I swiped his hand away and pushed past him. I wouldn’t have needed the warning if he hadn’t surprised the shit out of me.
Father coughed behind his closed door, his chest rattling.
Let’s not worry about that now, folks. Let’s work on keeping the whole family alive first.
In the front room, I reached the front door and made sure the heavy wooden beam had been lowered. Its end rested in the metal cradle that secured it in place. Moonlight flickered against the white wood. Then the light dimmed…before it mostly went out.
I closed my eyes as my heart stuttered. Every nerve ending was pinging with electricity. Adrenaline had flooded my system.
Beside the window overlooking the porch, we had three windows in the front room. The two that faced the backyard were close together, and a third looked out onto the side yard between our house and another. Judging by the difference in lighting, both back windows had just been obstructed.
We didn’t have shades on those windows.
Time slowed down as I turned. I knew what I would find.
My nightmares had come to life.
A large, glowing golden eye took up residence in one of the windows.
It was hard to breathe. That strange feeling in my chest rolled outward, fire leaking out from my center and into my limbs. But even as my body burned, my blood had turned to ice. I couldn’t move from fear.
That eye wasn’t more than fifteen feet away, much closer than the last time I’d seen it. Much closer. Through my fear-induced paralysis, I couldn’t help but take in every detail. A thin, vertical oval took up the center, the pupil similar to a cat’s but rounder. A deep, brawny gold outlined the black before exploding outward in a sunburst of color, lined through with streaks of lighter gold, orange, red, and yellow. Along the edges, darker patches shone through, making the sunburst that much more dramatic.
It was beautiful.
It blinked, and I saw that there were two sets of eyelids. The first looked like more of a sheen that slid over from the side. Then the human equivalent, top coming down and meeting the lower lid. The blink happened quickly, but the movement made me jerk.
“Finley?”
Dash’s voice rang down the hall. The golden eye flicked in that direction, as if the beast had heard.
A different sort of fear ate through the first, and I was all action again, launching forward to intercept Dash running into the living room.
“Stay back,” I barked, stopping in the center of the room to block his progress. I held out a hand. “Stay back! Stay out of sight.”
That gorgeous but awful golden eye slid back to me, taking me in, pushing past my barriers and taking my measure. I could feel it, as if he’d ripped out my soul and placed it on a scale.
The eye disappeared, and the body followed, dark scales moving beyond the window. In a moment, the moonlight came back, flaring through the darkness.
The sound of shattering glass made me flinch and lift my arm in front of my face. Something thunked against the wooden floor and skittered to my feet. My pocketknife.
I stared at it as though from a different body. A different world.
It had retrieved my pocketknife. Then it had tracked me here. It knew who I was and what I’d done. It must.
And now it had come to collect.
This might go very badly, everybody. Hang tight for the finale, I thought desperately, my whole body shaking.
I needed action. I needed to break out of these fear-induced shackles and use the energy for something useful. But what? What the hell was I going to do against a creature this size? Hiding seemed to be the only thing available to me right now. Hiding…or a distraction.
Tears welled up in my eyes, but I didn’t give in to them. To save my family, I’d do anything, including running blindly toward the Forbidden Wood so it would chase me. So that my family could get out.
“What do I do?” Hannon asked quietly from the hall.
“Keep them safe,” I said in a hollow voice as I steeled my courage. I bent slowly and picked up the closed pocketknife with my free hand, avoiding the shards of glass on the floor. The light guttered out again, and there was that golden eye, taking my measure. Waiting, it seemed like. Offering me a choice. Give myself up or risk my family.
Choose.
With the window broken, I could now hear the beast. Its puffs of breath in the quiet night. The simmering growl deep in its chest.
It wasn’t a choice. Not for me. It was an eventuality.
“Gather the kids near the large window in your room,” I whispered to Hannon, a tear dripping from my eye. I slipped the pocketknife into the pocket of my pajama bottoms. “If it comes to it, you climb out with them and get them to safety. Otherwise, hunker down and stay put. I’ll distract the beast.”