Page 44

Killian, I send across the shadow-link. Go from above, high in the trees. Show them what waits in the dark.

Above us, a sudden whisper of cold wind rustles the high pine branches. Killian glides down from the branches without making a single sound. As a wraith demon, his shadow magic doesn’t merely obscure vision or mess with the senses, like mine—it invades the mind. He shifts into a towering, translucent nightmare of mist, woven with fragments of polished black shadow and shattered bones, swooping low over Gregory’s men.

Killian doesn’t even touch them. He simply projects his shadow-sight into their minds, planting horrific, vivid hallucinations of their own brutal deaths directly into their brains.

The two lead hired thugs instantly stop dead in their tracks. One drops his heavy rifle onto the frozen mud, letting out a strangled, high-pitched scream as he clutches his chest, hallucinating his own ribs being torn open from the inside out. I chuckle, mentally telling myself to thank Killian for that mental image later. The guy vomits onto the leaves before turning around and sprinting blindly back down the trail, shrieking like a wounded animal. The man beside him drops to his knees, clawing frantically at his own eyes, sobbing in utter terror before scrambling backward into the brush on all fours.

“What the fuck was that shit?” another man bellows, his voice cracking with sheer panic as he fires three heavy rifle rounds blindly into the empty trees. “Did you see that?! Something’s in the trees!”

“Hold your ground, you fucking assholes!” Gregory shrieks. His voice is shrill and pathetic as he holds the pulsing relic higher. “It’s just optical illusions! Cheap parlor tricks!”

“My turn,” I whisper into the dark.

I throw my gloved hands wide, calling upon the heavy, suffocating weight of the Crossroads. A wall of pitch-black shadow erupts across the southern ridge, swallowing the bright beams of their flashlights instantly. The darkness is so thick it feels like dark oil, suffocating their lungs, cutting off the light, and turning the air freezing cold.

Then I unleash the sound.

I project a low, vibrating, demonic roar directly into the ears of every man in the clearing. The sound doesn’t travels through the air; it echoes inside their skulls, rattling their bones until their sense of direction completely shatters.

The hired men begin firing blindly in every direction, blinding flashes of light cutting through the pitch darkness to reveal their white, terrified faces. They’re crying and cursing. Bumping into each other like panicked, pathetic little animals.

Through the chaos, the Devil Dog fixes its glowing crimson eyes on a single target.

Kyle Lackey.

He’s all yours, I tell my beast.

The cryptid lets out a guttural, triumphant growl. In a single, blinding burst of speed, the shadow hound leaps out of the brush, landing directly on Lackey’s chest with a bone-cracking thud.

Lackey hits the frozen mud hard, his rifle flying into the shadows. Useless. He opens his mouth to scream, but the sound dies in his throat as the cryptid’s massive, obsidian claws pin his shoulders to the earth.

“Get it off me! Shoot it! Fucking shoot it!” Lackey shrieks, flailing wildly, his boots kicking at the dirt as his remaining men panic and fire point-blank into the cryptid’s form. The heavy lead bullets pass harmlessly through the shadow magic, kicking up clods of dirt behind him. A stray bullet hits Kyle in the leg and he screams. Another hits his arm, and one blasts through his hand.

Killian drifts down from an upper branch, hovering inches above the struggle like a silent ghost, his amber eyes flaring with cold, mocking delight. “Not so brave without a weapon and a helpless victim, are you, Lackey?” Killian purrs.

The Devil Dog unhinges its jaws, revealing rows of glowing teeth that burn like acid. Through our shared soul bond, I feel the precise moment the beast snaps its jaws around Lackey’s throat, crushing his windpipe, silencing his screams forever.

The cryptid isn’t finished though. It plunges its shadow-form straight into Lackey’s chest, ripping out his dark, oily soul in a swirling vortex of deep obsidian energy. The hound consumes the essence in a single, ravenous gulp, its blue eyes flaring with a bright, supernatural fire.

The surviving men watch Kyle get shredded, devoured, and erased from existence by a living nightmare.

Their minds completely collapse, giving way to pure terror.

One of them collapses to the frozen ground, dead. His heart likely gave out from pure terror. The cryptid doesn’t waste a single breath, ripping his soul free and devouring it whole, just like he did with Kyle. Right before the beast tears into his face, I recognize the corpse. It’s Jake.

“It ate him! It fucking ate his soul!” a thug screams. He throws his iron rifle into the brush.

“Run! Run!” another cries out, sobbing uncontrollably as he turns and bolts.

The hired men scatter. They tear through the dark woods in terror, tripping over roots, falling, and scrambling over one another to reach their trucks down at the main road. They came up this mountain expecting an easy paycheck. They leave with shattered minds, knowing that monsters are real and that this territory belongs to monsters.

Killian lets out a sharp, musical, mocking laugh, dissolving into a wispy cloud of black vapor to chase them down to the main road and ensure none of them ever dare return.

The screams fade.

The suffocating darkness recedes back into the pine canopy, leaving the lower clearing eerily quiet.

I step out from behind an ancient redwood tree, adjusting the cufflink on my coat and straightening my wolf pelt.