Chapter 6 #2
But it’s too fast. When I lose sight of it again, it materializes once more directly in front of me. This time when it lunges, I am too slow. A shadowy claw, shockingly solid and colder than liquid nitrogen, snatches my ankle.
It feels like a branding iron made of ice.
Finally finding my voice, a visceral scream rips from my lungs.
As the shrill sound breaks the unnatural silence of the park, a piercing light erupts from somewhere. The creature falters, releasing its hold on me. Not missing my opportunity, I take off. The light comes with me, enveloping me in a halo of shimmering, effervescent colors.
The shadowy beast stalks me, maintaining distance, yet keeping pace wherever I go. To my horror, the light around me is siphoning toward the creature somehow, growing dimmer with every passing moment.
I try to run to the street, to a busy part of the city, but the park only stretches on and on, empty and forlorn. Am I running in circles? How can that be?
My light is growing increasingly faint, consumed by the Thing. My pulse roars in my ears, a deafening drumbeat accompanying the frantic, spiraling chaos of my thoughts as I uselessly try to figure out how to escape. Where it touched me, my ankle is almost numb with cold.
The last vestiges of light flicker around me like dying fireflies, now barely illuminating the massive beast that stalks me.
Its inky purple eyes blaze with something terrifying and primordial, and its tendrils writhe with anticipation of their prize.
Just as the darkness is poised to engulf me completely, the creature coils.
Then springs.
At the same time, a blur of motion erupts from behind a nearby oak. A figure, impossibly fast, slams into the side of the Thing with a guttural roar that echoes through the deserted park.
The impact sends the creature staggering back, its tendrils lashing out wildly, then dissolving into the empty air. The glowing eyes flicker, and the entire shape of the beast begins to dissipate for a brief second, before the eyes return, churning and angry.
I can’t contain my gasp. Standing between me and the monster is .
. . the huge stranger from the library. With his back to me, he faces down the beast with a feral energy of his own.
Even with almost no light, I recognize his broad form, the untamed fall of dark hair, the unyielding presence.
A solitary figure against the malevolent entity that has been hunting me.
“Stay behind me,” he grunts, not taking his eyes from the beast.
The Thing flickers, appearing behind me, but the stranger is fast, so fast, and meets it before it can grab me.
In quick succession, it disappears and reappears at every side, all around me, but no matter where it goes, the stranger is there.
He seems to anticipate its next move, on some instinctual level that is far beyond me.
Squaring up on the stranger, the beast bears down on him, shadows swallowing him, smothering him.
I lurch toward him, intending to help although I have no idea how, when he turns to me from underneath the mass of shadows. I’m struck by how unnaturally bright his eyes are now, rimmed with gold. He tears an arm free of the creature and shoves me backward, toward safety.
“Run!” he orders, as he grapples with the Thing.
I back away, but hesitate. He saved me; I can’t leave him like this.
“Now,” he barks, as the beast tries to wrap thick smoky tendrils around his neck. He meets the onslaught with untamed ferocity when, to my utter shock, he bares his teeth and rips into the tendrils. Solid for an instant, they tear apart and soon dissipate into the air. They don’t reform.
As the tendrils disintegrate, the shadowy beast lets out a deafening screech that reverberates through the park. It bulges and expands, enraged, then shoves the stranger aside, slamming him into a tree and surging toward me.
Now, too late, I flee.
I’m tackled to the ground by a surprisingly solid form, and I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for the end.
When the end doesn’t come, I open them and realize that the stranger is on top of me, shielding me with his body.
My chest is pressed against his, and our legs tangle together.
The shadow lashes out at his back, raking sharp claws down it that tear open clothing and flesh alike, but he doesn’t flinch.
The chill of the Thing seeps through the stranger’s warmth, desperate to reach me. The shadow envelops us, trying to crush us, but he tenses, grunting with exertion as he resists the immense pressure.
I don’t know how he manages it, but he jerks upward, pushing it off us. Springing to his feet, he faces it again, leaving me sprawled in the dirt. I curl inward, immediately missing the visceral sense of protection his body offered.
“You can’t have her. She’s m—” he cuts himself off, baring his teeth in a grim facsimile of a smile, and holds his ground.
I watch in awe as he becomes the aggressor, leaping onto the mass of shadow and grappling it with a primal strength that flouts logic.
When I get a glimpse of his face, his eyes are gold-rimmed, and ablaze with fierce determination.
He becomes a blur of controlled violence. Every strike, precise and forceful. Every pivot, fluid. Every parry, immovable. And every time the Thing tries to ensnare him, he dodges with inhuman agility.
The creature shudders, its form fraying at the edges before pulling itself back together and retaliating. But with each successive blow, it seems more disoriented, more fragmented. It struggles to hold its shape.
With a final, mighty effort, he delivers a decisive strike that makes the creature hiss in fury, then its inky, now indistinct mass roils wildly before receding into the deepest shadows of the park. Only its purple eyes linger ominously in the air, before winking out.
The instant the eyes vanish, the streetlamps flicker on, casting cheerful, oblivious pools of radiance across the path. Above, the stars and moon shine on eternally, bathing everything in their cool, unbothered luminescence, and making the horror of moments ago feel like a private delusion.
The stranger, panting hard, turns to me.
“You, little Librarian, are coming with me.”