Page 43 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
I didn’t make it. Instead, I bungled back as three more bogeybats squeezed into the room on bowed legs. I kept them at bay with my weapon, panting as I searched for a second escape route. I didn’t find it before the first bat flapped onto the floor with a tremor, and I shifted, not knowing where to point my blade. All four beasts closed in on me.
“Stay back!” I snarled with jittery bravado. Did they even understand English?
“Amy—” Daddy choked.
Shivering, I thrust my lustrous blade at the first bat—keeping its attention off my father. “I’m not afraid to use this, you flying wart!”
It sprang toward me. So theydidunderstand English.
I screamed, hacking at it with the sword. Somehow, I made contact and opened a gash in its flank—a gash that oozed blood like crude oil. Railing, my attacker spun and walloped me with a skeletal wing.
I soared into my father’s closet door, my cheek cracking against its frame, then splatted onto the hardwoods, my sword skidding out of reach. But I landed on the cane and clung to it.
My head spun, so I was only partly aware of the bat screeching, its spittle misting my cheeks. But I latched onto the flail of its uvula, its teeth gleaming in a play for my throat.
One moment, I was awaiting decapitation. The next, I was gaping up at Briar, black gore smattering his olive shirt. He’d leapt out of nowhere and onto the bat like it was a horse, and he, its trick rider. The bat roared as Briar stabbed it with a blade double his size, compelling it into the wall, plaster cracking in a web.
A feral growl followed. From my father’s most loyal family member.
I questioned my own eyes when Novus, his tawny hair standing along his rigid back, bounded into the room through a wild stramash in the hallway. He gnashed at the bats by the door, several Dananns wielding sabers against them.
Briar whirled to help them. His serrated sword cast a blue glow over the ferocious brawl, one the bogeybat Briar stabbed didn’t engage in. Not because it was dead—although Briar probably thought it nearly finished—but because it hadn’t forgotten me.
I whimpered, squirming, when its soulless red gaze darted my way.
Briar whooped. Dodged more teeth. Kicked me my weapon.
I snatched the sword just in time to sever a slashing paw. I sobbed at what I’d done as the bogeybat deafened me. My bangs fluttered above my forehead, saliva smelling of offal beading my skin.
That’s when the real fight began.
I screamed the whole time, parrying for my life, and got distracted. I didn’t notice another bat hulking toward me—until its fangs fastened around my father’s cane to wrench it out from under me.
“Fuck! No!” I dropped my sword and gripped the cane’s hook with both hands, digging my nails into its varnish. I wailed for strength as the bat yanked, dragging me.
I didn’t know why these flying shysters wanted Daddy’s cane, or why he needed me to keep it from them, but the phone thief had mentioned protecting a totem. As badly as the bats wanted it, I’d have bet my flat ass the cane was it.
I wrenched the cane, also pulling the bat to my surprise. Little good that did me, though. Irritated eyes still bored through me, promising pain.
My jeans were poor protection against the first bat’s fangs. They clinched my leg like a bear trap.
I’d never made the sounds I made then. Tears burst from my eyes, my nails gouging deeper into the cane. Somehow, I held fast as the bogeybats took turns thrashing me.
Novus pounced on the one gnawing me raw, knocking it off me. My blood dripped from its mouth.
“Hold on, Amy!” Briar sabered his foes as mine whipped me in an arc across the hardwoods, slamming me against the closet frame again.
White-hot flames flared in my tailbone. But I was more stubborn than my pain. I wouldnotrelinquish that damn stick if Daddy needed me to keep it.
My blood painted the floor, frenzying Briar. He no longer fought to kill but to reach me in the fray. “Iwillget you out of here, Amy!”
That was the last thing he said before he tripped over Daddy’s motionless ankle and stumbled backward out the shattered window.
“Briar!” My cry rang to the stars as he plummeted, probably to his death. But I couldn’t spare another thought for that trauma. Not as a jarring whack preceded Novus’s plaintive yelp.
I shuddered to find a bogeybat impaling my beloved dog on his side, its hideous muzzle grinning, drooling. Novus skirmished for survival, his caramel eyes rounding.
I looked to the hallway for help, but the other Dananns had disappeared, their shouts of combat now distant. There would be no swooping savior. I was all Novus had.
