Page 62 of Too Cursed To Kiss
Then I heard it.
“You are mine.”
It was Frank.
He could see through the marble.
I was dead meat.
I ran like a demon had targeted me, but a second too late, I remembered Wald had said not to move too fast. Elizabeth’s eyes locked on my position as I tore for the door, her talon smacking at the ground literally at the place where my feet had just left. I was going to be dead if I didn’t stop, and the smoke things would kill me—or worse—if I did stop. Dead if you do, dead if you don’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Wald was locked in a death-grapple with Britannia near the door. That was closer than the pit, but the wards were still on the floor. Maybe the wards would protect me from Mama-monster. I doubted that anything would stop the smoke things because what was I? An expert on smoke demons? I wasn’t going to stay to ask questions. I walked as fast as I dared to the tracery on the floor. Mama-monster’s head swung around, likely looking for me, but she couldn’t see me. Frank’s sweeps were getting closer with every twisting pass of the room. There was a lot of the gray-smoke action in the middle of the floor, dimming the visibility. My sense of direction twisted, and I cautiously twirled to get my bearings.
Wald had Britannia on the ground. I thought Wald had her pinned, but in the blur of limbs and smoke, it was hard to tell. My choices were to stay where I was, make a run for the pit, or try for the door.
Frank swooped through my orb, and I ducked, inhalingthe musty scent of congealed blood. If blood released them, what sent them back? More blood? If only there was someone to ask.
I muffled a scream as the swirls came closer again. The smoke things were moving differently than when I’d cut my finger. The spirits, or whatever they were, seemed unfocused, as if they didn’t know what to do or where to go. Maybe it was because Devlyn was dead.
Frank swooped in wider circles around the blood on the book. That meant something, and if I’d been some accomplished wizard, maybe I might have been able to figure it out. Somehow, that was an advantage to getting out alive, but I couldn’t see it.
Mother-monster had locked its interest on Wald and Britannia. The lumbering talon-swinging behemoth approached their battling bodies near the door. This was my chance. I edged to where I hoped were the stairs of the pit, with a cold sweat dripping down my back, trying not to think about saving my own skin by leaving Wald. The ear-splitting screech of Frank froze me solid. The screech had been heart-stopping and meaningless before, but now it reeked of a hunter seeking its prey. I was sure that was a bad sign. Cowering, I squatted at the edge of the pit now visible underneath the smoke, clearly down the stairs. There was no way I would make it down there in time. I wrapped my arms around my knees braced for the attack.
That’s when Sert came out of the door below.
Sert couldn’t see me. That was a bonus. He staggered back with wide eyes as the swirling gray Frank-thing swooshed by, giving another mind-numbing shriek. Sert raced up the stairs, and I sucked in a breath. Now that I knew he was going to be up here, I could run down the stairs andtry the door, praying the smoke creatures would be more interested in him, or had some invisible range, or well anything. I was willing to try anything.
Sert paused on the last stair, his jaw dropping at the horrors. I had been living it, but I looked with him and saw it all with new eyes. Near the warehouse door, what I hoped was Wald rose from the prone form of what I hoped was Britannia. The hulking form was moving too fast for my eyes to actually see what he looked like. The Mother-monster was attacking him, but what I hoped was Wald had dodged her. Mother-monster was a hair under ceiling height, which was like twenty feet tall. Most of the gray smoke things were clustered in a ghoulish swirl over the book, which was lying on the ground beside the decapitated body of Devlyn. Devlyn’s head had bounced and rolled about ten feet away. I had no idea what was normal for these creatures, but based on the wide-eyed frozen terror of Sert, this was not family-normal.
Mother-monster snapped her head back, locking on to Sert. He nodded at her in a challenge. The air charged, sending shivers through me. He took something out of his pocket and turned his attention to the pit. I squat-shuffled to the edge to see what was going on.
You know that painting? It wasn’t there anymore.
God, now I knew why Sert looked familiar. He was the wizard in the painting. The pit floor swarmed with blood-soaked bodies. When he turned, Sert’s eyes were blacker than Elizabeth’s. This didn’t seem positive for the continuing-to-live part. My brilliant pit escape idea had gone up in blood.
I had no clue what Sert was doing, or whether that fifteen-foot thing was Wald or Britannia. I was deathly aware that moving too quickly would make me visible to Sert and likely kill me faster. The book was now a fair amount lessblood-soaked than it had been, and I was hoping that was positive.
The smoke began to break away from the feasting swirl and move toward me. Frank was coming back and bringing a friend. There are things you think about when you are about to die. I was thinking of the burrito roiling in my stomach and the bra wire digging into my left tit, and if Wald was dead, my chances of survival were near to nil.
That decided me. I crept as fast as I figured safe, away from the pit. I made it to the center of the room before the first thing/body/fill-in-the-blank slithered up over the edge. The sight of death-not-dead made me move faster. Sert’s eyes began to track me as I ran and so did Mother-monster.
Frank was almost on top of me. I sucked in a breath and tore for the door where Wald still hopefully stood.
Frank screamed into my bubble. The other creature, a thing of long flowing tatters of smoke that wrapped around him in spirals, with eyes on the ends of each thread of fabric, held him back and screeched at an ear-bleeding pitch.
I stumbled forward, darting around the talon which dug into the concrete four times before it nicked me. I screamed, tumbling forward onto the concrete and buffeting the impact with the hand holding the marble. The crack of bone snapping flamed the world red with agony. The marble burst out of my fist, bounced, and rolled away as I helplessly curled around my broken wrist, writhing in a mind-numbing pain.
My survival instinct kicked in.
The marble was my only hope, and it was maybe ten feet away. Cradling my hand, I rolled toward it. A talon scraped the concrete where I’d just been, and the backlash of the paw or hand attached to it swept me back. I hit the floor again on my side; the impact knocked the breath out of me as paincaged my chest. Goddamn it. I’d either bruised or broken ribs.
I lay panting in agony, tracking the marble. It was lying on the concrete, far enough away that the pain of getting to it would probably kill me. I was not dying here while waiting for something to happen. I got to my knees, but then the air whooshed above me.
The talon was coming back.
Howls of the smoke demons and groans from whatever was coming from the pit echoed through the room. Dredging up energy, I lunged toward the marble, but I was inches short of grabbing it. When I tensed ready to spring to get it, a hand on the back of my jacket hauled me up. Agony roared through my chest.
