Page 262 of Eldritch
Beyond him, just a short distance away, figures wisped toward his back, the shadows of a horde barreling right for him.
Not just a horde.
In the thick of spiders and the grotesque, humanoid monstrosities that rushed toward him flew those strange, wraith-like creatures that I’d seen crawling out of the spiders that’d chased Aleysia and I weeks ago.
“Zevander!” I screamed and as if he heard me, he glanced over his shoulder, toward them.
Slowly, he rose to his feet, facing the oncoming horde, and held his hands outstretched, just as Ravezio had stood momentsbefore. “Come for me, Pestilios! I defied death for her. I’ll fight you and any other god who seeks to take her from me!”
My chest cracked like shattered glass, splinters of panic stabbing at my heart. “No!” I screamed, clawing at the wavering wall that separated me from him.
The creatures descended quickly, swarming him, clawing and snapping at him with sharp fangs.
Dravien yanked the scroll from one of the small pockets at his thigh. “I found it!” He one-handedly unrolled the scroll, the other hand against the barrier as he spoke a chant that I recalled from the night Melantha had granted me passage.
On the other side Zevander teetered at the archway, frantically swinging his sword at spiders and wraiths that surged over him like a vicious, black cloud. He stumbled backward, his body disappearing, just like that of Cadavros moments before.
“No! No!” I slammed my palm against the ward, and it slipped through. As I pitched forward, my body was yanked backward, and I tumbled onto my bottom beside Kazhimyr.
“Got him!” Dravien lay on the other side of me, his face contorted in pain and teeth clenched, half his arm disappeared into the flickering barrier. “He’s slipping!”
“Don’t let him go! Please!” As I collapsed to my knees on a shuddering breath, Kazhimyr yanked me away. “Please don’t let him go!”
“Fuck! He’s slipping!” Dravien’s face reddened, his muscles shaking.
“Hang onto him!” Kazhimyr scrambled forward and as he shoved his hand toward the barrier, it flashed and sent him hurling backward until his spine crashed against the tree behind us.
I dove for the edge of the archway and peered down at Zevander, dangling by Dravien’s outstretched hand. Below him, gaped a bottomless black chasm. A terrifying and vast voidbelow his feet. I scrambled closer to reach for his hand, but it was coated in thick blood that had his fingers slipping through Dravien’s.
“Hang on! Please hang on!” Tears and panic wavered in my voice, as I reached down to clutch his forearm, both Dravien and I grasping him.
An unseen force seemed to pull at his feet, as his body tugged unnaturally at my arm. A thousand unspoken words passed over his eyes when they locked onto mine, the expression on his face grim.
He slid further, my hand gliding to his wrist.
Teeth clenched, I blinked away the tears and dug my clawed nails into the ground for stability. “Don’t you dare let go! Please don’t let go!” I screamed, my voice echoing around me. “I love you. You hear me? I love you, Zevander Rydainn! You hold tight!”
“Through every…thread of fate, I have loved you. Please … live.” He let out a grunt and his hand slipped from Dravien’s. Then mine. A single brush of our fingertips like smoke across my skin.
Time slowed around me, my heart caught in my throat.
A heart-wrenching regret burned in his eyes as he fell. Farther and farther away from me, his hand still reaching out as the abyss swallowed him. He silently mouthed my name, but I couldn’t hear it over the pounding in my skull and the scream that ripped out of me as if my soul had been wrenched from my body.
A grip of my ankles hauled me backward, and Zevander slipped from view.
Dravien rolled over to his knees and peered down. “No!” He yanked back his hand.
Empty.
Gone.
The reality in those words didn’t sink in. The visual lingered in my head—his face, the fall—but my heart refused to let it in. I felt suspended in time. Frozen. The horrific truth swirling around me as a mist of confusion and disbelief. A hollow clamor of noise that I didn’t dare acknowledge.
“Zevander?” I crawled back toward the barrier, resting a trembling palm against the surface that wouldn’t budge. The image of him falling flickered through my head again. “No. No, no, no. Please.” Harder, I pushed, desperate to see him again.
Something cold and hollow expanded inside my chest, but I didn’t bother to acknowledge it, as I slapped my palm across the barrier in search of a break.I need to see him!“Please, gods!” A merciless wave of panic crashed over me, and I slammed at the unyielding wall with both hands. Harder. Frantic. Grasping at hope with the same desperate tenacity as when I’d clutched his hand moments ago. “I need to see him! Please let me see him!”
All that remained on the other side was the forest and the creatures that scampered toward the archway, before vanishing from sight.
