Page 102 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
I looked to the book in my arms. What dark power could rest in its pages, what could be drawing it closer. Why such darkness had remained here. It’d been lured by the book kept here all this time.
A hurried clatter across the floor above us. Something moving rapidly. Alma growled. Bringing my attention to her beastly form as she snapped her teeth.
‘Alma,’ I called. Those annoyed reptilian eyes meeting my own as I grabbed the sack off the floor and pushed the book back inside. Tying it tight before I held it out to her.
Another horrid boom and crack came from down the dark hallway. Closer. Dust rained down from the cracks in the ceiling between the exposed wooden beams above us.
The house whining helplessly.
‘It’s only going to fuel them.’ I offered the sack to her. ‘Take it back to the house.’
Cursed items fed the dark. Especially when it was this ravenous.
She growled, tail thrashing with uncertainty before she nudged my thigh in protest. I pushed her snout back, ignoring how she snapped at my hand with irritation.
‘Please,’ I asked. Those eyes went mortal for a moment, contemplating if she should bite me before her sharp jaws gently took the sack.
She sent an irritated glance Emrys’s way. He nodded in some silent agreement before she leapt to climb up the ruined bookcases, curling along the sagging beams and through a hole in the wall. Plaster and wood raining down with the disturbance but as the dust cleared – she was gone.
‘At least the bastards can’t feed,’ Gideon reached into his boot to pull out another shadow blade. His attention on the ceiling above us as another rattle came, almost excited like children rushing about in the midst of a game.
The strange demented nature of it made me pull my father’s blade.
‘Have you dealt with davror before?’ The hilt lengthened against my palm as I pressed myself back against the wall. Slipping into Emrys’s shadow.
An ominous groaning came from the walls around us before anyone could answer me.
‘They’re in the walls,’ Gideon warned, barely giving us a moment before the wall between us exploded. Something solid struck my side, taking me down to the damp floor. I skidded into the far cabinet, having enough sense to keep hold of my blade as I rolled to my knees. Seeing the bony shapes of the reanimated remains through the thick clouding of the grime. The sharp blue snap of Gideon’s magic and the warning flash of Emrys’s demon fire. The wishing stone around my neck fluttering incessantly.
There was nothing but a screeching roar as the remains of the corpse lunged for me. Its bony fingers sharpened to long lethal claws. I swiped with my sword, relieving it of its hands but it didn’t stop screaming. Even as I turned again, cutting the creature in half, only for those cursed bones to clatter and scuttle across the floor. Forcing me to kick the snapping skull away with the heel of my boot.
‘Bastards!’ Gideon snapped, before the bright white of Emrys’s summoning cut through the room. Throwing all the creatures back. They flew into the wall, cracking and tumbling into a pile of bone and brittle skin. Only then those bones began to bounce and tumble together. Vanishing into the gaping holes in the floor, dark screeching laughter shaking the boards beneath our feet.
‘Gideon!’ Emrys snapped, reaching for my hand and pulling me towards him, just as the rotting floor began to implode beneath our feet.
The cold bite of Emrys’s magic wrapped around me and then I found myself in a tangle of limbs in the hallway. Gideon cursing somewhere above me from where we’d all been thrown against the wall.
Having the barest moment to draw in a breath before the doorway we’d come through collapsed. The whole room folded in on itself in a cloud of dust. Stinging my eyes as I retched, dirt coating my tongue.
‘The fucking house is unmaking itself!’ Gideon snapped, as Emrys’s hand found mine in the gloom. Pulling me to my feet and further down the hall as I tried to blink the grit from my watering eyes.
Those three knocks grew closer. The rattle and tumble of bone. Quicker and quicker.
Doorways collapsed either side herding us until we stood in another entryway. Further into the dilapidated house.Another curving staircase of no use, as multiple steps had caved in, the doorways around us either boarded-up or collapsed. Nothing but the endless dark before us. My heart pounded against my ribs.
A horrid demonic screeching laughter echoed from the floors above, banging against the ceiling making the plaster crack, then the walls either side of us.
What the dark hunts it always devours.
Emrys and Gideon turned to watch all the available entrances. Their magic filled the air with a crackling tension.
An inhuman scream echoed down the shadowed corridor to our left. The bright lavender glow from my blade illuminating what leaked from the shadows. What had found us. Gideon’s aether burst forward, a blue tinge to the air as he wrapped it around us like a shield.
Something slipped like winter fog through the darkness. Sickeningly pale. Moving slowly and predatorily, taking its time with its prey.
The house whined, the floorboards shaking beneath my boots, the door frames beyond rattling. Then that manifestation brushed up against Gideon’s summoning like a tidal wave upon glass. Searching any way through.
Those whisps of smoke became clawed ghostly fingers with sharp tips as they scraped against the summoning. As if the creature would gouge its way through the shield if it needed to.
