Page 58 of Insidious Monsters
fifteen
For a moment I was suspended in the air with the world laid out before me, the darkness below lit by a multitude of twinkling lights. My heart ached at how beautiful it was.
How alive.
Life.
Mylifewas…good.
No, what was I—
Gravity grabbed hold and pulled.
A scream bubbled up my throat. My chest pushed outward and pain ripped through me as Telarion pulled free, twisting mid-air to grab me and tear me away from death.
We landed in a heap in the tower, where devastation washed over me again. “Get off me. Get off, I want to die, I want—”
He slapped me.
The sting in my cheek loosened sorrow’s grip. I stared up at my stunned reflection in Telarion’s panicked eyes. Oh, God. “Telarion. Something’s wrong.”
He gathered me close and stood with me in his arms. “There’s something here. Oppressive, insidious. I can feel it.”
I could feel it too, pushing against me, trying to take me down. I hit the comm in my ear. “Quentin. There’s something here.”
“I’m on my way.”
I pressed myself to Telarion, wrapping my arms around his neck and squeezing my eyes shut against the wave of worthlessness that washed over me.
“It’s strong,” Telarion bit out through gritted teeth. “We need to get you away from it.”
“It’s not affecting you?”
“Oh, it is.” He hurried toward the stairs.
We were almost there when something dropped from the beams above and landed between us and the exit.
It looked like a cross between an armadillo and a sloth with huge, mournful eyes that almost made it cute, but then it opened its mouth and flashed long, needle-like teeth, ruining that illusion.
Telarion hugged me tight against his chest for a long beat, his nose brushing my temple as he took a breath. “I’m going to put you down now, August. I need you to cover your ears and sing really loud.”
“What? Why?”
“That thing is emitting a sound on a wavelength that’s so high your senses can’t register it, but mine can. It’s messing with your brain.”
“What about your brain.”
“I can handle it. Just do as I say.”
Fuck. “Okay.”
I didn’t need to ask him what he was about to do. That part was obvious.
He lowered me slowly, his attention on the eldritch. My boots touched the ground and a wave of grief hit me. Anguish over my lost mother, sorrow for all the dead mystics, for this world filled with too much pain and injustice.
“Sing, dammit!” Telarion ordered.
I covered my ears and began belting out the theme to my favorite supernatural show. Telarion fell into a crouch, thighs bunching, then leapt at the creature. The eldritch lashed out, its neck elongating so it could snap at Telarion, but my aberrant genius turned to shadow, washing around the creature’s head and then coalescing behind it.
