Page 70 of Demonic Affliction

I send my thoughts down the bond. I don’t think I could force myself to get the words out. An icy terror grips me, refusing to let go. Something about that sound, the creature that produced it…

I realize at this moment that I have never once in my life known true fear, not like this.

Vhalthor turns, his expression stony. However, his eyes give him away. He’s just as scared as I am—probably more. “We need to move. Something has found us⁠—”

He’s cut off by a piercing scream—this time, from one of his men.

Vhalthor whips around, searching for the source. His eyes move from soldier to soldier, taking a mental inventory. “Is there anyone unaccounted for?”

Silence. Then a voice from the back of the group, shaking with barely repressed terror. “Stult is missing. H-he was right beside me, and now…” The soldier looks like he’s going to be sick. “Oh, gods…”

Vhalthor's expression hardens, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “Everyone, keep an eye out. Something is hunting us⁠—”

Another scream. Somewhere to the left but closer. It pierces through the silence, then cuts off the same way the other did. Vhalthor whips toward it, and then a second scream, this time from behind. Finally, a third, this one from a direction I can’t place at all.

The soldiers around me start turning in place, backs pressing together. I can hear the panic building in their breathing. We wait. We watch. But there’s nothing.

Enraged, Vhalthor wields his sword, snarling into the shadows. “Coward! Come out and fight!”

There is silence. A breath. A breeze. Then all hell breaks loose.

23

Rhune

I watch in slow motion as dozens of pale, winged creatures fall from the canopy, filling the forest with their horrible screams. They're the size of demons, lean and completely hairless with puckered bald heads. Their skin is the same pale hue as the dripping Welwig leaves, allowing them to blend in with their surroundings.

Their faces are human-shaped, but that is where the similarities end. Each creature has four eyes set in two stacked pairs, all of which are a deep, wet red. Just like their eyes, the monsters have two pairs of wings apiece, though they’re thin and veined like an insect's versus a demon’s.

Their muscular arms end in talons the length of my forearm, and as they move, they clack together menacingly. One of them opens its mouth, and it just keeps opening, the whole lower half of its face hingeing open to expose rows and rows of needle teeth.

It closes that mouth around a soldier's shoulder and takes him up into the branches, disappearing in the blink of an eye. There is one horrible moment of screaming before it cuts off, and I know he is dead.

Then they're everywhere. Talons punch through backs, through wings, through skulls. Soldiers are being ripped off their feet in every direction I look, hauled up into the canopy where they meet their untimely ends. There is so much movement and carnage, it’s hard to think. But I know I have to protect my Willow.

“Run!” Vhalthor yells.

I pull Willow to my chest, one arm under her legs, the other locked around her waist, and I run. Dravik and Nyx have Cin between them, hauling him along by the arms, his feet dragging through the frozen underbrush.

We run.

Willow's hands fist in my suit, and her heart beats so fast against my chest that I can feel every single strike of it.

I have you, I promise through the bond. I have you. I will not let go. I will not let them hurt you.

Branches whip at my face. My wings scrape against the trunks on either side, but I do not slow down or shield myself. If one of those creatures should attack from behind, it will rip into me, and I can use the distraction to hand her off to Dravik or Nyx.

Anything. Anything to protect her.

The screaming does not stop. It comes from ahead of us now, not just behind. Then from the left. Then from somewhere off to the right.

We’re surrounded.

"They're all around us." Nyx’s voice shakes. “We… there’s no way out.”

Vhalthor slows ahead of us, then stops. His remaining soldiers stumble to a halt behind him, and the forest goes quiet again. It’s worse than the screaming.

Slowly, silently, the creatures step out of the shadows into the open. They do not rush. They do not need to.