Page 127 of Awry
That malignant energy — death incarnate?— emanates from it, causing a ripple of fear, of terror, to run through everyone gathered around me.Including the teens pressed against my back.
Chains aims the small cannon, and the dire charge loaded within it, at the hound creature.
Well, that clears up the loyalties.The creature might not be on our side, but it isn’t on Chains’s payroll either.
Presh tries to shift around me.I catch her with one arm stretched to the side, but she resists being pushed back.“Reck,” she murmurs in my ear.
She knows the shaggy bull-hound creature.Which flashes a wickedly sharp set of teeth in our direction, showing off long canines.The split of the gigantic maw is too large even for the wide head.The creature chuckles darkly.
So … that’s a smile?
Behind me, Kris vibrates with pure terror but is otherwise frozen in place.And she’s not the only one.At least a half-dozen shifters on both sides of the fray stumble back in sheer terror.
“Cu-sith,” I say—pronouncing it ‘coo-shee,’ from the old Gaelic.The universe voices the knowledge of what we’re all facing through me.And my naming the creature, acknowledging Reck’s beast form, pulls his attention firmly to me.
With wisps of the fog clinging to him, the cu-sith pads across the wet pavement, closer and closer to me.I’m caught in his gaze, also frozen in place.
And I know what I’m looking at now.
Another creature of pure myth— this one occasionally called the grim reaper.
Looking into his glowing green eyes, I’m completely certain that Reck isn’t in control of his beast right now.
And with that assessment made, I finally see the energy streaming from the cu-sith in all directions.Those thick ropes of essence tangle with and through the weave of all the life force — all the life-fueling essence within every being — in the immediate area.
As I watch, it all blackens.Not simply the creeping blackness — the pending promise of death — that I saw radiating briefly from Chains and the berserkers in the club.
No.
Every single thread.
Of every single being in the immediate area.
Withers.
Dying.
Presh inhales shakily, pressing her face against my back.
She can sense it as well.
Aknowingsnaps into place, wrapping around the trio of teens and yanking me so harshly to the right and away from the cu-sith that I nearly stumble.A desperate tenor I’ve never felt from aknowingnow runs through that energy.
But instead of following blindly, I try to ignore it.Just for one more moment.
The silent hunter steadily approaching me will chase us if given the opportunity.If we run, not all of us are going to make it.
The universe never minds playing with steep odds, but I occasionally do.Especially because the radiating lines of life force woven through and around both foe and friend are continuing to wither.Some are starting to flake away.
I’ve never seen such a thing, not unless the person in front of me is actually in the process of dying.And even that process is different.More of a fading.
Theknowingmight save me, might save Presh.
But everyone else is going to die.
“Shut your eyes, Presh,” I order, not taking my gaze off the cu-sith.
“What?”
