Creeping along the floor she eyes the mist.

She knows the shadows are out there. She can’t see them in the street peering out of the second storey window.  But she knows that the protections she’d laid out have fallen. The tributes given to men of power had been outbided. Or the men were dead. There had been but one warning.

 “Moon’s fallen in the wa...”

The messenger had ceased to exist. The mind-speak was a white static and she’d cut the cord and hastily clothed herself even before she’d realized the severity of the situation.

Extending her senses she can see that there are four or five of them entering the yard stealthily, silently along the bushes that encircle the yard, one of them coming from the woods. This one has a steaming breath and the emberic eyes of the creature pierce the walls, furniture and floor fixing on her. The smile does not reach its eyes when they set upon her.

“Heliaborn, we’ve come for you!” a voice like daggers on ice scrambling for comfort.

“And I’m particularly agog for your bloodlight. Let me spill it, revel in It.”, the final word a rasping hiss. Raising his sooted hand the not-man summons the others for assault.

 They stop their sniggering and surge forward fading away in the yellow lights of the carport and solidifying again in the shadow. One of them kicks over a garden gnome in the flowerbed by the bricked garden path. The gnome still grins with a dog between his legs when the kick shatters it showering the house with clay shrapnel. The smell of prey has made them bold.

Rounding the corner they step on the porch; the first bursting through the guest house door and roaring ravenously to the cold foyer. The others rush inside the main house and spread around the living room. One starts to climb the stairs, crushing claws tearing chunks out of the banister with each stride.

She dissipates the phantasm of herself upstairs and takes three quick steps and stops the roaring shadow-demon grabbing its shoulder. It disintegrates at her touch, “but this…!”

Gasping for air she falls backwards, breaking the clothes rack scattering its contents on the floor. Stabbing pain fills her mind and for a succulent second everyconcept goes dark.

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Kuvaoikeudet -

Ellie Denwood: STAIRS (ellien blogi on nykyään vain kutsulla, linkki poistettu)

Firstcurence

PART 2