Page 102 of Her Blood Revenge

He hurries up the stairs on his hands and knees, still unable to form a coherent sentence or apparently stand up straight.

Idiot.

‘Would be good if we had the backup of the creatures at the castle,’ I tell Shaw, picking up some loose coins left on a table and sliding them into my pocket. I stop before a hideous portrait of Bensen and mimic his arrogant stance.

‘They ran away. We don’t need cowards.’

‘You think Pix and Dorian are okay?’

‘I refuse to believe they are anything else.’

Bensen eventually returns with the clothing. We put on the robes, and I burst out laughing at the sight of Ronan Shaw, the General, the great witch killer, wearing an earth witch robe.

‘You better stop laughing at me, Arch.’

I try. I do. But my laughter continues echoing all around us.

‘I mean it,’ he warns.

I need to rest my hands on my knees to stop my sides from hurting. I get a smack around my ear as he grabs Bensen and heads toward the door.

‘So what is this thing all about?’ he asks him. ‘Your Athir celebration. You all gather around the fire and what? Pray? Meditate?’

‘W-we align ourselves with the earth b-below,’ Bensen stutters back. ‘For two days and two nights to praise his bounty for the summer and then welcome his harvest for the winter food. And at dawn’s break, on the second day, we eat, dance a-a-and…’

‘Fuck?’ I finish.

He nods.

‘Then let’s go and have a dance, shall we?’

Shaw goes to open the door, still gripping Bensen by the scruff of his neck. Before he can, it explodes into splinters, sending them both staggering backwards.

A mountain of a monster with great, curved horns stops in the doorway. His body is elongated, and his arms hang an inch from the ground. His skin has black and red stripes, and when he blinks, two sets of lids moisten his one remaining white eye.

‘Not possible,’ I breathe, looking at the creature I long believed dead.

I let out a nervous bout of laughter as he steps inside, his eye on nothing and no one but Shaw. A deep laugh rumbles from his chest as Shaw just looks up at him. There havenot been many times in my life that I have seen the Dream Walker speechless or stunned to such a degree that he can’t move. But the appearance of this living, breathing nightmare has him precisely that.

‘Sathick,’ Shaw breathes.

Neve’s favourite monster and a sick mutant of whatever the fuck he was before dark magic corrupted him. Man? Elf? Fae? I have no idea. But he’s old. As old as Shaw, perhaps.

Dorian said Sathick lived in hell. They were both the blood goddess’s creation.

‘Ronan,’ Sathick drawls, taking another step inside and making the house tremble around him and the floors beneath bend. ‘It’s been a while.’

Shaw quickly recomposes himself and returns to his feet. Bensen scurries to the side of the room, his mouth open in a silent scream, and he looks at the monster standing in his hallway.

‘Last time I saw you,’ Shaw says. ‘You were bleeding out after we decimated the blood coven in the silver mountains.’

Sathick scoffs, flashing the many layers of razor-sharp teeth filling his mouth. I saw him use those teeth far too many times. His jaw dislocates, and his favourite meal is human flesh.

Particularly babies.

I try to hide the shudder as I recall the many piercing cries of those he devoured. At the sound of their wailing coming from inside as he swallowed them whole after shredding their skin as they passed his teeth.

Shaw killed him many years ago. Or so we thought.

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