Page 154 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Underworld

He blinks slowly, his smile slipping slightly as his mind tries to figure that one out. Gods, sometimes I miss simply conversing with other humans—or at very least those demons and entities that work closely with them. One of them would be bound to know who the fuck Houdini is. Since I don’t feel like explaining, I roll my hand in silent encouragement for him to proceed withhis demonstration. His brows beetle for a moment, looking adorably confused, but plasters a faint smile back on his face as he lifts his hand over his head. The spirit flame ignites in his palm and steadily begins to grow, casting a paleblue light over the fog gathered around us and drifting from above in slow, gentle streams.

“I actually initially discovered this when I was flying overhead,” he explains in a low voice. “It was startling to say the least.”

I raise my eyebrows politely, not entirely impressed. As pretty as it looks, I’m not seeing anything that would get anyone I know worked up over. Jugong scoffs in a soft coughing sound that makes my lips twitch. Nygohl doesn’t seem to be paying us any attention, however. His gaze is focused on the grating now as his spirit flame grows brighter and brighter as the flame flickers and jumps and grows reaching for the beams. Sighing, I fold my arms over my chest and lean back against the wall that is Jugong’s chest as I watch the wraith working hard to prove some kind of point.

I really don’t get paid enough for all of this. I only hope that if I humor him enough that just maybe when this is all done, he won’t kick up a fuss and will come along peacefully for the transportation back to Lithera.

I am about to tell him to give up so that we move on to whatever creepy shit he wants to try and scare me with something shifts so suddenly overhead that I jerk back violently, my elbows slamming back into Jugong as I practically try to trample to make space between and whatever is now diving for the protective grating like a massive, clawed hand. Twisted and gnarled with the branch of an ancient oak, it reaches for us with three long fingers and a crooked thumb, each claw nearly as long and thick as my thigh. A low, rattling moan follows thatonly makes the wails of the dead growl louder in result until the thing screams in frustration as its claws impact the grating with enough force to snap several long claws, splintering them so that they fall harmlessly within the courtyard while the things shrieks, its clawed hand driving on the barrier as it is just joined by another, and the another.

Eight twisted hands batter the grating making it groan in protest, but it holds firm, raining broken pieces of what appears almost like wood on top of us. Jugong extends a wing protectively over my head as his other wing curls tightly around me to hold me in place against him so that I’m not hit by the debris raining down on us. Meanwhile, Nygohl hasn’t moved even an inch. His head tipped back, he is watching the angry display of whatever monster is lurking outside of these walls with a small, knowing smile.

“What the hell is that?” I shout over the cacophony of monstrous moans and the slam of the large, inhuman hands.

His head tilts toward me even if he doesn’t look my way, but it is enough to know that he is listening and hears me. He shrugs casually, his smile growing wider.

“I am not entirely certain if it has a name. It is some sort of native tree monstrosity. I suspect that they inhabit the forest throughout but appear to be slow breeding and long-lived and tend toward living a solitary existence—all the better for the rest of the underworld, I imagine,” he murmurs. “Clearly a predator that responds to thermal signatures. My guess is that the temple’s presence drew it and the grating was installed after some unfortunate… accidents, before it was finally abandoned.”

Nygohl’s chuckle is poorly timed as the hands slam down again at that moment and for the first time I’m realizing thatthese are all likely coming from a singular massive creature lurking within the heavy fog, and I don’t know whether I should murder Nygohl for luring us into a death trap, or kiss him for getting us into the temple before that thing out there could make quick work of us the moment we got within range for it to sense Jugong’s crazy-high body heat. The hands flatten with a reluctant groan of displeasure, dropping away like dying moths one by one.

“I can see why this place was abandoned,” I reply drily and shiver as I pluck some moss from my hair, trying not to react to the fact that it likely had fallen from the creature and was part of its body. “Ents from hell is not exactly a great selling point.”

I peer speculatively at the walls noting the elegant masonry and a large, ornate fountain at the center of the courtyard across from the small pool of the spring. The foundation clearly draws from the spring and was designed to impress any supposed visitor. Whoever they might have imagined that it to be in this fucked up place. Each wall is adorned with figures of infernal goddesses, each veiled like that of the queen in the reliefs, each staring sightlessly ahead toward the fountain in the center of the room, their hands lifted and bearing their different insignia that I vaguely identify as relating to the occult arts.

Also, not my department.

At each end of the room, however, there is a simple arched doorway—one that leads from the direction from which we came, and the other leading to a new destination. Yet there is something about this courtyard that suggests that there is a lot more to it than there seems.

The ghost fire winks out, and the wraith dusts his hands along his cloak. He’s still wearing that unnerving smile that makes mystomach clench with unease and a subtle heat of something else beneath it.

“Ready to move on?” he inquires as he turns toward us expectantly. I stare back at him cautiously, uncertain whether or not he will try to kill me in the end. The unholy light in his eyes grows brighter as their flames leap eagerly as he launches into explanation. “The entry way and the rooms that extend off of it for visiting pilgrims is more just advertising for those same visitors and of little importance, but beyond the courtyard… its purpose begins to unfold quickly.” He holds out his hand, gesturing to the far door that I had been looking at just a moment earlier. “It awaits just over there.”

Of course it does.

My lips thin in frustration and I fight against the tight hold of Jugong’s wing hugging me to him so that I can stubbornly put my hands on my hips.

“This is feeling a lot like a ride through a haunted house on Halloween. Why don’t you just get to the point and spare me a trip through the Murder House here.”

To my frustration he doesn’t speak but merely shakes his head as he fades to a shadow and slips further away before materializing on the other side of the room and walking to the door. It seems that he is giving us little choice but to keep playing his game.

“Nothing had better jump out at me,” I mutter sourly.

“If it does, I will sever its head with a snap of my teeth,” Jugong solemnly assures me.

As sweet as the sentiment is, my nose wrinkles in disgust at the thought of having something foul caught between his teeth. Especially with his proclivity of keeping his head so close to mine even if it forces him to bend forward uncomfortably so that he is in optimal sniffing distance.

“Come on,” I grumble. “And don’t eat anything dead. I don’t want to be smelling that for the rest of the time Nygohl confines us here.”

Jugong huffs disdainfully but he doesn’t protest the insult too loudly other than to inform that he isn’t a scavenger. I call bullshit on that because I’ve seen him eat some pretty questionable stuff, but I am choosing to be the bigger person as I make a face at him and proceed to follow after the wraith, leaving the Giwung to follow me. Even so, I make a mental note to go back and check that fountain later—just to satisfy my curiosity—as I follow the wraith deeper in the temple.

Unlike the brightly lit corridors atthe entrance and what Nygohl called the pilgrimage rooms, the corridor behind the door is lit by nothing more than neatly interspaced lamps, providing enough light to see by but not entirely comfortably. And not if one needs to see something in fine detail in the low light. Despite that, there is no missing the fact that the walls here are streaked nearly solid red to the point that I cannot tell if it is something left over from a grisly massacre or if the blood is seeping through the walls themselves.

Given how fresh it looks, I’m starting to suspect the latter. If that is the case something happened here that has trapped thedead within these walls—or beneath them. I immediately shiver at the thought. This place makes my skin crawl. The Lamentari Forest is bad enough for just generally possessing a creepy atmosphere due to the nature of dead that gathers there—but this temple is an entirely different matter. It feels unnatural—wrong.

“I do not like this place,” Jugong observes, giving voice to my thoughts.

“I agree,” I murmur as I give the walls an uneasy look. “I long ago dismissed ideas of there being anything as simple as good and evil but this place is having me rethink that conclusion. It feels like it wants to consume us.”

Nygohl glances back at us over his shoulder, his lips curving as if privately amused at our expense. “That is because it does.” His eyes trail up to the ceiling and my gaze follows it only for me to stumble in horror at the shifting screaming faces staring down at us futilely. “There are very few places like it. The Labryinth that exists between worlds is one. Another is a carnival roaming across your world—though it is the least of them and its nature far more chaotic and curious like that of a child. Thankfully only the builders of the labyrinth were idiotic enough to help the energies reshape into a spirit entity or else we would probably all long be dead by now,” he says with a casual cheerfulness that sends another shiver up my back.

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