Page 251 of Eldritch
“Get back!” Kazhimyr yelled and sent a blast of misty ice toward the horde, stopping them in their tracks. A jerk of his hand exploded their guts.
“I don’t like this,” Dravien said, peering toward all the webs overhead.
“C’mon.” Kazhimyr jerked his head. “We’ll do a quick search for Zevander and get the hell out of here.”
As the three of them strode on, a foreboding chill slithered over the back of Kazhimyr’s neck. The webs and thick roots they’d seen outside of the tree bore an unsettling resemblance to the dream he’d had while recovering from his bite. A scritching sound brought all three men to a halt.
“Do you hear that?” Kazhimyr asked, cocking his head to listen. He slowly lifted his gaze to the webs overhead. Hundreds of spiders peered down on them. Some the size of a bear, others small as mice.
“Get out!” Kazhimyr sent a blast of cold toward them, but they scampered down the webs quickly, faster than he could freeze them in place. In seconds, the three were overwhelmed, separated from each other as they maintained their own halo. Dravien swung a sword while Kazhimyr showered them in the white mist. Ravezio slid his blade across his arm, flicking them with his blood which landed on the ground in a hiss of steam they seemed to avoid.
Kazhimyr backed himself away from a larger spider that prowled toward him and when it reared up, he frowned, staring back at the human face embedded in the dark carapace underneath. His boot slipped over the edge of something and Kazhimyr fell through the dirt floor, watching it close overhead. His spine smashed into the ground, knocking the wind from his lungs and he turned over to his side, coughing. He shook his head and groaned at the ache in his neck, rubbing the spot where he must’ve hit the ground hard. He sat up, glancing around tofind himself in a cavern similar to the one above, but without the mess of webs. All around him stood walls of roots.
Dread curled in his stomach as he pushed to his feet, eyeing a door ahead of him.
A door that looked precisely like the one in his dream.
Fuck.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
MAEVYTH
Skinny, brittle roots crackled beneath my boots as I stepped through the dense fog. In search of a way out of the strange woody labyrinth, I’d turned around, retracing my steps back toward the hole I’d stepped through. Surely, I should’ve made my way to the center of the tree again, but the more I walked, the more lost I felt, surrounded by tall roots that seemed to reach out for me as I stepped over them, and that awful green glow.
Where do I go?
I lifted my gaze toward the darkness overhead, certain that something was watching me, and stumbled forward. The tip of my boot sank into a soft depression in the ground and a white pocket of air hissed out. The stench of rot and decay filled my nose and I slapped a hand to my face, stumbling away. Another hiss told me I’d stepped on a second pocket. And a third.
My vision flickered and wavered, my head light, as dizziness claimed my balance. I threw my hand out to steady myself against one of the roots, and a prickle raced across my knuckles as tiny, vine-like branches crawled over them. Yanking my hand free, I staggered on, vision growing wobbly and unfocused.
Once outside of the steam pockets, the dizziness seemed to lift a little, and a tickle of nausea settled in my stomach.
The crackle of roots from behind sent an urgent rush to my muscles and I hastened my steps. Over roots and under low-lying branches, I traversed the strange landscape by nothing more than that unnerving glow of light.
Another crackle.
Hiss.
Someone was following me.
With light steps, I moved faster, in no particular direction, desperate to find a way out of the damned labyrinth of trees.
More cracking. Closer than before.
Not daring to turn around, I dashed through the darkness. As my boot struck an upturned root, a force crashed into me, knocking me to the ground and the air exploded out of my lungs on a scream. I turned onto my back, horrified as Zevander’s massive body scrambled up mine, his eyes, black as pitch and barely discernible in the darkness. He pinned my wrists at either side of my head, his gaze wild and ravenous.
“Zevander?” I whispered, desperate for one flicker of recognition.
There was nothing.
Not the man I’d made love to the night before. Not the one who’d fought back at the church until his body had given out on him and the walls collapsed around him. Not the angel who’d whispered to me in the darkness of my cell.
Something else stared back through his eyes. An ominous presence with no soul.
“Come back to me.” Through a mist of tears, I watched for a twitch. A shift of his eyes that told me he was still there, fighting. The small glimmer of hope that I’d seen the few times he’d slipped into his head.
He wasn’t there.
