Moths.
There are thousands of the bastards swarming in the room.They surge towards the ceiling light, drowning us in darkness again.
My skin slicks with sweat, my body rigid, breathing rapid.
“L—Lucy…” I hiss.
“What?”she moans and rolls over.My fingers grip her arm so tight I must cut her skin.
There are very few things that inspire fear in me, but being trapped in a room with a million swarming moths is definitely up there.
The thick cloak of fluttering wings undulates and pulses, the thrum of their beat makes the air vibrate.I want to be sick.
“Lucy,” I whisper-shout.
She sits up, rubbing her eyes and then goes still.
“What the fuck?”She hurls herself back in bed as the moths surge for her.
I scream and chaos erupts.
Bastien slams open the bedroom door.
I scramble off the bed and grab my scythe and start slashing through the air, cutting as many of the moths as I can.But it’s only slightly above useless.They surge and dart out of my swing path.
“There’s too many of them,” I bark at Bastien.
Lucy is lifted off the bed, thrashing and kicking out at the moths as they surround her and levitate her out of the room.
Bastien lunges into action, drawing short ribbons of magic from House Inferos’s walls.He uses them like a whip, slashing this way and that as I yank my trousers and a top on and run after them.
Lex is already in the middle of the apartment frozen in horror as the moths consume the front door, disintegrating it.
“Midnight?”she squeaks.
“Yeah, fuck knows, I’m as clueless as you.”
But as Lucy floats past us, buried deep in the swarm, I see a growing glow.
Bastien barrels in behind me, his hands looped around dark ribbons of magic he swings this way and that, thrashing at the moths.
“They’re siphoning her, look,” he says.
I glance at the moths closest to the patches of skin I can see and he’s right.All their proboscises are jammed into her skin and pulsing with a light that flows from her and then settles in their bellies.
I run to the kitchen window and peer into the courtyard.
“It’s Interitus,” I say as Lucy is dragged out of the apartment.“GO!We can’t let Interitus take her.”
I run after her body as she’s flown faster and faster through the house.I leap down the last half a dozen steps, yanking magic from the walls as I go.My hands twist and flex, pulling threads of magic together until they form a mesh to scoop the moths away.
I manage to catch a huge swathe.But it only seems to encourage the remaining moths to swarm tighter around Lucy.
She’s roaring in the middle of the swarm.The glow throbbing as she fights to take control back.
Some of the moths break off and start devouring the front door.I know Lex said these bastards will eat anything, but I never realised how literally she meant it.A rumbled howl emanates from the door.
“Vetch,” Lex shrieks as she bounds towards the door.He vanishes as the door crumbles.
