Page 93 of Aberrant Monsters
“To find Telarion. He sensed something and went upstairs to look.”
“It’s not safe,” Nandi said.
“I’ll be fine. The ghosts won’t hurt me. They need my help.” I raised my voice on the last part.
We got to the foyer.
“It’s not them I’m worried about,” Nandi said.
“I’ll be fine.” I pushed them toward the door and ran up the stairs. “Telarion?”
The air was thicker up here, charged with a menacing energy that made my skin crawl. The lights were off, so I flipped a switch.
Nothing.
Great.
Perfect creepy vibe. “Telarion?” I refused to play scared for the eldritch that had been hiding in this house and feeding on people like a fucking coward. “Telarion, what the fuck?”
He wouldn’t have left without telling me, which meant he was here and either ignoring me or unable to answer.
Telarion never ignored me when I called.
My instinct was to break into a jog down the corridor and smash open each door ninja style until I found him, but a deeper instinct gripped me by the nape and drew me forward slowly, one step at a time.
Listen, it instructed. See.
The hallway began to waver like the world behind a heat wave. When the wavering ebbed, the hallway was no longer a hallway but the inside of a gaping maw, crimson and pulsing.
Hungry.
Green residue seeped from folds in the cushiony walls, gathering in pools on the squidgy floor.
This was the eldritch. It had somehow become part of the house. Become one with the house. Pretty sure they didn’t have this breed in the crypto manual.
There would be no trapping this thing. I’d have to kill it, but for that I needed my saber.
Common sense dictated I head back. The eldritch probably had no idea I could see it, that I was aware of its true face. I should act all casual and just go back downstairs, but Telarion had come up here and now he wasn’t answering me.
He could be in danger.
I told myself I owed him. That he’d saved my ass too many times for me to walk away now, but it was more than that. It was the fact that somehow, some way, the damn aberration had made it onto my list of people I would do anything to save.
There was only one thing to do now.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the eldritch’s maw.
* * *
The groundbeneath my feet felt like sponge but I kept my expression neutral, trying to maintain a calm demeanor and keep my heartbeat regular. I wasn’t sure if this thing could see in the conventional sense. I had no idea how it experienced the world around it, so I needed to account for all aspects, and one of the ways a predator tracked its prey was by scent.
The scent of fear.
And there was no denying I was afraid. But not for me. For Telarion.
I got to the first door on the left. It was open and a figure stood against the wall.
Telarion.
