Watched.Watched.
Always watching.
Not even the bugs chirped.
“He-hello?” I called.
My voice echoed into a whisper, growing thin, thinner—thinning—until a shrill, high-pitched ringing pierced my eardrums.
A grunt punched through my lips, and I doubled over. Hands on my face, gasping for air through my fingers. The pressure wasn’t enough to ease the pounding throb inside my skull.
Skriii—skriiiiiitch.
The sour, moldering smell of rot and sulfur draped itself across the campus. My stomach lurched so viciously I nearly vomited. The ear-splitting scratch of nails heralded the demon’s arrival, as its wings were as silent as death.
Dread suffocated me, my heart pounded painfully hard, and an icy fear washed through me. I looked up at the gap between the History building and the lecture halls, instantly noting the gnarled figure hunched in the gray gloom. Taller than a man, stretched to an impossible capacity and bearing wrong angles. Wing-like appendages spread out, tipped in hands with talon-sharp claws that mirrored meat hooks. The neck twisted with acrack, and sharp, yellow eyes illuminated from within by an infernal glow narrowed on me—its intended prey.
My heart rioted against my ribs, and a weak scream died on my lips.
A stolas.
And how was that for believable?
Was that real enough to shatter the illusion of my disbelief?
The demon opened a beak lined with crooked, needle-thin teeth and emitted a horrible, ragged growl. Viscous, red-tinted strings of saliva oozed from its beak in webbed strings. Large splotches of old, dried blood were crusted on the crest and wing feathers.
Gravel skittered from the stolas’ talons as it prowled closer and closer. All while my thigh muscles tensed and refused to unclench. I was frozen in place, leashed by fear, a helpless fool within reach of a primeval predator.
I might as well have been serving myself up on a silver platter.
The stolas flared its wings in a threatening display, stressing the danger of its presence with a thunderous hoot.
Adrenaline flipped the switch in my body, and I jolted into action. Sprinting through the ankle-deep fog, leaves and loose twigs snapped under my boots. Several times I stumbled or tripped, whimpering with fear. Even the afternoon streetlamps flickering to life around the campus appeared grim through the shroud of eerie mist.
The grumbling cries and talon scratching sounds of the stolas chasing me kept me in perpetual motion. I panicked at the thought of that damned demon catching up to me and snatching me up with those horrible claws at any second. I swore I felt the rustle of air from wings sweeping behind me as it reached out.
My panic-stricken sprint took me under an ivy-wrapped stone arch. I emerged into the sickly amber glow of the historical wing’s exterior light. Alarm struck me as charged and violent as bolts of lightning with each aching pulse of my heart, and an ancient, animal instinct screamed in my head:Run, run, run!
The demon was larger and faster than me. It could probablyfuckingfly. I couldn’t see myself getting out of the encounter alive. A sound snapped beside me, and I lurched in the opposite direction. And managed to stumble over my own feet.
I tripped and sailed sideways into the grass. Blunt pain radiated through my hands and knees. Wet grass and cold dirt seeped through my pants and froze my skin. A rolling blanket of fog shuddered where I crashed.
The demon emitted a cooing snarl sort of sound. I flipped over, crawling on my elbows to escape the stolas hunting after me. Its rounded, feathered face grew nearer, allowing me to briefly skim the grotesque features of a distorted bird. The sight of it made my heart flop and wither in my chest, and air refused to enter my lungs. I was simply frozen, locked into the final moments of my life, watching gleaming talons reach closer, and closer still.
A shadow from thin air cut across my vision.
I shrunk back and threw an arm over my face. My heart stalled even as my entire body seized into a statue of rigid stone.
The blow never landed.
Instead, a metallic scrape broke the silence.
A grunt and frustrated snarl followed.
My neck snapped up, and a breathy intake of air filled my lungs with much-needed oxygen. Exhilaration rushed through me.
Burnished in amber light, Luther appeared, towering between me and the demon. Time slowed, and my gaze flicked from his broad shoulders, down his toned backside, then back up to the dagger in his hand blocking a meat-cleaver talon.
