AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ozias or Calem?” Gaige asked.
“I don’t know.” The forest had fallen unnaturally quiet. “Are there Kitska beasts about?”
Gaige absently touched the back of his hand where his symbol used to be. Shadows began to leak from his frame and slither through the grass at his feet. “Likely. I haven’t sensed any nearby creatures, but…”
Another frightened yelp, much closer than before, split the air. Calem rocketed from the tree line and nearly crashed right into us. His golden hair was undone and wild with twigs and leaves. Minor scratches lined his arms, as if he’d torn through the forest without care for the barbed vines. Face parchment-pale and eyes wide, he came to a halt before us. “We’re going to die.”
I’d known Calem for as long as he’d been raised. I’d never seen him like this. “What happened?”
“We have to get out. We have to leavenow.” He pushed past us and rushed toward the Zeelahs.
“Wait.” I snared his wrist and tugged him gently to a stop. “Ozias isn’t here. We can’t leave him.”
“Let go of me!” Calem clawed at my grip, leaving raised marks along my skin. “I swear to gods if you don’t let me go, I will shift and bite your hand off.”
“Calem.” I placed my free hand over his. “Tell us what happened.”
Beads of sweat lined his hairline, and a violent tremor rattled his body. Straining against my hold, he turned his bulging stare on me. There wasn’t an ounce of mercury to be seen. A quiet ringing crested in my ears. Calem was scared. No,terrified. Almost as if bespelled into abject fear.
“Please,” he begged.
Without letting go of him, I jerked my chin toward Gaige. “What could cause this?”
Gaige’s hand had flown to Okean’s key, and he gripped the pendant tight. “There’s no way of knowing what kind of beasts lurk in the Kitska Forest. So many creatures from all over our world died here, and they simply remained. Native or not.”
A twig snapped in the forest, and Calem flinched. He tried again to wrench himself free. “It’s coming.”
“Ozias!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, praying he hadn’t gone too far. A strange, prickling sensation skittered through my mind, followed by a jumbled flash of images that were near impossible to decipher. But the overwhelming sense of dread was something I couldn’t mistake.
Felicks?
The key dangling about my neck seemed to burn at the thought.
A hysterical laugh bubbled from Calem’s lips. “We’re going to die. It’s finally going to happen.”
Gaige crouched before Calem. “Tell me what you saw.”
A mess of shadows bloomed to life around us, and Ozias bolted from the shadow realm. His chest heaved as scoured the area. “What happened?”
“We don’t know. We’ll figure it out as we go. Get the Zeelahs.” I let go of Calem and turned to our frightened mounts. Between his reaction and that strange, preternatural sense of…something, I knew we had to flee.
A branch splintered in the wood, and Calem’s erratic laughter died. Slowly, he raised his chin to stare out into nothing. “Too late. It’s here.”
I felt it before I saw it. A frigid, bone-deep cold slammed into my body at the same time a musty, mothball-like odor filled mynose. All sounds disappeared into a vacuum, save the crunching of leaves and twigs coming from the forest. A pain burned through my lungs as my legs turned to lead, black spots dancing across my vision. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. All I could do was watch and wait. It was as if the approach itself were meant to instill terror. None of us could move. With, every passing second, every uneven, ragged breath, we knew we were one step closer to death.
The Kitska monster emerged with the calm surety of a predator. Covered in a thick, feathery hide, the beast was the size of a large hound with the body of a fox. Ivory antlers grew from the crown of its owl-like head. With an elongated, flexible neck, it swiveled its head to skewer us with three endless, glowing, violet eyes.
The moment I met its stare was the moment every horrifying memory coalesced in me at once. The chalky skin and blue-tinged lips of my mother as a sickness claimed her life. Jude’s scream as he’d been attacked and thrown to the ground. The cool sting of a blade above my heart, followed by the sticky warmth of my own blood. The weeks it took me to die, and the horrendous, soul-consuming fear of being alone in the end. But the worst image wasn’t something in my past, but a deep-seated fear I hoped never came to fruition: Gaige lost to the shadows, screaming as his mind was ripped to shreds.
I crumbled to my knees.Death would be better than this.
The creature sauntered forward, its talons digging through the soft earth with ease. The visions played on repeat in my mind, and I began to shake uncontrollably. In my peripheral, Calem and Ozias were doing the same, but Gaige had tucked his chin to his shoulder. He dared to look my direction for a second and silently mouthed something to me.
Not silently.A blip of awareness managed to make its way through the onslaught of horrifying visages. The tendons alongGaige’s neck were strained, his veins bulging. His throat bobbed as his lips moved, as if he were shouting.
Shouting.
“Kost!” His voice broke the void, and suddenly our surroundings slammed back into focus. “Summon Felicks!”
