Page 60 of The Last One
Yes, something’s coming. All of me coils inward, preparing for the worst.
“Where are her clothes?” Jadon asks, eyes still on the floor.
“In the barn,” Olivia answers.
He looks up, annoyed. “What? Why?”
But before she can answer, the floor in the parlor explodes, sending wood splinters and shards into the walls and ceiling. The angry smells of hot earth and dead things roil the air and clash with the scents of night-blooming jasmine, sweat, and lavender.
Three creatures with skin as smooth and flaky as the trunks of birches burst out of that hole in the floor. Each of their heads is shaped like a ram’s, with four horns swirling from the tops of their skulls. Except for mouths and jagged teeth, their faces have no features. No eyes. No hair. No ears. Their long arms end in sharpened talons that resemble twisted tree roots.
Olivia shrieks, then runs back into the pantry.
Jadon whispers, “Kai?” He backs away from the creatures and drops the satchel. “Catch.” Without taking his eyes off the beasts before us, he tosses me the second sword.
I catch the long sword and sink back into my crouch in the space between the pantry and sitting room, painfully aware that I’m not wearing a shirt or boots.
Olivia shakes her head in disbelief. “What are they?”
Jadon whispers, “Sunabi.” He launches ahead and swings his sword at a sunabi’s neck.
The blade breaks like brittle bark, and a shattered piece nicks the scoop between my collarbones.
“Shit,” I say, wincing.
“You okay?” Jadon holds off the snarling sunabi with the broken stub of his sword.
I nod and say, “Yeah.” I squeeze my eyes shut to push against the pain. A trickle of warm blood drips from the cut and soaks into my bandeau. Wounded already, and I haven’t even started to fight. The cut burns in its small space, but my body feels heavy. All of me tingles. I take a step back.
The sunabi step forward, the talons on their feet clicking against the hardwood floor. One sunabi advances in front of the others, its breathing noisy, its scissor teeth bared.
I take another step back.
Jadon moves to flank them. “Is this the plan?” he asks, his shattered sword ready.
“Sure?” I say, short-winded.
These creatures could tear the three of us apart in seconds. But they hesitate. We stand there, these creatures and I. They turn their heads away from Jadon and in my direction. If they had eyes, they’d be staring at me right now. One sunabi snarls, its claws digging into the wood floor as it steps forward. The sunabi’s hot breath burns my skin, but I have no fear. No, I’m filled with sorrow, cold and hollow. This creature, thisotherworldly, does not belong in this realm.
Neither do I. Not in Maford, anyway.
I grip my sword tight, my focus on the otherworldly before me. “Please,” I say to the creature, “just leave this place.”
“Kai, we need to kill them,” Jadon says, his voice hard.
Maybe it knows the word “kill,” because the sunabi lunges at me.
I shout, “No,” and thrust out my left hand.
The creature slams back into the wall and sinks to the ground.
The second sunabi pounces.
I throw my left hand again.
The creature hurtles back, knocking over one of the armchairs.
Like before, my hands burn, and like before, my fingertips glow coral, red, and blue.
