Page 56 of Outside the Veil
“And the wind did roar and the wind did moan…”
His whispers rose to compete with the bedlam outside as he ran through chorus and verses again and again, until his voice grew hoarse. A shivering splinter came from one of the back bedrooms, followed by the discordant notes of glass falling to the floor. Finn bellowed words he couldn’t understand but the defiance rang clear, still on his feet and fighting.
Through the terrible sounds of battle, Diego concentrated on Finn, as if he could send strength to him. He imagined he could feel Finn’s bright warmth against his mind. His own brain created the illusion to comfort him, no doubt, but he clung to it regardless.
A deafening crack sent him under the covers like a small child in a storm. “Damn it, Finn, why did you suddenly have to play Lancelot?” He huddled, shuddering through what seemed hours of violent cacophony.
When the noise finally ceased, it happened so abruptly he thought he had gone deaf. He crept to the top of the stairs, listening. Was it over? And if it was, why didn’t Finn burst through the door to tell him? Nothing, no noises reached him at all besides his own breathing, the absence of sounds in the woods more ominous than any of the screeches and calls of a normal night.
He eased downstairs, every creak on the steps a gunshot in the silence. Wait—there was a sound now, the susurration of something dragging along the planks of the front porch. He pressed his ear to the door. The faint whispering stopped directly in front of him.
“Finn?” he whispered.
Help me…
He wasn’t certain if his ears heard the words or his mind. “Finn?”
Diego… Help me…
He had promised. No matter what he heard, he would keep the door shut. But what if it was Finn? What if he was so badly hurt he couldn’t speak, so badly wounded he wouldn’t make it through the night?
His hand shook on the doorknob. “Cariño, if it’s you, you’ll have to figure out some way to let me know.”
The porch light refused to turn on, the bulb most likely broken. Diego eased the door open a crack. The biting cold sent fire down his throat. A long, pale body lay stretched out on the planks.
“Say something,” Diego urged in a desperate whisper. “Anything and I’ll pull you inside.”
The body shifted as if trying to rise, the head lifted to meet the light streaming from the house. Dark patches mottled a face hidden by wind-whipped hair. Diego stepped forward, straining to see. A long-fingered hand reached toward him.
“Close that thrice-cursed door!” Finn’s voice bellowed from his right.
Diego startled back a step. The face in front of him split in a sickening, cadaverous grin.Not Finn, Dios, not Finn.A roar shook the house. The wind rose to shriek through the doorway. The thing on the porch leaped up, Finn-shape melting into something huge and dreadful. Diego glimpsed a rush of enormous wings and a sinuous black shape that slammed into the wendigo before he wrestled the door shut.
“Ohgodohgod,” he whispered, and sank down on the bottom step in the hall, heart slamming against his breastbone. “Don’t open the door, no matter what you hear,”Finn had said. He satwatching the grandfather clock’s pendulum and the slow tick of its hands, waiting out the hours, desperate for the first gray hint of morning.
Chapter fifteen
Isis by Necessity
The first flaming glints of sun pierced the filigree of branches. Silence had wrapped around the house since two in the morning, the battle evidently over, but no sign of Finn.
Diego stared out of the front window, shadows tugging and toying with his aching eyes. Crawling dread joined the leaden, nauseating sensation of sleep deprivation. His ability to reason might as well have leaked out his ears in the night.
Damn the stupid promise. I can’t wait anymore.
The sun was nowhere near clearing the trees but enough light filtered through to see, he hoped enough to discourage nocturnal creatures.
He eased out into the mist-shrouded morning, searching for any sign of a hulking shape lurking by the house or in the grass. Branches of every size littered the front lawn, blown down in the fierce winds or broken off by hurtling bodies. An ancient pine lay across the driveway, branches yearning skyward as if it struggled to rise.
“Explains one of the crashes, anyway,” Diego murmured to the large cricket on the front step. “I don’t suppose you’re Finn?”
The cricket leaped away to hide in the grass.
“That would’ve been too easy.”
When no shambling, reeking creature appeared and no cadaverous hand reached up over the porch planks, he ventured forward. Visions of every horror movie he had ever watched assailed him. This was the part where everyone in the audience would be yelling, “Don’t go out there, you idiot!”Great. Reduced to a B-movie extra.
“Finn?” he called in a soft, hoarse voice. When nothing stirred, he tried a little louder. No answer. He shivered in the unnatural quiet. While he would never have claimed to be a tracker, there appeared to be a clear trail of crushed plants and broken limbs to show the path of the battle. He started toward the woods, trying to watch in every direction at once.
