Page 17 of Fae Exile

I was staring straight at dozens of eyes that looked directly back at me. Out of sync with each other, they blinked. Some eyelids shuttered vertically, others horizontally. Most of the eyes were small, dark, beady, awful, glistening orbs, but others were as large as a horse’s.

“Dammit,” I muttered under my breath while holding the monster’s unnerving stare and discerning a pattern to the placement of its eyeballs—a spiral that wound across the crown of its head and halfway down its face, ending above a gaping, lipless mouth.

“What is it?” Reed asked as he moved his blade in an arc to either side of us.

“The horses,” I scarcely whispered. “We need to protect them too.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to be possible,” Reed said around a frown.

“We can’t just leave them out here with these things!”

“We might not have a choice,” Roan said.

“There are more coming up from underground,” Finnian shouted.

I jerked to glance downward and behind, waving my torch out in front of us again, this time stretching farther.

Loosely akin to an inky black squid or octopus, with too many legs to count as they all slithered at once, the creature before me yanked its head out of the trajectory of the fire.

It hissed—like something wet sizzling on an open flame.

I speared the torch forward. It slid out of the way faster than should have been possible for something as large as a horse and with so many legs. When I pushed the fire toward its face again, it spat—missing me, but landing on Reed’s outstretched arm.

Reed yelped, frantically wiping the black glob of phlegmy goop on his britches.

“Are you okay?” I asked urgently but kept my attention on the beast, whose eyes were all open at once, glaring at me and the wavering flame I held. Even in the flickering lights, the monster had no color but the sludgy blackness. The flame didn’t reflect upon its surface, though its wetness suggested it would be shiny.

Its flesh ... absorbed the light.

“Don’t let ‘em spit on you,” Reed hollered. “It burns like hell.”

“You’re surrounded,” Xeno called down.

“How many now?” Roan asked.

“Thirteen, maybe fourteen, fifteen.”

“Bollocks. Looks like we’d better get to slicin’ n’ dicin’, then.”

“And if they’ve got more of this nasty stuff inside them…?” Reed asked as he dripped saliva onto the blackening patch on his forearm, trying to deactivate the poison.

“Then we’re screwed,” Roan said while the creature staring me down extended several of its many arms in his direction. Its arm span was longer than any of us were tall.

I lunged forward, managed to poke it with the flame before it could stretch into a concave curve around the arc of my torch. It recoiled, squealing so piercingly my ears hurt.

“Xeno,” I yelled without searching for my friend among the trees. “If it comes to it, you get Saffron outta here. Go straight to Nightguard and don’t look back.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you.”

I was about to remind him he was adragonprotector and that Saffron was the last of his kind, when the whines of the monster I was burning ceased and it struck forward as fast as a viper.

With fire and steel, I defended and attacked, but the monster had too many arms. Its night-colored flesh sizzled and cooked, it wailed and squeaked—and yet it managed to weave a tentacle around my bare throat and suction onto my skin.

I thrashed and hacked at its limbs, but for every one I cut, another seemed to instantly take its place. Spindly barbs latched on to my flesh, and as I tore them out my skin shredded with them.

Pru screamed, Saffron cried, and the men grunted and cursed.

I didn’t have to look away from my attacker—couldn’t, really—to confirm just how gravely surrounded we were.

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