Page 5 of What Whispers in the Dark
“Is it always a fucking competition with you two?” Garrik growled, then glanced at where a hole in the forest was open. Eight blurs of silver. A smear of faces. Purple waving from their necks?—
Fucking cowards.A low, lethal sound vibrated from his chest.
Defectors.
Fleeing. Thinking timber could save them.
Without further thought, he flicked his wrist at the insult. Smokeshadows coiled around them, outnumbering Jade and dragging them screaming into the darkness. He did not wait for Jade and Thalon’s remarks. Garrik reformed as veiled night, as darkness and ash and wind, shadows swallowing him whole, prepared to spit him out?—
Screams flanked him. The taste of iron saturated the air. Tings of armor and swords, gurgling, then?—
Snap.
Like fireplace wood popping. And wet, crunching thuds.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
In rapid succession, countless Ravens had no time to draw a breath as Garrik manifested in front of them. One by one byone, he grabbed each face, offering them their last view on Elysian: his razor-sharp teeth in a smile more sinister than a crippling nightmare.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Another and another.
Seconds—it had takensecondsto litter the dirt in heaps of purple cloaks and silver metal.Secondsfor his vision to fully cascade to night. An abyss of ink, a grayscale of muted color, as every vein and bone and will in his body slithered with desires out of his control.
He had minutes now—maybe less. By the undeniable evidence of black veins branching, spurting from his fingertips and no doubt his eyes, neck, and chest …minutesuntil whatsheleft him with would fully consume him and he would succumb to serpent darkness. Killing everything—everything—in that glade.
The younglings.
Thalon.
Jade.
Conserve your powers, Garrik called out to Thalon. If … if serpent darkness took him … if he could not restrain himself in such a state …
And you?Warning was buried there. Warning and concern.Brennus. What if?—
He severed their connection and would not hear it again. Because when it came down to their lives, they werealwaysfirst. And what came after, even if it risked his own life, even if he was depleted, there was no question. No matter what uncertainties lie ahead with Brennus,themfirst.
Garrik did not answer. He outstretched his hand, now reformed as shadows and ash. Took a breath—asteadyingbreath—as if it could delayher. If flesh, that hand would have worn their blood like war paint, a warning to every enemy in that glade, but he could only focus on the way darkness curled, thirsty formore.
Somewhere outside the borders of his vision, Thalon and Jade were both fighting with swords on the ground now. And where that revengeful fury of steel landed, Ravens departed this world. Jade’s chilling shrieks returned Thalon’s roars, chased by the screams of the dying and damned.
He hardly heard it, but knew the moment Jade kicked a soldier off her sword. Recognized the watery squelch of another splitting in two. The sounds fueled his descent. The bloodlust and agony.
Thalon’s familial sword.It did not stop swinging. Impaling another without breaking his stride.
The screams, the clang of swords, the younglings’ terrified cries?—
Garrik angled his shadowy head where four Ravens herded them, jerking their chains toward a murky pond.
They were next.
A Raven’s leathery wings unfurled from the mass. In their hands were the chains. With one effortless flap, he was sent into the air?—
From across the glade, lightning and clouds of thunderstorms exploded. Opening the sky in the direction that the male flew.
You were told?—
