Page 48 of Light Locked
“Quinn is dead, but she tore open his shoulder,” Ralth said, licking the blood off his fingers in a way that made her stomach lurch. “He might be an Insednian, but he has no soul and a human heart.”
“So, we have parts of an Insendian, and a tainted Veilin. These days it seems like we find everything in pieces.” Myken replied thoughtfully, as Ralth’s bright eyes flickered to Clea. His gaze was hungry, tongue lapping a stray stroke of blood in the corner of his lip.
“I’ll go finish things before the Insed costs us anything else. Even when you chop off their heads, they still bite. Watch this one,” Myken said. “I think he’s already used her up, and done something to her mind to make her docile toward him. The first is unfortunate but repairable. I think the second will help her sell at a higher price.”
With every mounting word, Clea’s heart beat faster.
Myken bared his teeth in a wicked grin and vanished.
Clea dropped to her knees and cast another blessing in Ralth’s direction before she darted for the trees. She didn’t know if she could ever escape these creatures, or even kill them, but she had to fight back. She had to fight with everything she had.
Steps away from the forest, eyes illuminated en masse between the trees, Clea sliding to a halt. She searched the clearing, seeing the wall of eyes watching her like an arena of dotted darkness.
They were surrounded. They were surrounded by forest beasts,lingering in the quiet as if they’d always been there. They did not attack, but watched. Clea had never seen them behave in such a controlled manner before.
Ralth flashed into a crouch before her and as he stood, she saw the wall of eyes behind him flicker with movement. Monsters shifted in the blackness, hints of gray claws, spines, tails, bones and teeth, growing ever restless as Ralth straightened in front of them.
He lunged. She drew Ryson’s dagger from her boot, stumbling back as he lashed out at her with bared claws. When he lashed out a second time, she swung the knife back toward him, cutting his wrist. He recoiled and hissed in pain at her, but the wound stitched itself up.
Weapons didn’t hurt them either.
Ralth swung for her again, faster, hungrier. She leapt back, but he appeared by her side and hooked onto her arm. Using his entire body, he slammed her into the ground. Her lungs latched onto her breath with the force, and she heaved forward in an attempt to get to her feet. He dug a heavy heel into her shoulder, and she crashed back into the frozen earth. His pointed fingers grazed her throat menacingly as she drew in suffocated breaths.
Her mind raced through any means of escape, every thought repetitively blank. She’d never felt the force of such repeated, violent blows. They could resist weapons. They could resist blessings.
Ralth leaned down with a wicked smile, his hair falling aroundher face like a curtain behind which he intended to share dark secrets.
“D-Docile, he said? No, no. Docile, maybe only to the Insednian. Did he curse your mind?” Ralth hissed as his other clawed hand grazed her temple. “What is the secret curse? The secret curse to have a Veilin follow you like a lamb?” Ralph’s eyes widened in a kind of hysterical, distracted, excitement. “O-Oh, I want to know. So-So badly. Y-You always fight until we gut you to your last breath.”
Clea turned her face away from him, preparing her hands for a blow.
“Struggle is fun, but not in the end, not in the end, is it? I don’t want you to struggle to the very, very end. Such a hassle.”
Grabbing a breath, she shouted and slammed her hands into his chest, spilling light through her fingers. His chest heaved with a joyful laugh until he grabbed her hands and then howled when the cut on his wrist re-opened and gushed.
He drew back as if pain were an alien thing, as if wounds were an alien thing, holding his bloodied wrist to his chest as his other claw lifted to strike her.
A black shadow flashed over her face before she could act, and the pressure of Ralth’s body lifted off her. She heard a short, loud huff as something tackled him to the ground.
She propped herself onto her elbows in time to see Ryson and Ralth rolling through the snow, blood trailing behind them.
When they came to a halt, Ralth scrambled away, slippingonce in the snow before turning to face Ryson, who held a dagger in his left hand. Ralth was still clutching his gushing wrist that now bled through his fingers. Why was it not healing this time?
Ryson put his dagger away with one hand, simultaneously drawing his scythe with the other. He was breathing heavily, but between labored breaths, threatened in fluent Kaletik. Ralth hissed at him, but sank back and vanished.
Ryson slammed his scythe into the snow as he collapsed against it, cursing.
Clea scrambled over to him. His shoulder was a bloody mess, accompanied now by a gaping wound on his side. His breath shuddered dangerously, spots of blood dampening his hair in sticky patches.
“Hold on,” Clea demanded, reaching to heal the wound.
He snatched her hand in his, coating her fingers in the blood that dressed him.
“There’s worse to worry about, Princess.” He swallowed hard as he staggered back to his feet.
Ralth and Myken now stood at the edge of the woods with a third figure in a bloodied gray cloak. He clutched a wound on his chest, peering through a veil of blood-soaked hair with glowing, green eyes.
“What are they?” Clea asked.
