Eleanor stepped forward to examine the wound over the shoulder of the doctors. “See that?” she said, as one paramedic cut a sizeable chunk out of the officer’s uniform to allow access to his entire limb.
The laceration that the umbraphage made ran deep into the man’s arm. Scarlet-red blood ran freely from it, dripping onto the ground. And then, Cinn saw what Eleanor was talking about—tiny flecks of black ink swimming in the blood, as if alive. Looking even closer—as close as he dared—it appeared that the veins around the injury had blackened too.
“It makes the wounds a nightmare to close,” said Eleanor. “Occasionally, some of our gendarmes have needed full blood transfusions because so much of the stuff got into their bloodstream, it poisoned them.”
The man fell to his knees, clutching both hands to his head, to the dismay of the medics who’d been trying to clean out his wound. Without warning, the man’s wailing suddenly increased in volume and he shook his head violently, as if trying to clear it of something. Cinn shuffled back.
“And this,” continued Eleanor, as if giving a lecture. “Is another side effect of our lovely new friends. If you get too close, or if one strikes you, it can sometimes trigger the person to experience delusions. We’ve even had some reports of them projecting nightmarish visions into the minds of their victims. In rare cases, the affected individual has become trapped in a state of psychosis. Even if you’re a fair distance from the umbraphage, they can intensify feelings of fear, sorrow or anger in their proximity.”
Were they a ‘fair distance’ from them right now? Perhaps the light barrier was protecting them. Even so, the umbraphages emanated a chilling aura, tainting the air with an oppressive weight.
Cinn cautiously retreated from the disturbed man sprawled on the concrete. Paramedics hovered over him, administering an injection while Darcy whispered something to Julien.
Taking small, uneven steps, Cinn stumbled backwards until he hit a garden fence.
These umbraphages. They were… too much.
Eleanor… Julien, Darcy, Elliot… the rest of Auri, hell, potentially the rest of theworld, were relying on him to sort this out? No chance.
The reality of the challenge slapped him in the face like a bucket of icy water. He crumbled against the fence, crumbled under the weight of everyone’s expectations.
Julien and Darcy approached.
“This is why—”
Darcy interrupted Julien with a sharp, “Don’t.”
“So, are they similar to what you saw that day in my cottage, Cinn? When you shadowslipped?” Darcy asked.
Cinn glanced over to the action again, where the ongoing struggle with the umbraphages was still unfolding like a desperate ballet, light battling darkness on a blood-soaked stage.
“Similar. Not exactly the same, no. But they… feel the same,” he said, his voice trailing off to a near whisper. “I’m so sorry, but I really don’t think…” He stared over at the two deadly creatures of darkness throwing themselves at the barrier.
Darcy dropped to the ground beside him, with Julien following closely behind. “Pleasedon’t worry about that right now,” she said.
Julien nodded, his lips tightly pressed together. “Let’s go home. I’ll talk to Eleanor. You’ll never have to see them again, if you don’t want to.”
“Don’t promise him that, Julien!” snapped Darcy.
Cinn looked away from the pair of them, up into the sky. The sun was still visible, but its light appeared dampened, diminished.
Another scream, another person down, this time a woman.
As Eleanor walked towards them, frowning, Cinn climbed to his feet.
“I think we’d all better return to the va—”
Before Eleanor could finish her sentence, an almighty inhuman screech tore through the air, and everyone’s heads snapped towards the light circle, where one umbraphage had fashioned its form to create two long limbs, working them together to create a rip, a tear in the barrier. Within a heartbeat, it had completely freed over half of its shadowy existence, causing a wave of outcry from the gendarmes below.
“We need to run,” Julien said, yanking Cinn’s arm so hard that a jolt of adrenaline shot through him, his heart pounding in sync with the urgency in Julien’s voice.
It was too late.
The umbraphage was completely clear of the barrier, not a single wispy trace of it left behind. Several gendarmes came together to create a flat surface of light, one last futile effort of defence, but it easily surged upwards, rising high until it was above the chimney line.
Distantly, his mind registered Darcy and Julien’s shouts, but Cinn tuned them out. Because the umbraphage was…lookingat him. He couldn’t explain how he knew this; the creature had no face, no eyes with which to seek him. But itknewhim.
And it was coming for him.
