“Demons don’t play nice, doll,” I said. “We play tricks.”
A spark lit up in her eyes. I’d given her an opportunity; I was allowing her the chance to give in without surrendering too much of her pride. It was awfully generous of me, but hell, I wasn’t entirely evil.
“Tricks?” Her voice had shrunk to a whisper. “What tricks?”
I’d shown her my eyes, so I decided to give one more taste of what I was. I brought my lips close to hers, so close our breath mingled. I licked my tongue over my lips, its forked sides spreading to start from opposite sides of my mouth until they slid down to meet in the middle.
Her eyes were the size of saucers. She seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. The possibilities of a split tongue tended to have that effect, but I’ll admit it was particularly pleasing to see her shaken. She was squirming again, but this time, it wasn’t in hopes of escape.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered. Thoughts of what this tongue could do would be running rampant through her head. Her defiance was wavering, her desire overpowering her.
I grinned, and brought my face down to whisper against her neck, “So, shall I show you my tricks?”
Bang!
Raelynn leapt up from her seat, crushing herself against me at the sound. The chapel doors had swung open so hard they slammed against the columns behind them. The wind howled inside, carrying with it yellow leaves and a pungent, sour smell.
“What is that?” Rae’s voice choked up as she peered around me. “What…oh my God…”
I sighed heavily. The click and scrape of nails across the chapel stones sounded its arrival, as did the low, rumbling growl in the Eld’s throat.
“The game is on pause, doll,” I said, pushing her further behind me. “Don’t think I’m done with you yet.”
The monster that walked through the chapel doors was straight out of my nightmares. I’d thought the bizarre, canine-skulled thing in the woods had been an art piece — but seeing it move, seeing it sway low to the ground and gurgle as its long black tongue dripped thick saliva across the floor, absolutely shattered my belief.
It shouldn’t be real.
It couldn’t be real.
But it was. Snarling, white eyes shot through with reddened veins rolling about in its head, it stalked into the church and rose up on its thin, deer-like back limbs. Its teeth clipped eagerly, a sound like the chattering of a cat chasing a bug emitting from its bare bone jaws.
“Leon,” my voice was a hiss, tense and desperate. My hands were knotted up in his shirt. “Leon…do something…”
“Do something?” He shot me a narrow-eyed glare, and said mockingly, “Oh Leon, do something! Save me, please, oh please! What happened to Be gone, demon? What happened to trying to bash my head in with a crucifix?”
The creature snarled at the sound of his voice. It was swaying in its stance, sizing up an attack. The smell rushed in my nose again and I nearly gagged. In the church’s dim light, I could see the beast’s body in all its wretched horror: skin that was gray and moldering, the bones pock-marked with little holes of decay, the teeth blackened, sharp, and jagged.
“What is it?” I whimpered, too terrified to be angry at Leon’s sass. “What the hell is that thing?”
Leon cracked his knuckles and rolled back his shoulders. “One of the Eld. They’re ancient creatures born of the blood and misery of dark places.” He glanced back at me over his shoulder. “They’re the kind of things that come skulking around when you cling to dangerous magical artifacts you have no business keeping.”
Before I could retort, before I could be furious he chose now of all times to keep pushing about the damned grimoire, the creature threw back its head and howled. Not like a dog, but like a man. Like a man in agony, like a man unleashing years upon years of pain and fury into one gut-wrenching cry. Then it leapt and, somewhere between what my eyes could see and my brain could process, Leon collided with it.
They slammed into the seats, sending wood splintering and screeching across the floor, and I had to leap back to avoid having a pew slam into my gut. I shrunk back against the wall, unable to tell which beast was winning in all the chaos. Their movements were too fast, too unnatural. I blinked rapidly as my vision blurred, but it was only because their speed was too much for my eyes to follow.
I’d seen large dogs fight before — the snarling, screeching, and yelping had haunted me for days. But this was so much worse. The sound of them was ungodly. It rumbled through the chapel’s stone floors, echoed from the corners. It was the sounds of something living being torn apart, the sounds of a monster bearing down on its prey.