Queens Of Light And Darkness #2
A shadow passed behind her. Perhaps there was a noise, too.
Leviathan scales scraping over linoleum.
But she would have mistaken it for him coming in the front door.
Even as the hair on the back of her neck rose up, she would have turned with the tray of cheese and apples in her hands, a bright smile on her face, lips parted, ready to greet him.
The tray fell from her suddenly nerveless fingers and shattered on the floor, dumping its contents everywhere.
He remembered when he found her that his foot had slid as he’d stepped on an apple slice, turning it to sweet and sticky mush beneath the heel of one boot.
She’d been surrounded by what was familiar and unfamiliar.
Her blood made cheese slices into islands in a red sea.
For she did not see him at the door. He was not there to greet her and toss his backpack on the kitchen island. He was not there…
She likely couldn’t see the door at all through the Leviathan’s smoky coils. It would have stood there, hovered there, filled floor to ceiling with shifting, shimmering, oily coils wreathed in pitch black smoke.
Staring at her.
The Leviathan didn’t have eyes yet they did. They could see. They did see. They peered inside of their prey. And they smiled without mouths. But they smiled nonetheless.
He imagined that she knew what it was. Not the name of the creature, of course. But that it was from the place that he had come from. That it was from the Under Dark. A plane where monsters ruled in the unending blackness.
She’d been waiting for years for someone to come get him.
But she’d likely thought it would be another silver-haired, red-eyed, pointy-eared Kindreth.
Maybe she’d believed it would be Vulre himself again.
Had that blasted Blood Knight even told her his name?
Or had he simply shoved Declan towards her with a grunted explanation: take the child you have always dreamed of.
Make sure he is not in the Sun too long.
Ensure that no one looks too closely at him.
For he is a dream to you, but a nightmare to everyone else.
Declan didn’t know.
Alexia and Tyler had started to hint to him that last summer about his heritage.
Trying to find the words to explain who and what he was.
As far as they understood it. And, he imagined, they feared telling him would either bring Vulre back or cause Declan to go after him.
Either way, the terror of loss sealed their lips until it was too late.
So Alexia had faced the Leviathan not with shock, but with the thought that this was destiny. Fate. Finally, a monster–whether Vulre or Leviathan–had come to take her son away from her. And so she did the only thing she could.
She fought.
She knew he would be coming home in mere moments. And he would walk into the house and maybe directly into this thing made of shadow. He would not have a weapon on him. But she did.
Blindly, she reached behind her for Krith.
Her fingers brushed the hilt of the kitchen knife, spinning it, causing it to rattle against the countertop.
The Leviathan saw what she was up to and gave a rattling, hissing laugh.
Her hand clamped around the knife’s hilt.
Her knuckles went white as she swung the weapon around to the front of her. Closed her other hand around it, too.
“Get out!” she growled. “Get out!”
More rattling and shushing of coils as the Leviathan regarded its puny prey. If she wanted to fight, it would “fight” her. It would make her suffer.
“You’re not going to touch my son!” she cried. And then, almost to herself, whispered, “I love you, Declan.”
And she rushed towards darkness.
The scene shifted.
To another woman who was defending her son against another Leviathan.
“Rahven, get behind me!” Ashryn barked, even as she used one of her hands to physically push him there.
But he would not go. He stepped in front of her, which had a cry of fear leave her lips.
“It’s so… so… big,” he whispered.
This Leviathan stretched out from the nearest wall where the wards were anchored to such a far distance that Declan could not see the end of it. The Leviathan billowed upwards from floor to far ceiling. Its smoky coils flaring to life with red light.
So big.
Massive.
As large as the entire cavern.
It was like nothing he had ever seen. Not before that moment. Not during the war. This being was… monstrous.
“Rahven, please,” Ashryn begged, “I need you to run.”
Never had he heard Ashyrn afraid before. Not even when she’d found him and Vulre at each other’s throats. Not even when she’d told him that the dread Night King himself was after them.
“I won’t leave you,” he told her, his eyes fixed on the wall of coils.
“You won’t be. I’ll be right behind you,” she whispered fiercely. “We need to get back to the city. It won’t… won’t follow us there.”