draped in a bird's skin."
They kept moving deeper into the ravine.
The stream grew shallower, and the rocks were covered in claw marks.
Finally, they found the young interpreter lying beside a patch of fallen reeds.
He was still alive.
His face was drained of color.
His lips wouldn't stop trembling.
As soon as he spotted Martin, the young interpreter clutched his sleeve and whispered, "Don't look up."
Martin asked, "Where are the others?"
The young interpreter just shook his head, not saying a word.
He said they'd heard someone singing.
The voice sounded like a woman's.
She was singing a folk song.
It was a tune only people from the ship would know how to sing.
The water crew figured some women from the settlement had gotten lost, so they went off into the forest to look for her.
When they reached a fallen log, they saw a woman sitting with her back to them, her hair trailing down to her waist.
She wasn't wearing any shoes.
But her feet weren't human.
They were bird talons.
Pedro's younger brother immediately raised his axe.
The woman turned around.
The young interpreter was shaking so hard his teeth clacked together as he spoke.
"Her face was beautiful," he whispered, his voice trembling.
"But her mouth was split all the way to her ears," he went on.
The laughter rang out again from the treetops.
This time, everyone looked up.
In the twilight, a dark figure dangled upside down from a high branch.
Her face was that of a woman.
And she had the wings of an eagle.
Her claws gripped a soldier's iron helmet.
Underneath the helmet, half a face was still attached.