Page 8 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
‘Stay where you are.’ Emrys gave the barest nod, the command was quiet as he pulled a blade from inside his coat. He moved into the darkness and out of sight.
A strange coldness lingered after his departure. How easily he shed the demeanour of a lord. Like a snake being free of an old skin. Of course. He’d fought in streets like this for years. The fight against the Mage King hadn’t been held on a grand battlefield, but down cobbled narrow streets where the bricks were still chipped from the deadly spells they’d survived.
Emrys had once been Lord Commander. The most ruthless title to hold.
I should have focused on him and what direction he took – only there was something else on the wind, beneath the stagnant memory of death. Familiar and strange. Like damp earth, old scrolls and tobacco laced with hookers’ weed. That trader’s scent. Taunting me.
My skin almost burnt with the urge to change. To hunt.
I took the portal stone from my skirt pocket, not looking behind me as I forced it towards Thean’s chest, barely having a moment to think of how tangled our fingers became. Too consumed with that scent, how faint it was in the wind.
‘Alma,’ Thean barely had time to snap in warning. It was the first time I’d heard my name from their lips – and it almost made me stay.
My beasts had other ideas.
It was a painful rush, a biting sting over every inch of me, a sinking inside of my clothes. Then there was just the world through different eyes. Too small and quick. The filthy ground too close, reduced to a blur as my small limbs burntwith exertion across the uneven terrain, following that vague scent. The ghost of a memory loomed as I plunged through the sharp stone ruins, small claws racing over damp wood and shattered glass, frigid puddle water biting into my fur.
The screeching howl of the forsaken monsters haunting this place echoed around me, but I ignored that danger, nose twitching. The scent grew stronger and stronger, leading me through a maze of destruction and towards a trapdoor at the back of a dilapidated house. A rusted chain curled around the handles. Wooden planks had collapsed across it, blocking the way as weeds tangled with brambles. There was a crack in those doors, a hole just big enough. One I rushed for.
Then I was falling.
I felt the air open up – and then I changed.
The stinging rush returned as my bare feet landed on damp wood, the impact jarring my knees enough to force me into a crouch.
Bitter, dead air licked up my naked back, making spikes cut through the ridge of my spine in defence.
I panted, breath misting before me in the moonlight, looking into the shadows only to find a face looking back.
A scream caught in my throat as I jerked backwards into a shelf, the jars rattling against my bare shoulder blades. Dust danced in the needle-thin streams of weak light. The remains of a withered corpse coated in dust sat behind the desk opposite me, cobwebs woven between the gaps in his grey teeth. The mangled face still screamed out in agony as the head hung oddly off its shoulders.
The trader.
I looked down at the shattered jars at his feet, the luminescent glow still clinging to the murky glass. Poison. Jars he’d kept to deter thieves.
Killed by his own bounty.
Good. It was what he deserved. My eyes fell to the battered, dusty leather coat holding his bones together. I pulled it from the tangle of his remains without hesitation until a thick plume of dust filled the air, making me choke and spit.
I shuddered, pulling on the coat and ignoring the stench of decay as I knotted the belt. The old leather creaked in protest. I brought my balled fists to my lips, trying to warm my numb fingers with my short, panicked breaths. Looking up at the low beams, the webs tangled between them.
How small this space seemed now. How forgotten. I’d stood here before. Tired and hungry. Aching from another beating. The thick hand of my Keeper on my shoulder. The sweat-and-ale stench of him.
Now a scuttling from the darkness made my ears prick. Then I smelt the matted fur and filth. Faeces and rotting meat.
Another beast. Its beady eyes gleamed as it hissed from the hole it had gnawed into the wall, small furry body trembling with the urge to attack – to guard its territory.
There was a sharp ache in my jaw before I bared long, sharp teeth, a horrid growl tearing from my throat. The creature’s ears flattened as it sank back into its hiding place beneath the rotten boards and I jolted towards the shelves amidst rows and rows of dusty bottles and jars.
It was here. It was all still here.
A horrid weak sob burst through my lips. My clawed fingers dug into the soft rotting wood as a deranged, choked laugh escaped my lips.
‘I did it, Kat,’ I whispered.
A creaking of wood and a thump above made my hackles rise, turning me towards the remains of a crooked wooden set of stairs leading out of the basement.
‘Alma,’ a hissed curse, muffled, from somewhere abovealong with the scrape and drag of wood being moved off the trapdoor.
