Page 26 of Eldritch
It didn’t occur to me what had him running so fast, at first. Not until, moments later, two pale creatures emerged after him, their bodies suspended between the sixteen long legs that carried them quickly in my direction.
Fear gripped my throat.
“Zevander!” I rasped.
“Ready yourself!” He rounded my body until standing at my back, as the spider humanoids scampered toward us. “Call on your whip.”
My whip. The glyph. What was the damned glyph?
“I don’t remember it!”
“Yes, you do. You’re letting fear control your thoughts. Slow your mind andthink.”
“If I slow any part of me, those things are going to devour me!”
With quick hands, he held my hip and steadied my elbow, raising my arm a notch. “You’re tensing too much. Relax your muscles, you’re too stiff.”
If my heart hadn’t been pounding in my throat, I’d have told him that was a compliment, coming from him. “I can’t relax when they’re bounding toward us!”
They were closer than before.
Closer.
One ambitious leap away from pouncing on us.
My instincts told me to run. My whole body shook with the urge to spin on my heel, training be damned! “I can’t do this!”
They pounced.
Zevander threw out his hand, and the creatures shot up into the air, their legs still scrambling as if closing the last few inches between us.
“Call on your glyph! Now!”
I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. In the quiet of my thoughts, an image slipped through my head. The spine. “I see it.”
“Strike them.”
Nodding, I threw my hand out. Nothing but bones flew from my palm, clattering to a pile on the snow.
“Focus! I can’t hold them suspended for eternity!”
I threw my hand out again and felt a thump of pressure against my palm, as the whip snapped outward then retracted back. “Ha! I did it!”
“Shall I release them, then?”
“No!” Fear lashed through me at the thought of him setting those things loose.
“Then, try again.” The strain in his voice set my nerves trembling.
I stared back at them, the vague recognition of Mr. Primsley and his wife, Diana, peering through that grotesque form. They’d owned the bakery in town, and while they’d never gone out of their way to be kind to me, they’d certainly never been cruel.
Again, I raised my hand, trembling harder than before, and focused on the glyph in my head. The whip flew from my palm, snapping just short of the creatures.
“Stop looking at them as human. Imagine what they’ll do to you if I set them free right now. Imagine what they’d do to Aleysia.”
Aleysia.
A spark of anger lit my blood at the thought of Mr. Primsley’s teeth tearing into her flesh. Snarling, I threw out my hand again on a growl.
