Page 56 of Cloak of Night
The hand jerked hard, and the trap door flew out of its frame completely.
There was a dim room with bare dirt floors on the other side. It could be another trap, but she didn’t have time to hesitate.
With her lungs aching, Sora grabbed the door frame and propelled herself into what she hoped was Zomuri’s secret vault.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Broomstick watched Spirit dive into the lake. She swam slowly, as if movement were harder underwater, but she didn’t freeze up or seem bothered by the corpses suspended around her. He cheered her on from shore: “You’ve got this!” Maybe they’d finally caught a lucky break.
Suddenly, Spirit stopped swimming. She floated in the middle of the lake, nowhere near the bottom, and planted her feet as if she were standing on the ground. Broomstick ran to the edge of the water. “Spirit, no! Whatever you’re seeing in your head, it’s not real! You have to fight it off and keep going.”
She didn’t move. At the same time, the cave around Broomstick shuddered. The icicles hanging off the rock walls rattled, like a million chandeliers about to break. The walls of the cavern groaned.
Was it the monster? Or something else?
He unsheathed a sword and took several steps back from the water’s edge. Whatever was coming, he couldn’t affordto get knocked off his feet and into the lake.
The cave shook again. This time, the walls couldn’t hold on to the icicles. But the icy spears didn’t fall straight down either. Instead, they flew across the colossal cavern and began to come together just a hundred feet from where Broomstick stood. The icicles hovered in the air, assembling themselves into something.
First an icy heart.
Then a barreled chest around it, the icicles still loosely linked together like chain mail so Broomstick could see through the holes between them.
Arms. Legs. And last of all, a head with icelike swords as its teeth. The monster roared, letting out a breath as rank as thawing corpses, while its components jangled against one another, sounding much more dangerous now than collapsing chandeliers.
Broomstick recoiled. But then he saw the lake out of the corner of his eye, and he remembered his promise to Spirit that he would stay alive, in case they needed a second chance at the vault.
He brandished his sword and looked straight into the monster’s crystalline eyes. “Hello, Snowy. What brings you to these parts this fine day?”
The icicle creature roared again, then charged.
“So much for pleasantries.” Broomstick sprinted straight for the monster.
As soon as it got close enough, he leaped. Broomstick landed on the creature’s knee and scrambled up to find purchase. The monster swiped at him with icicle claws and tried to shake him off.
Broomstick raised his sword and plunged it into the creature’s thigh.
It didn’t react.
“For Luna’s sake,” Broomstick muttered.
He started hacking at the knee. Icicles broke off, and the monster took in a raspy inhale as his leg sagged for a moment. It didn’t give out, but it was a revelation for Broomstick—each shard of ice seemed to contribute to the creature’s power.
Broomstick hit the butt of his sword against more icicles. A few broke off, and the monster’s leg twitched. But now it was really angry, and it clawed at Broomstick with both hands.
An icicle stabbed his shoulder. He let out a cry and grabbed the wound.
The claws came again. Broomstick, bleeding steadily, still managed to avoid the blow by slipping around to the back of the monster’s knee.
What he needed was an ax to hack off the leg. But all he had was a sword. Broomstick wrapped his own legs tightly around the creature’s, held his left side with his arm, and started to saw at the ice with his sword hand.
The ice monster bellowed. It kicked out its leg and sent Broomstick flying off. He landed with a thud, and he skidded on the slick ground toward the lake.
No!
Broomstick dug his sword into the frozen ground to stop his momentum. He slid right into the blade, just inches from the water. The sword cut into his flesh, and even more blood dribbled out of him, two streams of red trickling into the lake.
Small waves began to form on the surface, and the water lapped farther up the shore, as if it were hungry for another body and mind to consume.
