Page 164 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
But another roar had already rattled the air so hard that I felt it reverberate through my very bones.
Steeler, Garvis, and I had barely made it to the church’s front door when a ghastly shape emerged from behind it.
A giant of a humanoid figure rose higher than the church’s steeple, covered in flakes of gray, peeling flesh and holding a man in skeletal hands that were tipped in long, curving talons.
The man lolled in its grip, head swinging, and as the monster made a rapid five steps forward on skittering legs, I saw why.
One of those talons had completely impaled the man’s chest like a needle in a pin cushion. The man was already dead.
But that didn’t stop the monster from opening a maw of sharp, jagged teeth and chomping down on the man’s head.
Leaving just his impaled body from the neck down.
I stuffed a scream deep, deep down as the sound of a crunching skull mingled with the splats of blood that joined the pavement. Steeler had flung his free arm out in front of me as if that would have stopped me from seeing or hearing, but when he looked sideways at me, I knew it had just been a gut reaction. He glanced at Garvis next, and the three of us nodded at each other.
Side by side, we tried to dive into the monster’s mind, but…
There were no thoughts to grab onto. Even when I allowed my eyes to close for the briefest moment, I could only sense more of that impervious fire, as if the elementitselfmade up the creature’s mind.
Which only left Wild Whispering to use against it. But amid the flames and smoke that was stuffing itself down my throat, there were no plants or animals around to call for help. There was nothing except…
The monster’s head whipped our way, a shift in the wind alerting it to our presence.
It leapt, but my hand was faster.
My knives were already spiraling toward it, three of them, one after the other, and blood spurted in arcs as the blades hit their marks: one in the forehead, one in the neck, one in the chest.
Not enough to stop it completely, but enough to make it rear back in surprise, another one of its roars cracking my eardrums.
“Good girl,” Steeler said, pride lighting up his voice despite the situation.
Then he was gone.
One second, he had been a solid, seething presence beside me—the next he reappeared in midair above the monster’s head, swinging Old Veracious down upon its skeletal gray neck.
Blade cut through sinew and flesh and bone.
The head came thumping down moments before Steeler himself landed, catlike, on his own two feet, straightening up in time to move out of the way as the monster’s body followed.
For a moment, I gaped at the sight of him covered in splatters of dark blood and clutching his dripping sword with his fangs bared. He looked every bit like the nightmare I’d always imagined him as. Therealthreat. Therealthing to fear in the dark. Therealmonster.
Then a voice boomed out from behind that sight, and I jolted.
“It looks like we’re all going to need these weapons.”
Barberro and Nara had reappeared, this time wielding axes and sickles and a variety of other sharp, shiny objects. They tossed Garvis a machete, and he caught it by its handle with surprisingly deft fingers.
I should have been rushing forward to retrieve my knives from the monster’s decaying body, but my eyes had returned to Steeler. A pallid sheen was creeping over his face as he shifted his gaze from the tip of his sword to the body and head of the thing he’d split in half.
“Steeler?” I stepped forward. He raised an expression of utter sorrow and hopelessness to my face. “What’s wrong?”
More screams shattered the sky from the direction of the village square, and every hair on the back of my neck stood on high alert at the realization that there weremore—moremonsters who could not be destroyed with the power of our brands, who would have to be ended with steel.
But Steeler grabbed my hand as if I’d tossed him a rope at sea.
“Old Veracious told me who it was the moment it touched his neck,” he whispered. “It gave me his real identity.”
My forehead furrowed. “His? What do you mean byhis?”
