“Maybe they’re waiting for you?” Tristan called back.
“Perhaps…” She waved to him, following the soft glow of the candles lighting the windows of Fynn’s house.
A glint caught her notice again, down the street beside Fynn’s, and she turned. A blue light puttered out before the back alley. Irritation plucked at her nerves. Why was this being following her?
She strode towards it, her fists at her sides. As she crossed the road, the streetlamps went out, one by one, plunging the street into darkness. A suffocating kind of darkness which only the dead of night brought. Aloisia froze at the centre of the street, her balance wavering and threatening to bring her to her knees. Even the moon had withdrawn behind clouds. The only light was the golden flames at Fynn’s home, barely visible through the deep blackness.
Slowly, and as carefully as she could, Aloisia edged to the stone path. Her feet tripped upon the cobbles, catching their edges on each step. She held her arms outstretched to guide her way and was met only with the freezing night air. Each hastened breath was like ice to her lungs.
The darkness weighed on her, pressing in on all sides, like fingers grasping at her. It coiled around her throat, around her limbs, an invisible shroud enveloping her. She tried to steady her breath, quieten her frantic heartbeat.
It’s only the dark of night, she told herself, casting aside images of the shadows wrapping around her.
“Lis?” Tristan called from afar.
She opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came, her chest constricting against the cold.
A flash of brilliant blue light lit the surrounding night. In the burst, monstrous black shadows were revealed; grotesque imitations of the human form, lumbering upon the pathways and reaching for her with elongated limbs.
Aloisia gasped and grabbed a nearby lamppost.
Darkness gathers.
The rasping voice came again, clawing through her consciousness and raking her skin.
And death with it.
A piercing scream shattered the night.
In the wake of that terrible cry, a hush descended, settling upon the world like a veil. An absolute darkness pressed inwards, with even the light at Fynn and Brighde’s house now out. Aloisia blinked against the inky blackness which swallowed her vision, adjusting her sight to it.
The scream sobered her as if she’d been thrown into a freezing lake. Chills ran like rivulets of ice atop her skin. Her body shook from the cold or the shock, she wasn’t sure.
Images of those humanoid ghouls came unbidden to her mind. She hiked up her skirts and unsheathed the dagger at her calf. What those shadows had been, she wasn’t sure. A trick of the blinding blue light? Or spectres walking the streets? Regardless, she would rather greet them with a blade in hand.
“Brighde?” Fynn called, his voice fragmenting the silence, loud enough Aloisia could hear it down the street.
With her heart racing, Aloisia skittered along the narrow path, her arm held out in front to guide her way and the dagger clenched in the other. Had the scream come from Fynn’s house? Was it Brighde? As her vision gradually adapted to the darkness, she found her way to the door. She fumbled in her purse for the key Brighde had given her.
“Lis?” Tristan called, closer than before.
Darkness still shrouded the lane. She peered through it but couldn’t find him. There wasn’t time; she needed to get inside, to make sure her family was all right.
She found the key at the bottom of her purse. Her hands shook as she guided it to the lock by touch. As she jammed the key in, a match struck, and a golden glow came from the window.
Then another scream; her brother’s scream. She turned the key and pushed the door open. Footsteps sounded behind her, and in the light of the candle, she spotted Tristan bounding over.
Aloisia entered the house and bit back a cry of her own. The blade tumbled from her hand, forgotten, and she clamped the other over her mouth. Brighde lay motionless on the floor, Fynn knelt beside her. Blood blossomed across her abdomen, seeping through her dress. Her pale blue eyes, once so full of joy, were glassy and unseeing.
“No, no, no,” Fynn murmured. He cradled Brighde to his chest, her blood smearing across his arms and staining the front of his white night shift.
Aloisia stood frozen in the doorway, vaguely aware of Tristan at her shoulder. Her thoughts slid over one another, too fast, too slick to grasp. She bitterly regretted that last tankard. The sobering effect of shock was wearing away, leaving her mind tumbling as if down a mud bank whilst she clutched at saplings to break her fall. Saplings which bent and broke at her touch.
“Fynn,” she breathed.
Tristan clasped her shoulder, guiding her further into the room. “What happened?” he asked, his voice distant though he stood beside her.
Fynn shook Brighde a little, not seeming to hear them. “Come on, wake up. Please.”
