Shealy stood frozen with shock, watching the unthinkable, still held in the cold stare of the monster directly in front of her. Nothing the imagination could conceive would rival the horror of it. One of the creatures jerked and three mouths opened, shooting streams of viscous fluid at a cluster of terrified women and children. The noxious liquid hit them and they cried in agony, spinning and running for the river but making it only a few steps before keeling over, skin rolling off them in great, slimy hunks. A scream had been building in Shealy’s chest. Now it broke free as she stumbled, fumbling for the door behind her as she tried to back out without looking away from the beast watching her.
But the doorway was narrow and she still clutched the arrow in her hands, held across her body, both ends catching at the frame and barring her exit. She saw the problem, knew she had only to turn the arrow and she could escape, but her fingers were numb and the command to shift couldn’t escape the clogging fear jamming the synapses in her brain.
The creature inhaled deeply, all three heads facing her now, all acting as one. Shealy felt her tattered dress flutter outward in the suction it created. It would spit those burning acids on her and she’d no longer have to worry about her scarred face because this monster would strip her of it forever. She was jabbering something, and Tiarnan shouted at her to move, to run. The words came through the dense sting of terror, heard but not understood. Felt, but not realized.
Then suddenly she gave a convulsive shake that swung the clutched arrow off kilter and fell through the open door behind her. She hit the ground with a
thud
that knocked the breath from her. The door slammed shut, momentarily breaking the hold those six eyes had on her. The taste of blood in her mouth, the jarring pain from the fall knocked her out of her trance, and she scrambled to her feet, running wildly away with no sense of direction or thought.
The creature gave another cawing screech that hacked and harvested the fear so thick in the air. The screams of terrified people surrounded Shealy as they raced in mindless clusters from the nightmare. But the tiny island on the river offered no shelter from the three-headed beasts. They spat their erosive fluids at them, and all around her people howled in pain and fell to the ground as it ate through their skin and immobilized them in a slow, torturous death.
Ahead of her, a woman stumbled, and the small child in her arms fell. In an instant the woman was snapped up by vicious jaws.
Shealy had only a glimpse of the woman’s face, but it was enough to cut through her terror and slice her to the quick. A part of her mind fought what her eyes clearly saw, denying that it could be true. For a frozen moment their gazes met, clung, and Shealy saw in the woman’s eyes the same astonished disbelief that must be in her own. It was over in a flash as the creature tossed its head and chomped its jaws on the woman’s body, but there was no mistaking the grief, the love, the loss that had been packed into that look.
“
Mom
?” Shealy breathed.
“Run,” the woman cried as teeth sliced through her. Blood sprayed her face but she choked out three last words. “Take her.
Run.
”
The voice went through Shealy like a bolt of lightning and she did as she was told, scooping up the toddler and clutching the warm little girl to her chest as she ran away from the beast with the others. She glanced back to see the woman who’d looked so much like her mother devoured with sickening speed, leaving Shealy doubting that she’d really seen the familiar features, that the voice had been the one from her memory, the one that once had sung to her and told her stories. The one that had whispered
I love you
each night before bedtime.
It couldn’t be. . . .
They’d reached the edge of the island, and like sheep herded to a cliff, those in front plunged into the raging river. The current here was ferocious and loud, echoing with the sounds of the huge waterfall up ahead. From the shore, Shealy could almost feel the force of its pull.
“No!” someone shouted. “The fall will kill you, fools!”
She didn’t know who spoke but she saw those who’d charged in being sucked away and hurled over a great wash of thundering white water. Shealy skidded to a stop at the river’s edge and gasped at the flailing arms and legs that tried to fight the inevitable. In moments, they were gone.
The child in her arms cried piteously. Shealy looked into the little girl’s face, numbed, stunned. The eyes that stared back at her held a silvery sheen and a rounded shape that Shealy knew all too well. They were the same eyes that stared back at her from her mirror every morning.
With a gasp, Shealy spun, facing the bloody ground where the woman who’d held this child had died, seeing again the shock on her face as her terrified eyes met Shealy’s.
Oh. My. God . . .
It couldn’t be and yet . . .
The swarm of three-headed creatures droned around her, stopping her frantic thoughts. They had leveled every structure until it looked like a war zone. Less than a dozen men and a few strong women remained, and they circled the beasts as they spewed their death potion and snapped their shark jaws. She could see Tiarnan and Liam among them.
One of the beasts lifted on its rear legs and scanned the island while the others chomped and spat and swiped their great tails. In the blink of an eye, the monsters had cut the number of men and women in half.
They needed help. They needed a
miracle
.
Helplessly, she looked down at the child in her arms—into the eyes so like her own—and a great shudder went through her body. She felt a strange sense of reaching out, of sharing a kindred message that some ancient part of her mind understood while the rest of Shealy remained baffled. What she was thinking couldn’t be.
It wasn’t possible that the little girl she held could be who Shealy thought she was. Surely her mind was playing tricks on her and the woman she’d seen devoured seconds ago wasn’t Shealy’s mother . . . couldn’t be her mother. Her mother was dead, her body washed out to sea. . . .
She covered the girl’s face, turning it into her shoulder as the carnage went on. Her stomach heaved, but she fought it. She had to think. She had to do something. She’d lost the knife, but she still clutched the arrow in her hand. An arrow with no bow. A bubble of hysteria rose up in her just as a strange icy prickle puckered her skin from head to her bare feet.
The creature that had risen on hind legs spotted her.
Mouth dry, heart hammering, she looked into the cold, pitiless eyes and realized it had not found her by chance. It had been looking for her.
It made a sound in its stout throat, a chortling buzz that brought the other heads up and around. Frozen with fear, Shealy watched all nine of the three creatures’ heads turn to face her. The moment stretched impossibly long, passed frightfully quick, and then the creatures
swarmed
. There was no other word for it. They didn’t take flight and yet they came together like wasps, a black and gray cloud of motion bearing down on her. Taloned feet churned the dirt as they charged at Shealy.
She screamed. She knew it, but she couldn’t hear herself over the strange cawing whine the monsters made. The little girl in her arms screamed, too, and their terror seemed to twine together, creating a bond that felt electric.
The air between them seemed to warp, like haze over heated asphalt. It made the distance between them and the monsters bend and flatten in alternating waves. One of the creature’s heads stuck out in the lead, teeth flashing in a macabre smile. The child clung so tight that Shealy couldn’t draw a breath. This was it. This thing
—things—
were going to eat her and the poor child she had no hope of saving.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of color. Tiarnan, racing at the monster’s side, his legs stretching to keep pace. He seemed somehow bigger, faster than the others who followed as he pulled his long sword over his head and brought it down on one of the writhing necks.
Yes, that’s what they needed. Bigger. Faster. Stronger . . .
His blade bounced off the shiny feathers with a metallic clang. The creature didn’t even slow down.
Like armor
, Shealy thought, watching the swarm rush at her. It wasn’t fair. Feathers should be soft. Pliable.
The air around her warped again, enveloping her and the child until it felt like the source must be coming from one of them. She looked down, met the little girl’s wide eyes, and knew she was right. A charge of electric heat shot through them both and then it pushed outward, overpowering the piercing drone of the monsters. The power felt thick and soundless, like a solid force that flowed between invisible barriers, infusing the particles of air around them until it slowed the seconds. Shealy was dimly aware that tremors shook her and the child, tremors that came from deep inside and worked their way out like a great tidal wave bearing down on the shore.
The little girl in her arms twisted to face the doom racing toward them. Huge tears streamed down her face, but she pointed a finger at the creatures and cried, “No.”
Tiarnan bellowed something at Shealy. She could see his mouth moving, the fear in his eyes as he stared at her, willing her to run. Yes, that’s what he said. Run.
RUN.
But there was nowhere to go. Couldn’t he see that?
Behind Tiarnan, dawn lit the horizon and cast a dark shadow over the creatures, over Shealy who stood in their path. They were close, so close she could smell the dank and oily scent of them, could see the flecks of black and white in their steely feathers, feel the heat of their frenzy.
Feathers should be soft.
Still holding the child on her hip, Shealy shifted and brought the arrow she clutched up and out, a thin, useless weapon against the enemy of destruction. A shout broke through the fog of silence that had shielded her, and suddenly everything happened at a speed that defied comprehension.
A snarling rumble—deep and dark—rose from Tiarnan’s mouth and he leaped in front of her, hitting the ground with powerful legs braced, turning with a grace that stole her breath. He snatched the arrow from her outstretched hand, shoving her away as he faced the monsters. She stumbled, still holding the child and unable to break her fall as she sailed backward.
Impossibly fast, Tiarnan plunged the arrow into the black eye of the nearest head, shoving it down into whatever brain compelled it, then in one fluid movement, he swung up with the huge sword clenched in his other hand, slamming the blade into the flesh beneath the chin of a second writhing head. Shealy braced for that clanging metallic ring but instead she heard the squelch of flesh, and then the severed head flew into the air and bounced to a stop at the river’s edge just as she fell to the ground beside it. She stared into the flat black eyes.
Tiarnan’s cry echoed loud and clear as he chopped and hacked, ax in one hand and sword in the other. He was covered in blood, moving so quickly that he dodged the lethal spray of one creature while slicing limbs and piercing the flesh of the others.
Something had changed
, Shealy thought as she stumbled to her feet and dodged to the side, narrowly missing the crushing weight as a now headless creature toppled and crashed to the ground. After seeing that Tiarnan’s blade cut through the armor that held them at bay, the four men left to fight beside him crowded in, going for eyes and legs, jumping away from the vicious swipe of a tail. The creatures howled their pain and panic, clearly confused by their failing defenses. The second monster lost its battle and went down with a shriek that felt like a million nails dragging across a sheet of steel. The other men closed in on it, but the animal fought ferociously and its snapping jaws bit into one attacker and cut the man in two before he could even cry out.
Only one of the creatures remained, and it fixed its gaze on Shealy.
It charged in a loping canter, trampling the fallen bodies of its brethren as it bared its teeth. Tiarnan’s chest heaved as he ran it down, using his ax to anchor himself in its side and then swing up onto its back. He ran up the spine like he would a rocky hill then dropped astride it, swung his sword, and lobbed off one of the heads, spinning and taking another in an instant that shattered into microseconds of blood and violence. The beast tried to turn on Tiarnan, but he was too quick and it was injured. It staggered to the right, blood streaming from the stumps of its necks. Tiarnan balanced on its massive shoulders, pulled his sword high, and then brought it down with a force that cut through bone and gristle and severed the last head from the body.
The creature listed, lurching one direction then another, until its legs simply collapsed and it hit the ground with an echoing
boom
.
The sudden silence solidified in a golden hue as rays of sun pierced the trees and bathed the battlefield in radiance.
Tiarnan stood atop the corpse, king of the carnage. He looked larger than life, muscles bunched and quivering with power, skin gleaming with blood and gore—some his own, most the creatures’. He threw his head back and let loose a roar of fury and triumph. At his feet, the three surviving men who’d fought with him did the same. They roared at the rising sun. They roared at the ground soaked with blood.
They roared at death and at the life that had not been snatched away.
In her arms the child quieted, hiccupped, and then tucked her head beneath Shealy’s chin.
As the deafening shouts of victory echoed around her, Shealy fell back against the solid earth and cried.
Chapter Eight
T
IARNAN knelt beside Shealy’s prone body, preparing himself to find that her heart no longer beat and her lungs had frozen in death. But when he touched the satin warmth of her cheek, her eyes fluttered open and captured him in the mists of a silvery storm.