Page 126 of An Invocation of Monsters

39

Elle

I think it was only the shock of seeing the monster that saved my life.

Mary’s knife paused at my throat, stinging and ice-cold, when she saw the look on my face.

Then she turned as his eyes opened, blasting us with a light so intense it felt like our flesh would be scorched from our bones in an instant.

She flinched, then fell to her knees, prostrating herself before him.

“O Master, God from Beyond the Door, I beg you to accept this woman,” she pleaded. Her hair had risen as well, as though lifted by invisible fingers, the pooled blood around us swirling upwards towards the sky.

It was the monster’s presence, here in this world, that had turned physics upside down and inside out.

The earth itself was rattling, the vibrations passing through the wooden beam I was tied to and making my teeth clack together.

I slammed them shut, forcing myself to meet the monster’s gaze.

He was enormous, so large it broke my mind. A thousand times the size of a human being, big enough to take a bite out of this cliff and take us with it.

As black as night, with alien runes blazing in vivid aqua all over his body.

He leaned forward, peering at us with an eyeball the size of a car.

What was he? Was this what Mary was trying to summon?

He said something, his voice so loud my head felt like it’d been struck with a bat. I cringed, crying out, and Mary screamed openly with her hands clamped over her ears.

When she took them away, her palms were covered with fresh blood. It pooled and flew upwards, into a hand that had appeared over the circle.

I stared up at the monster’s lineless palm, awed and amazed by the titanic proportions.

Utter madness.

The ground quaked harder, like the earth itself was shrieking from his presence. The wooden beam cracked, then shattered, flying up in a spiral of dust.

I stumbled forward, only to discover that the flowers in my hair, the stitches in my sacrificial dress, the ropes around my wrists and body—all of them were disintegrating as well.

Petals and threads flew upwards, along with shards of bone as Mary’s deer skull mask burst into pieces. Even the flame of the bonfire, made liquid by the lack of gravity, joined the storm of detritus, along with its ashes.

Mary clutched at her face, at a thousand bleeding cuts from the shattering of her mask, and stared at me through a mask of blood.

Pain screamed through every part of me as I moved, but I had kept my presence of mind.

I held the knife now.

She backed away, wrapping her arms around herself. Then she turned to shout at the monster.

“I offer her to you, O Master!” she screamed up at him. “She is yours! I only ask for what is mine!”

The monster’s colossal gaze focused directly on her, and she whimpered, crumpling once more.

I didn’t have much time to ponder how to escape before his eyes turned to me.

There was a literal weight to his gaze. I felt it pressing down on my head and shoulders, a titanic force that wanted to drive me to my knees before its power.

But I pushed back, remaining upright, staring defiantly at the monster with one eye. If she wanted to sacrifice me to him, he was going to have to fight for it.

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