Page 61 of A Touch of Poison
When I wasn’t watching my step, I watched him. He’d been even tighter than yesterday, and since we’d spotted the town, the deep gold of his skin had turned ashen. It wasn’t fear that marked his movements and expression, but… guilt… shame…
And he thought he’d been here before it had been ruined?
Something was very wrong.
The sounds grew quieter as we emerged on another, narrower road. Bastian looked left and right, then pulled me across the street. We took a right turn and paused in what had once been a doorway, though the timber had long since disintegrated to splinters at our feet.
“There.” He pointed out a house at the end of the lane, on a T-junction, set back behind dead shrubs and the remains of a garden.
Despite being abandoned for so long, there was startlingly little life around the town. The copse where we’d left the stags was full of stunted, sickly trees.
Even nature knew to stay away.
He gripped my shoulders. “We go in, find the fireplace. I get the box. You stay close. Understood?”
I swallowed, nodded, then we were hurrying down the lane. We paused at the T-junction, listened, peered around the corner.
Nothing.
We stalked across the road, Bastian’s hand tight around mine. No magic surged between us, but his grip still felt like a lifeline.
The way his breaths heaved and his jaw ticced, I wasn’t sure whether that lifeline was saving me or him.
No roof remained on the building Elthea had sent us to. The walls were partially collapsed, but thankfully a chimney stack still stood at its heart like a beacon.
As we stepped across the threshold, a low sound rumbled through the air.
I froze, stomach dropping. Bastian raised his free hand, the grip on my fingers tightening. That was the only thing that stopped me fleeing. Head canted, he surveyed the ruined room, then pointed to the far wall.
That was when I heard it.
The crunch of something large moving just the other side of this building.
He pressed a finger to his lips and led the way.
Heart hammering, I tiptoed around broken glass—the shards of a mirror reflecting the clouds overhead. I hardly dared to breathe knowing only an ancient wall stood between me and something the fae found so terrible they called them Horrors.
Great windows had once graced the next room. Now only their metal frames remained, open to the other side.
We crouched below the level of the cracked windowsills and crept along.
The sounds of movement grew louder, accompanied by a series of low, rasping huffs.
Was it sniffing the air?
Could it smell us?
A chill sweat trickled down my spine as I followed Bastian dumbly and tried to keep my breathing under control.
We reached the end of the run of windows, and as I straightened, I caught a glimpse of sunlight gleaming on something outside. A rainbow sheen marked the sleek, dark segmented body, like oil on water. I could only see part of it, but…
It was fucking huge.
Bastian’s hand on my back urged me through the next door. Despite a crack running its full height, the back wall of this room stood between us and the Horror, tall and relatively complete. My breaths eased a little, though my pulse still throbbed in my throat.
We’d reached the fireplace.
Almost done. Then we could leave this damned place and never return.
