Page 13 of Where Shadows Bloom

In the distance, the Shadow began to shrink, like it was melting into the earth.

Over the clamor of hooves and the shaking of the wagon, I cried, “I think it fled!”

As soon as the words left my lips, some great force slammed into the wagon, turning the bench on its axis and sending me careening.

I was pitched out of the wagon, tumbling forward and crashing to the grass, landing on my back. All the breath was kicked out of my lungs. Looking up, the stars spun around in the sky.

“My lady!” Lope’s voice bounced around in my head, sharp and full of panic. I wobbled into sitting, the back of my head throbbing, and looked around.

The wagon was tilted over, and our horses were thrashingabout on their sides, trying and failing to stand—and each was held down by a creature as big as I was, black as the sky, with large, cavernous mouths hanging open over the horses’ faces.

When I shut my eyes to blink, memories spun around me, unstoppable as a dance. The evening in the garden. The day at the wall. Mother. A scream. An endless, hungry mouth. Falling. Breath. Arms. Blood.

I frantically patted the grass around me, reaching before I even remembered what for.A knife, I recalled,I need my knife.

My hand shook violently as I found it a few feet away, rolling to my feet as I tore it from its sheath. Dim moonlight bounced against it, pure white against the darkening world around me.

Something grabbed hold of my neck, throwing me back onto the earth. Above me, there was an open mouth, a void, and a horrible, groaning, hissing sound—

“My lady!” cried Lope.

I thrust the dagger above my head, stabbing madly but missing. The creature withdrew from me, scuttling backward on clawed feet.

Leaping out from behind the wagon, Lope tackled the creature, her sword drawn and plunging straight through the monster’s head. In only a second, it went limp and then disappeared into black smoke.

“Aim for the head,” she said, her chest heaving as shejerked the sword out of the ground she’d planted it in. She waved me close, and I ran to her side, my free hand tangling with hers.

That’s when I saw them.

Aside from the Shadows atop the horses, there were at least ten others. Four or five climbing the wagon, their eyeless, blank faces swiveled toward us. To my right, another six or more, like a crowd of people, watching me.

Lope squeezed my hand.

I looked into her eyes, and for just a second, the world paused. Her eyes shone bright as steel, and my heart ached at the devotion, the ferocity, the bravery painted so clearly across her face.

“I’ll protect you,” she whispered. “Don’t move.”

I’d obey her every order. I’d trust her with my life. Always.

A Shadow jumped forward, clawed hands reaching for Lope’s throat. In one swift move, she pierced her sword through its head. It crumpled to the ground and then dissolved into the air. With her other hand, she took a knife from the strap around her chest and ran in front of me toward the mass of Shadows. Yet to my horror, the monsters melded together, becoming one creature with many heads, a towering wave of darkness looming over Lope.

Another, smaller Shadow darted across my vision, as if chasing the horde of Shadows toward Lope. Before it couldget any farther, I cried out, “Stop!”

The sound of my voice was enough to make the smaller Shadow swivel its body. It hissed, and then in a blink, it was bounding toward me on all fours.

Fear pierced my heart, but more than that, rage, rage at the thought that this beast would go after Lope. I sprinted toward the monster, anger flaring inside me like a lit furnace. It flung itself onto me and pinned me to the earth. The pain of the impact was interrupted by the pressure of the Shadow kneeling atop me, its jaws agape. I plunged my knife forward through its mouth, my fist going through the strange, swirling darkness of its body, wispy and cold like fog, and then out the back of its head. The Shadow fizzled into nothingness.

Just like that.

Just like that, I’d killed my own nightmare.

There was a retching, choking sound to my left.

Lope.

Plumes of what looked like black smoke floated around her ankles and seeped into the ground, remnants of the Shadows she had already destroyed. But it was not enough.

The monstrous, many-headed Shadow had one set of hands wound around her throat; another dug its claws into her wrist, making her drop her sword and let out a weak, strangled cry. She thrashed her other arm, wrestling to get the knife into the skull of one of the Shadow’s heads.

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