Page 42 of The Wolf's Appetite
The air grew hotter, the stench unbearable—sulfur, charred meat, and something ancient.
And then I saw it.
Long gray fingers, jointed wrong, pushing out from between the beast’s split ribs. Each had six claw-tipped digits, the nails black as blood. The claws scraped along the bone as they emerged, throwing splintered ribs out of the way. Flesh flopped wetly on the ground as the creature pulled itself out of the corpse.
The head followed—elongated, crowned with a spill of long hair, the color covered in the black blood. But I saw hints of its true shade. White as the light erupting out of the witches’ palms.
For a second, the face was almost human, if a person had been hollowed out and remade by the very demons of hell itself.
And then the Leandrean stepped free of the carcass with a slow, deliberate grace, blacknessdripping from its body in thick ropes as it tossed the carcass and metal slab it had been atop across the room.
It slowly turned, looking every one of us in the eyes, its mouth curling into something that might have been a smile.
“They are here. The door to hell has been opened,” the oracle whispered, voice trembling for the first time. “Only the gods can save us now.”
26
AISLING
The manor felt still in a way that didn’t sit right with me. There was loneliness, yes, but in the pit of my stomach, there was this dread I couldn’t shake, one that had nothing to do with the war ahead.
All the females were gathered in the drawing room—the fear and anxiety thick with all of us. No one wanted to be alone right now.
I was surrounded by the hum of low conversation. The scent of the fire burning in the hearth and the delicate clink of teacups on saucers filled my other senses.
From the outside, it might have looked like a peaceful evening. But this moment was fragile. Any of us could snap.
Ainslee, Lennox’s sister and Luca’s mate, ruler of theEastern European Lycans, was telling a story about a yearly festival in Luca’s stronghold. I knew she was doing it to fill in the time and keep everyone’s minds off of the current situation.
I was smiling, trying to listen, but there was a weight pressing at the edges of my mind. Something was…off.
I got up to grab another cup of tea when I felt the hair on my arms stand on end, and electricity crackled through the room. The other women shifted with unease. They all felt it, too.
This intense humming sounded, and as it grew, my ears rang, and I was forced to set my mug down and cover them to ease the discomfort it was causing.
“What the hell is going on?” Kayla asked.
Before anyone could answer her, the hum turned to a vibration, the lights in the room flared, and then we were plunged into darkness as the electricity went out. The firelight was the only illumination, casting eerie shadows across the room.
“Give the generators a second to kick on,” Luna said, and as if her words conjured them, the lights flickered back on.
Evelyn’s voice cut through the air. “Did you feel?—”
The rest was drowned out by the vibration that now turned into a shriek that had all of us crying out and clutching the sides of our heads.
The noise waseverywhere—inside my skull, in thewalls, buried in the floor beneath our feet. It was reminiscent of an animal’s growl wrapped in something infinitely more sinister.
The air thickened and pulled inward, sucking the breath from my lungs. The lights went out again, and the shadows in the corners of the room elongated, peeling away from the walls and reaching out to us. We panicked and congregated closer to the mantel, the light from the fire offering a strange protection.
I knitted my brow when I heard a splintering, cracking sound. I scanned the room for the source of the noise, focusing on the darkest point. The edges curled in on themselves, like an endless black hole spreading outward like a disease.
And then I saw it.
The creature unfolded from the darkness—long limbs, clawed fingers that dug furrows into the floorboards, and skin the color of a stormy night. Its hair was long and matted, a shade deeper than its body, and covered in some dark gunk.
Its eyes… there was nothing in them but a void so deep I felt it pulling at me. I knew what this creature was, had heard legends of the Keyholders, but had never seen one in my life.
The Leandrean.
