I open my mouth to explain that if we don’t hurry, something much scarier than both of us will find us lurking around his chambers and we will both get killed. I hear the distant clink of chains. The whisper of a phantom breeze through metal links. The air fills with the thick scent of copper. Sharp and thick as if blood has pooled in my mouth. Serrated fingers breathe down the column of my throat, irritating the skin and sending a chaos of tingles down my spine.
“Shit,” I breathe, straightening and turning to face the room.
Julen pivots with me, eyes bulging in their sockets. The rattle of his gun echoes through the hollow hiss of staggered movement. His feet shuffle on stone, disturbing the filth.
“What’s that? What is that?” he stutters, arm sweeping from left to right in wild jerks.
I can only pray he doesn’t set his gun off. I don’t trust the walls not to cave in, or worse, the bang alerting Veyn. But I also don’t tell him to put it down.
Veyn, I can almost trust.
These two, I don’t trust them at all.
From the shadows, they emerge. Hulking, grotesque figures rejected from the bowels of hell itself. Creatures too horrific to stare directly at. Both shuffle into the already stifling chamber with their stench of blood and death. The putrid musk of something rotting in the sun.
The one run through and bound by chains ambles forward, trailing the links piercing through his calves across the stone.
His companion shuffles. Not as bold or proud as he had been the last time I saw him. His body of tendons and muscles curl inward as if protecting himself from pain.
And I wonder if they had something to do with what happened with Lenora the night before. If they were the ones controlling her. My guess would be the one leaving bloody smears through the filth.
“What the fuck are those?”
It takes me a second to realize Julen is screaming. Horrified and panicked shrieks that echo off the walls and seem to get absorbed by the shadows. The sound doesn’t faze the two inching closer with the steady patience of demons with nothing but time on their hands.
The bang ricochets off the walls.
Smoke explodes from the barrel of his gun in a thick, gray cloud that permeates the air with the stench of gunpowder.
The bullet slams, dead center of the creature nearest him with a sickening thump that makes me flinch. The accuracy at that distance should have split the demon open, but he barely registers the attack. Barely twitches. He continues forward with his chains clinking behind him and his dark, hollow eyes fixed on the man trembling before him.
The wound crusts with an ashy soot that weaves thin veins across the gray plains of his chest. From the hole, a chain weaves through. A rusted coil of metal that snakes down to loop back into his body through a rotted cavity at his waist.
Maybe it’s because I’ve seen them enough times that the shock of them no longer fazes me the way I’m sure it should.
Julen is standing in a puddle that stains the stones black. The lingering perfume of his release mingles with the stink of gunpowder, blood and eons of disuse.
I don’t blame him. There is no judgment in my heart when he’s but a toddler staring up into the face of a monster. But there is satisfaction. A warped sense of justice.
“You smell of the other two,” the one wrapped in chains states in a voice thick with ashes. “Weak.”
The gun clatters from Julen’s trembling fingers with a resounding crack that echoes through my skull. It lands in the pool of his urine, forgotten as all the blood washes from his face, leaving him stark and violently ill.
“I want to watch,” I blurt, finally understanding Lenora’s need to see the task through to completion.
This piece of trash murdered my sons. He may not have pulled the trigger, but he gave the orders and that is just as bad. He’s also responsible for James and Gloria’s deaths. This pathetic excuse for a man is singlehandedly responsible for all the major losses in my life.
Now, I get to watch him die in whatever gruesome manner these monsters see fit.
The two don’t seem to hear or acknowledge my request. Their focus is the man collapsing to his knees as they surround him.
In a decision that surprises even me, Julen scoops up the gun. I momentarily think he’s going to try and shoot the creature again, but he turns it on himself. The barrel is placed beneath his chin and a second bang erupts. Brain matter bursts from where the back of his skull is shattered in a fountain of crimson and ivory. The pressure dislodges his left eyeball, and it pops from the socket. The gun clatters from his fingers to strike the floor once more.
And nothing happens.
He remains on his knees with the monsters looming over him, his skull gushing blood down the back of his coat. He makes a noise that is a mix of a whimper and terror as he realizes he’s not dead.
“Weak,” the one with the chains hisses a second time. “It will take much more than that to save you.”
