"Where's Sebastian?" Abby gasped. She craned her neck upward, but beyond the fissure of moonlight every space stood in shadow.
"Uh, oh, getting upset? We can't have that," Vesta crooned. She crushed a palm hard into Abby's throat and pressed.
Abby choked, her eyes bulging, as the soft tissue began to cave in, cutting off her airflow. Her arms fought against the binds, but they only made small flapping circles, a baby bird fallen from its nest.
"Stop!" one of the cloaked figures barked. Abby watched the man who'd spoken. His voice continued to echo strangely. It sounded like many voices speaking at once. He flipped his hood back, and Abby recognized the man from her dream, Tobias. He turned on his heel, strode to Vesta and ripped her off Abby in a single flick.
Vesta stumbled back, straightened herself and glared at Tobias in reproach. The third figure, Tane, turned to watch the scene unfolding.
"Yes, Abby, at last we meet…in the flesh." Tobias took a deep bow, his white teeth gleaming.
White teeth that looked wrong, too white in the darkness, too white against his red mouth. He and Alva had spoken of eating and of hunger. She pushed out a trembling breath, it stuck in her throat on a sob, but she swallowed it back.
“Let the ground open beneath me,” she thought. “Let it swallow me whole.”
Vesta walked behind Tobias, running her hand over his shoulder, her sharp nails fingering the fabric of his cloak.
"Stunning in black, isn't he?" She looked adoringly into his eyes, and he smiled back at her, lifting her hand to his lips.
"Almost there," Tane muttered, as he finished a final marking to Abby's right.
"What do you want?" Abby whispered, awash in fresh terror. Each emotion came as a wave: shock, despair, confusion, and horror, with an underlying desire, no, obsession, to just wake up. Through the fog of emotion, she watched Tobias, his long fingers rubbing together as if in preparation for a tasty meal. Her skin crawled as his pink tongue glanced off his lower lip. His eyes continued to dissect her across the clearing.
"I wanted you to be awake for this, my dear," Tobias whispered as though murmuring to a lover. He knelt beside her, ran a single chilled finger along her arm, wrist to neck. "I could have let you sleep, made you sleep, but this is my gift to you."
He smelled like death, his breath stank of rot and decay. She recoiled, but the foulness stayed, making her gag.
A low moan caught her attention. She broke Tobias's trancelike gaze.
"Sebastian!" she screamed, and fire ripped through her swollen throat.
Tobias laughed, contemptuous. Vesta sneered and kicked dirt at Abby’s face. She closed her eyes too late and felt the gritty sting of sand beneath her eyelids.
"Well, well, the entire party has arrived," Tobias said.
Abby blinked hard until she could see again.
"Abby?" Sebastian yelled as if a gag had been removed. He sounded groggy.
"Yes, I'm here. Oh, God, please, just let him go," Abby's voice cracked and she clenched her eyes against the tears.
“You have no power over us, Vepar,” Sebastian said in a low, serious voice that shocked Abby to silence.
“You use that name freely?” Tobias snarled, rushing out of Abby’s sight. She heard a thud, flesh on flesh and Sebastian gasped, but did not cry out.
She wanted to scream and protest, but understood that if she wasted her energy, she would surely die. Vesta had moved closer to Abby, taking long, deep inhalations like she wanted to smell her, taste her. Abby panted, terrified, and tried to focus on her breath. She had to calm down.
Tobias returned, his dark lips wet and his eyes glazed. He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. Abby saw a streak of red on his pale hand.
“Oh, God, help me! Please, someone, help us!” she screamed and started to cry, struggling against her bonds. She dug her heels into the dirt and ground down, but knew that she could not rip free.
Tobias laughed, loud insane laughter that flooded the forest and made Abby’s brain feel soft and swollen. She wanted to shove her hands over her ears. The others joined him, their laughter drowning out Abby’s cries.
Sebastian began to murmur and the laughter stopped.
“What do you say, human?” Tobias shouted, mocking him. “Do you pray to your God for help? Or do you pray to your sister…Claire?”
"Shut up!" Sebastian's scream pierced the silence, and, for a moment, even Tobias stopped to stare.
Abby shook with fear, twisting into the earth like it might protect her. Her shoulder hit a rock and she winced, wishing she had fingers to grab it. She could murder, she would murder, if given the chance.
"This is phenomenal, really, a phenomenon," Tobias sighed, turning his gaze back on Abby. "I have never met one who did not know, at least in some deeper sense. But you, you, my lovely, are completely innocent, so pure…" He bent down, his icy fingers trailing over her cheek. She jerked her head to the side, but he gripped her chin roughly, forcing her to face him. He leaned down and pressed his face into her hair and inhaled.
Vesta hissed, but made no move to stop him.
“However did you find her, Sebastian?” Tobias asked in his thousand voices. “You are like a magnet for them. Maybe we should keep you.”
"Get away from her," Sebastian wailed. Tobias only smiled and nuzzled his face into her neck; she felt a dull scrape as he dragged his teeth across her earlobe.
Abby turned her head away, fighting the urge to face Tobias and bite whatever piece of flesh she could get hold of. Through the shadows, she finally spotted Sebastian. He was not staked to the ground, but to a tree, his arms and legs stretched behind him, concealed by the trunk. He bucked and jerked and howled, but could not break free. It looked painful and Abby lost another shard of hope. He could not possibly break free.
“Let’s get on with it,” Vesta growled, whipping her hair back angrily. “These games bore me.”
Tobias turned and glared at Vesta.
“Patience, Vesta, my killer, or you will not eat again.”
Tane fidgeted uncomfortably, glancing from Tobias to Vesta as if a fight might erupt.
"Now, before we begin." Tobias stood and walked to Sebastian. Abby could only see Sebastian in shadow, but his head rose as Tobias neared. “You are already dead. You know that, don’t you?”
Sebastian remained silent.
“Though I will hate to finish the man who has hunted me for so long. Such a shame that you had to be wasted this way. You might have joined us, I think, powerful human that you are.”
“I will follow you to hell,” Sebastian whispered.
“Oh, no, I don’t think they’d let you in, but no matter.” Tobias waved a hand dismissively. “You still live for one reason. The book. Where is the Book of Shadows?”
“What Book of Shadows?”
“Don’t toy with me, human,” Tobias said, low and quiet. “Where is the Book of Shadows?”
“If you’re talking about Claire’s books, they’re gone. I burned them a year ago, when I gave up looking for you,” Sebastian lied.
Abby listened, rapt. She had seen the Book of Shadows.
“He lies,” Vesta snarled, kneeling next to Abby. “But we can help him tell the truth.”
Vesta grasped Abby’s head in her palm, sinking her fingernails into the flesh of Abby’s scalp and forehead. A searing pain shot over her skin, and Abby howled in agony.
“Stop!” Sebastian screamed.
Vesta loosened her hold, but Abby felt the burning gouges. Tears rolled from her eyes and she turned away from the sight of Vesta, who smiled meanly above her.
“The Book?” Tobias asked again.
“It’s at Sydney’s house. I hid it there. I can show you where.”
“Liar,” Vesta hissed and dug again, but Tobias interrupted her.
“Stop, you fool,” he snarled. “She’s bleeding, you’re wasting her.”
Vesta pulled her nails from Abby’s skin, and she felt the warm blood trickle towards the back
of her head, weaving through her hair.
“You will take us after the ritual,” Tobias said simply. “By then you will be ready to die.”
Tobias moved back to Abby, staring down at her, his head cocked to the side.
"It is so sad, my dear, that you will never even get to feel it, not once, because it will all belong to me."
He leaned down and licked the blood from her forehead. His tongue felt hot and bristly.
Abby did not respond. She could barely feel him. Her ears had flooded with sound, and her head throbbed.
Vesta laughed, throwing her blond mane back, her face tilted to the night sky. She looked evil, and Abby felt the magnetism of that thought. They were evil.
A low wind picked up, washing over Abby and swirling her hair around her face. She could smell the lake water, could imagine the coolness against her face. She was so thirsty.
"It's time." Tobias spoke softly. His eyes connected with Vesta and then Tane. They each nodded and moved out of Abby's line of sight. She could hear rustles, but no one spoke. Sebastian continued his struggle, but said nothing; a strange silence had fallen over the group.
Tobias, Vesta and Tane encircled her. A thick grass rope snaked through their hands and they stretched it into a haphazard triangle as they spread out around her body. The rope looked old, bits of grass popping from the whole, deep charcoal and crimson stains embedded along it. The chants began low, just a murmur, their mouths moving in unison. Abby could not hear the words; they sounded like another language. The three trained their eyes on her, seeing, but not seeing, their pupils like smoky crystal balls. The forest was bathed in a silence so thick that it choked her.
Her brain twisted in circles. How to get away… she tried to cling to those thoughts, but something was happening. Her skull felt as if it were being cracked open, sharp fingernails digging down into the bone and stretching it wide. Then a sensation like hot picks pierced the sensitive flesh all over her body. She pitched and twisted, wanting to rake her nails across her face, rip out her burning eyes, stop the images suddenly flooding her vision. Flashes of death assailed her. Blackened corpses strewn in fields of wildflowers, their flesh rank, stinking in her clothes, her hair and her mouth. In the forest, she turned and retched, but nothing came out. The visions continued, blood seeping from open wounds, the glint of a knife as it fell over and over. Abby saw Devin, her face a mask of terror, her arms and legs staked to the earth. Beneath it all, she saw the haze of her captors, their eyes gone from black to hot, red fire, faces of the dead dancing deep in their pupils.
Tobias stood at her feet. His face grew starker in the moonlight, his features changed, his eyes sank deeper and his lips paled to a bleached white. The muscles in his neck elongated and tensed, then flexed into rope-like snakes beneath his engorged skin.
Abby shook her head, but it only brought another surge of terrifying visions. She jerked her face to the right where she encountered the bloated face of Devin, her full lips parted, a teardrop of blood sliding from her mouth. She began to scream, but could not hear it. Only the chants of the three murderers rang in her head. They grew louder. Foreign slurs mixed with English, their voices blending into a single stream of loathing that wrapped erotically around their hunger.
Tremors shook her body, everything vibrated, even her eyes. Fire leapt through her veins, singeing. She had once read a story about a man who was electrocuted; he described it as being burned from the inside out. They were burning her alive without a single flame touching her skin. She screeched, shook, fought, but could not reconnect with the circle and the woods. She was sure that her body was trying to shut down, some defense mechanism to knock her out and end the pain, but they would never get away then. More images slammed into her, but she forced them back.
She searched for solace, some pillar of thought to cling to, and the cave from her dream flashed in her mind. She imagined Devin’s drawing of the cave and used it to remember. She saw gray slabs of rock, an impenetrable force. That could be her, a solid wall - a dark, cool mass. She returned to her memory of that dream, a slow trudge, almost liquid air.
She felt the pain subside, but was afraid to end her vision - she concentrated. The cave grew more real and the forest dissolved.
In the tunnel a figure moved forward, Devin. Every surface of her body flickered with tiny glittering lights. She sailed towards Abby, a purple silk cloak billowing around her, fire-red hair flying like buoyant energy in the crammed space of the cave. Abby expected her to sail right through her with a single puff of air, but she slowed and stopped. It wasn't possible, Devin was dead, but none of that mattered.
Am I dead? The thought nearly shocked Abby from the vision and back into the woods, but Devin reached out her hand. Abby felt the touch, fresh, clean, like pressed flour clinging to her fingers. Devin's eyes bore into her, they spoke to her, but her lips did not move.
“What?” Abby wanted to scream, to force the urgent message from Devin's silence. Finally, Devin lifted her hand, her slender fingers opening. Abby stared into her palm; it was filled with water, a small pool cupped there like a precious stone. It glittered and undulated, reflected Abby's face in ribbons. She held her own hand out, thought, “Give it to me.” Devin smiled, extending her arm forward.
Liquid poured in. It was ice cold and thick. Abby opened her eyes to the woods, choking. Tobias knelt over her, a heavy glass bottle clutched in his hand. Spitting and hacking, she tasted the metallic blood as it spilled from her lips and over her chin into the crease of her neck. He was feeding her blood!
The vacant look left Tobias's eyes as he watched the blood spew from her mouth - replaced with a storm of madness. His face warped and turned wolf-like. His lips shrank back, disappearing beneath a row of pointed teeth, and his eyes narrowed to two tiny black slits. For a second, Abby was sure that he was transforming into a monster - that he would bend forward and feast on her trembling flesh, but his features snapped back into place, the monster was a man again. He squeezed her nose, and the soft cartilage howled in protest as bright stars shot through her head. She gulped the blood, her gag reflex overcome by her empty lungs. He reluctantly pulled the bottle away, and she gasped, the fresh air only a minor relief. The acrid taste coated her lips and gums, the blood smeared over her teeth.
She heard Sebastian's screams of protest, but they sounded far away as if she and the three killers had moved to a suspended plane and he had been left far below. Vesta and Tane were still standing around her, their hands tightly clutching the rope, their lips moving rhythmically.
Abby felt her left palm opening and closing mechanically, her hand empty of the small glassy pool of water that Devin had held. Devin was gone, the cave was gone, but Abby felt a tug, an invisible tendon stretching out, not satisfied with the emptiness that it found. It wanted the lake - wanted to pull it inside of her.
Tobias set the bottle aside, slipping a glinting silver dragon from his bag. The dragon, almost a foot long, flashed in the moonlight. Its head was reared back to reveal tiny ruby fangs. He pulled the tail, which separated from the dragon's torso, and a long, pointed blade emerged. Abby's eyes fastened on the dragon. Its eye, a single black gem, throbbed viciously. Tobias clutched it, but it was as if the dragon held him, a force much larger than the palm-sized, jeweled beast. He placed the dragon on the ground, but held the dagger tightly, wetting his lips.
Abby wanted to fight or scream, any response to the quivering blade lingering dangerously close to her neck, but she could muster none of these things. As she watched, the blade changed color, a subtle pink hue that shaded to a deeper red as he shifted it over her body. Centered above her, directly over the hollow of her rib cage, the blade flashed a brilliant red that momentarily blinded her. She closed her eyes, only for a second, snapping them back open as Tobias gripped her tank top and ripped it up the center, exposing her bare flesh.
The red blade pulsed like a throbbing heart sucking and spurting blood. Tobias's hands shook as he held it tightly, poise
d over her. The invisible tendon in her palm snapped, her fingers closed on wet coolness, not blood, but water. Her arm jerked involuntarily, but the force was immense. It flew forward, ripping the leather stake from the earth. Her hand connected with the dagger, which sliced into the soft flesh below her thumb, but did not hurt.
For Abby, time slowed, her body moved, but everything else traveled five seconds behind her. Tobias's face registered her free hand, but only as it reached back and ripped her other hand free. He dived towards her, his teeth bared, and she rolled. His face connected with the dirt. The dragon knife spun circles on the forest floor, dirt flying up in small plumes, like a mole tunneling underground.
Abby kicked out, and the leather binds around her feet snapped like dental floss. Vesta dropped her piece of the rope, Tobias screamed in protest, but it was too late. The circle, the séance, whatever they had been doing, was broken. Tane looked confused, shaking his head and stumbling forward. Tobias jumped on top of the dragon, which was burrowing into the dirt away from him. The dagger lay on the ground, and Abby snatched it up, feeling it singe and melt into her skin. She jumped to her feet and wheeled around shoving the dagger out blindly. It ripped across Vesta's torso, cutting only fabric, but she reeled back and fell.
A streak of air whipped by Abby’s face, and she gasped, stumbling backwards into a wall of brush that barely held her. Tobias had an arrow in his back. He howled and reached behind him, trying to pull it free.
Abby searched for the source, but saw only darkness in the trees beyond. Another arrow ripped into the clearing. It missed Vesta, just, and lodged in the tree beside her. Her eyes were wide and wild, but she did not hesitate, sprinting to Tobias and jerking the arrow from his back. Abby saw a spurt of black blood pour out from the wound.
Abby ran to Sebastian, who had rubbed the ropes on his hands to frayed tethers that she easily sliced free. She knelt, cut the ties on his legs, wincing at the red, chafed skin on his shins.
Ula (Born of Shadows Book 1) Page 13