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I didn’t think that Thea had survived. Yet with twelve gaping holes in her body, and a thirteenth punched through her heart, she was still moving, crawling on her hands and knees towards the bellowing monstrosities that were once her own offspring.
They turned to her with unseeing eyes, the heads of the two children bowing as they spotted the woman writhing in a pool of her own blood. But they turned away again, uncaring, showing no signs of recognition, no memory of the thing that was once their mother.
“My babies,” Thea croaked, and something within my chest twisted.
I detested the very thought of feeling any sympathy for the woman who had murdered not just me, but my mother. Yet my heart still seized with foreboding when another beam of light slammed into the earth, only feet away from Thea’s ragged body.
“No,” she said, her head swinging from her children, to the pillar, and back again. “Please, no,” she wailed, pleading to some unseen force. “I’ve only just brought them back. Time.” She staggered to her feet, clutching at the holes in her belly, loping for her corrupted brood. “Please. Give me time.”
A single black tentacle the size of a tree ripped out of the pillar of light, tearing through the veil between realities with a deafening crack.
Not this, I thought. The last thing we needed was another monstrosity to fight.
But the thing hadn’t come for us. Thea’s eyes went wide as the tentacle shot straight for her body. She screamed as it curled around her waist, dragging her towards the gateway. Her talons tore into the earth, digging great furrows as she fought to stay in our world, as she fought to be with her children once more.
“No,” she screamed. “Please. No.”
I’d never heard Thea so frightened. I’d never heard anyone so terrified. Her screams pealed through the night as the tentacle dragged her through the rift. The beam of light winked out into nothing, and just like that, Thea Morgana was gone.
But there was still the matter of her children.
Another howl tore through the graveyard, and before we could even think to coordinate, Gil had already raced across the hill, launching himself at the closest of the abominations. He was a roaring missile, jaws gnashing and frothing – but I couldn’t even begin to think where he could attack the beasts and hope to slow them down, much less stop them.
He smashed into the monster, tearing at its belly with his claws. The beast reared back, lifted its own spindly, spear-like talons, and struck. Gil yelped like a kicked dog, stumbling into the earth, his fur matted and slick. Blood dripped from the awful gashes carved across his chest.
“Fuck,” I said, raking at my hair. “Oh, fuck. Gil, oh fuck.”
Carver tugged on my shoulder. “Dustin. The artifacts.”
That’s right. I’d forgotten about them, the entire pile still littering the ground between the gravestones. But the abominations had set their eyes upon us, and were moving with an awful, unholy speed, wriggling like great worms across the grass.
Worse, they were growing. God, but I hadn’t imagined it. By some horrible twist the Eldest had given these monsters a form of cellular acceleration. It had started slowly enough, but between climbing out of the earth and attacking Gil, each of Thea’s children had nearly doubled in size. Who knew how large they could become? And if they set their sights on Valero –
“We need to stop them. They’re getting bigger, Carver.”
“That hasn’t escaped my notice. It will take most of my energy, but I should be able to trigger a detonation using the arcane power stored within the stolen artifacts. I’ll need your help in this, Dustin.”
“Okay,” I stammered, forcing myself to calm down. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”
“I’ll need you to shadowstep among the children, to distract them while I work.”
“Come again? I think I misheard you there.”
“You heard me right the first time,” he growled. “And I’ll need you to hold them in place. Use your blades, the way you would pin insects to a board.”
Or the way I’d done so with Amaterasu, and with Thea that same night. Use my blades like an iron maiden. That part? No sweat. I just needed to bleed half my body out to get the job done. The thing about distracting the beasts, though?
“Do it,” Carver snarled.
I had no choice. We were the only ones left standing, and if I had to act as the decoy, then so be it. I walked into the shadows, traversing through the Dark Room. The mists were even more excitable, as if being used twice in the same night hadn’t been enough for them.
They tumbled in the darkness, snaking tentacles and shadowy fingers over my skin, my cheeks. I might have imagined it, but it felt as if one of the tendrils reached for the wetness in my wounded palm, between my fingers, lapping at my blood.
I emerged in the graveyard, putting the pile of artifacts between myself and the pair of abominations. The smell of freshly turned earth grew thick in my lungs as I breathed. “Over here,” I shouted, whirling Vanitas over my head as I did, his garnets and tarnished gold flashing in the night.
Thea’s children howled as they caught sight of me, their human faces contorting into deranged masks of both hunger and hate, the dozens of mouths in their bodies baying for my blood. Slobbering and slithering, they wriggled towards me, towards the artifacts. Not one of them noticed when their bulbous, gelatinous bodies consumed their own gravestones as they approached.
I didn’t hesitate. I slammed my palm into the earth, driving my intention into the shadows, to bring forth enough blades and spikes and spears to hold Thea’s children in place. And this time I didn’t need to cut myself open, either.
