7. Chapter 7
A thrill of terror leapt up my spine.
The creature tilted its head, taking stock of Serich’s body. Analyzing the meat, I knew. How long it would last, how many meals it might make of him. That wasn’t a decorative cauldron. They meant to cook us up in it.
Serich hurled the thing away from him, sending it sprawling.
A blade was loosened from my belt and in my hand before I realized it. And then a pair of arms slid around my waist, the hair covering my ear fluttering beneath a rancid breeze.
“It goes easier if you accept it.” A bony finger trailed along the cut of my cheekbone. “Too much adrenaline can spoil the meat.”
Good, I thought, bracing myself against the spiny ribcage pressed upon my back. Then I would flood my body with it, foul my meat with as much adrenaline as possible. Let them feast upon the worst meal of their lives.
No sooner had I jammed the blade into the creature’s thigh than another appeared. The one holding me stumbled backward with a howl, blood spurting from between gnarled fingers.
I lifted another blade from my belt and hurled it through the air, where it somersaulted tip over hilt and found its home in the third creature’s neck.
The first had leapt to its feet, yanking the knife out with a snarl.
The thigh wound opened like a geyser, the sweet smell of blood scenting the clearing. Too sweet. Why was it so sweet?
Serich appeared at my side, a slash of blood in a diagonal freckled line across his face.
The creature I had maimed drew backward, the ragged black robes it wore swirling like smoke. I felt my heart might burst with triumph, watching it withdraw. But I had mistaken a tactical retreat for cowardice.
The swishing of robes came from all around us. I saw only streaks of black and white as I swung my head this way and that, their jeering ringing in my ears. Serich and I fell back-to-back automatically, as though we’d trained that way all our lives.
Four knives remained to me. I drew one as the circle closed around us, their fingers wriggling, wet teeth snapping. Their cackling sounded like a death knell. If I’d trusted that God cared, I might have prayed. Let it not be the last sound I ever hear.
Behind me, a creature fell with a scream. One of my daggers found the black eye of another, but two more surged in to take its place. At my back, I felt Serich hacking and slashing, smelled the rosy blood marbling the air.
Let the circle close and fight intimately, or throw my blades and then find myself defenseless for a few precious seconds while I dug through my satchel for another weapon?
I lunged, slashing out at the nearest. It was nimble on its toes, dancing away, black eyes sparkling as if this was all for sport.
“I want a thigh,” it called to its fellows, eyeing mine hungrily. “Thighs are like butter.” And in rapid succession, my parts were divvied up.
I threw a blade at the one who’d claimed my kidneys and another at the one that requested my heart, but an icy wave of hopelessness crashed over me as yet more swept in to assume their place.
“We have to run for it,” Serich shouted over his shoulder. “Barrel through them, make a hole!”
Even if we slashed through the circle, would they give chase?
With strong yet brittle fingers, another grabbed for me, its jaws unhinging like a snake.
My blade sank into its stomach, gutting it, a pile of steaming black intestines plummeting to the earth.
I heaved the body into yet another advancing creature, knocking it off balance, but it spat the hair from its mouth and leapt back to its feet.
Over its shoulder, grouped around the great stone belly of the cauldron, more had been summoned. One busily lit a fire; another tested the sharpness of a cleaver; two more whetted knives against a block atop a massive wooden banquet table that had been conjured in a blink.
Serich’s back slammed against mine, one slick hand scrabbling for my wrist. “We have to run!”
I threw my bloody blade at the advancing creature as another crashed against me from the side, all groping hands and putrid breath, but its head split down the center as Serich’s falchion sank into its skull. Even in death, its eyes still smiled. The perfume of roses filled my nostrils.
Serich wrenched the weapon out and towed me away by the hand.
Our path was clear but I couldn’t see the ending of this feral clearing as my feet pounded the ground, which nearly rose to meet me when I stumbled.
Stretching infinitely before us, it replaced the wood we’d hiked to get here, a limitless black horizon of doom.
I jerked back, wrenching myself from the vise of Serich’s grip. I hadn’t consciously decided to. My body must have made a plan without me, and I swung back to the skeleton crew of creatures who had given chase.
“Desideria!” Serich yelled, but his voice echoed strangely, as if from very far away. I felt exhausted, streaked with sweetly grotesque blood, rose petals coating my tongue, my bones frosting in defeat. So tired I wanted to fall into a heap and drift off into a better dream.
I suppose I must have, because the creatures wove and swam, blurring at their edges, as my eyes glazed over.
And when they cleared, a pile of corpses lay at my feet.
Don’t get too comfortable, It said, watching through my eyes as I drew back from the tattered, bloody husks. You still have to make it through the night. And then, grudgingly: You did better than I thought you would.
I almost cried with relief, feeling Its darkness sweeping through my mind. Faeries? If those were faeries, I never wanted to meet a nymph.
And you never will. They don’t exist. I don’t know where your villagers came up with that story.
The clearing had melted back into the wood. Only the shredded faerie bodies remained. That and the heavy, cloying scent of roses.
I fear I’ve broken your…companion. It said companion as if it were a dirty word, darting my eyes from the strewn limbs to Serich. He was a solid mass of red, two bright spots of amber where his open eyes stared out at me. I knew I could look little better.
His gaze traced the contours of my body, the hands still curved at my sides like blood-dipped sickles. “It came back?”
Collect your blades, It said. Tell this one to pick his jaw up off the ground.
“Yes,” I said, wending through the corpses to find the ones with my weapons buried inside them. “We should hurry.”