Corson

“Wren!” I shouted and lurched toward her as a tentacle lashed through the curtains and wrapped around her arm.

She didn’t scream as she stumbled away from the wind whipping the curtains back. Rain pelted through the window, soaking her and the wood floor as whatever held her started drawing her toward the window. Jerking on her arm, Wren tried to wrench it free as she reached across her body for her knife. The Hell creature yanked her back, slamming her against the wall and knocking her blade free from her hold.

The knife clattered to the floor, but Wren still made no sound as she dug her fingers into the blue-gray tentacle in an attempt to pry herself free. Arriving at her side, I unleashed my talons and sliced the tentacle, severing it in one swipe. The detached appendage flopped across the floor, spewing gray blood from it.

I spun toward Wren, my eyes frantically searching her to make sure she was okay. The arm of her shirt was ripped open, and red welts marred her skin. I’d slice this thing to shreds for touching her, never mind leaving marks on her.

Something screeched in the night, and my lips skimmed back. I realized what creature was outside before another tentacle emerged through the window and whipped into the living room. Seizing Wren’s arms, I pushed her behind me and released her. When the end of the tentacle brushed over my face, I sliced it off. Before I could stop her, Wren darted away from me and scrambled to retrieve her knife.

“Leave it!” I shouted as the front door burst open and more monstrous arms unraveled until they filled the doorway. They slithered up and down as they stretched into the room.

Wren released a startled cry and threw herself onto the ground. Rolling across the floor, she avoided the tentacle swinging toward her, reclaimed her knife, and bounded to her feet. When another tentacle shot toward her, she sliced off the tip before dashing out of the way of the spewing blood.

She ran toward me as I jumped over another tentacle to land beside her in the center of the room. I stepped forward to block her from the tentacles unraveling through the window. They slashed back and forth, extending further into the room as they searched for us.

“What are these things?” she demanded breathlessly.

“It’s a macharah,” I told her as I nudged her further behind me.

“It? There’s only one of them?”

“Yes.” I leaned back to avoid taking a tentacle to the face. “We’d be surrounded by them if there was more than one out there.”

“I feel surrounded now!”

Shifting her grip on her knife, she swung it sideways to implant it into a tentacle. Her momentum pushed the tentacle into the wall where she embedded it there. The end of it flopped and curled over before Wren yanked her blade free and sliced the tip off.

Snarling, I lifted my hands and swung them back and forth as I used my talons to hack my way through the tentacles and toward the door. The wind whistled as the appendages whipped around my head, seeking to batter me into immobility. I dodged back and forth to avoid having my brains littering the floor. Lifting my hand, I speared a tentacle before it could go over the top of me for Wren.

As I worked my way forward, Wren stayed beside me. She stabbed and sliced her way through the appendages as she dodged the attack with ease. All around me, severed tentacles fell and flopped onto the floor where they melted into a gooey ooze that slid through the floorboards. The macharah pulled away its amputated limbs to allow them to regenerate, but no matter how many tentacles I cut off, more pushed through the door.

When I neared the door and the source of the attack, I turned my shoulder to keep Wren partially behind me and better protected. I caught brief glimpses of the thing attached to the tentacles through the lashing appendages. The macharah had settled itself on the walkway.

“What seal is this thing from?” Wren panted as she sliced off more tentacles.

“The macharah were behind the one hundred-third seal.”

The macharah drew some of its tentacles back and placing its arms beneath it, the creature lifted itself off the walkway and plopped down in front of the door. The color leached from Wren’s face when the tentacles peeled back to reveal more of the hideous beast.

Thirty-plus, smaller tentacles circled the bottom of the macharah and propelled it forward until it stood in the doorway. The macharah moved fastest through large bodies of water, but it was capable of traveling on land too. The rain probably helped its movements.

Without any eyes or ears, the macharah navigated by scent and touch. Once the tentacles latched onto a victim, they drew their prize into the macharah’s mouth, which encompassed the entire top of its nearly four-foot-wide, flat head.

Thousands of teeth lined the inside of that mouth, and I could hear them all clicking together as the teeth swirled about in anticipation of a fresh meal. Looking at the beast, it was easy to tell it had feasted well on Earth. The blue-gray skin covering its torso was stretched so thin that it revealed the bodies of the macharah’s recent victims sloshing around its stomach.

Rising on the smaller tentacles beneath it, the macharah’s blob-like shape filled the doorway.

“It’s hideous,” Wren breathed.

I sliced away another tentacle, but one slid past me toward Wren. Before I could blink, it slithered around her arm and yanked her forward. Releasing a bellow of fury, I hacked it off her and raced forward to leap at the macharah.

I dodged the tentacles trying to latch onto me as, on my descent, I plunged my talons into the spongy flesh of the macharah and sliced downward. Blood spilled around me; unrecognizable things tumbled from its stomach to scatter around my feet. I dodged the obstacles the stomach contents created to slash at the macharah again.

Screeching, the macharah reeled backward and battered its tentacles against me. I grunted when a couple of my ribs gave way with a crack before digging my talons deeper into the remains of the macharah’s belly. I pulled my hands apart, tearing the creature open from side to side. It gave up trying to beat me off and retreated down the porch steps. Rain lashed my face, flattened my hair to my skin, and poured down me as I followed the macharah into the storm.

It had hurt Wren. It would not leave here alive.

A savagery unlike any I’d ever known boiled through my veins as I repeatedly tore at the creature until the macharah faltered and slumped toward the ground. The clicking of its teeth stopped, some of its tentacles rose lazily before flopping down. I found myself kneeling on the macharah’s flayed remains as they turned to liquid around me. Swept up in the downpour, the last bits of the macharah were washed away by the rain.

My shoulders heaved as I lifted my head to take in the night. The freezing rain pelting the ground formed puddles and ran in streams down the street. I pushed my dripping hair away from my forehead as I searched for more enemies amid the swaying trees and abandoned homes. Lightning tore across the sky in a zigzagging pattern that caused the air to crackle with electricity.

The wild ferocity of the night matched my mood as waves of thunder punched the air in rapid succession. I took a steadying breath to try calming the need to destroy that continued to race through my veins and rose to my feet.

Already working to repair themselves, my healing ribs snapped into place. I turned back to the house to find Wren standing in the doorway with her knife in hand. I doubted much unsettled Wren, but as I stalked toward her, she edged away from the door, and me.

“Are you okay?” I demanded as I climbed the stairs toward her.

“I’m… I’m fine,” she stammered. “What about you? That thing, it—”

“It’s dead.”

I shoved some of the partially digested remains that had spilled from the macharah, out the door with my foot. Grabbing the door handle, I lifted the door and settled it into place to close it again.

“Do you think there’s more of them out there?” she whispered.

“No. They usually hunt solo, and they would have scared off any other demons or seal creatures close by.”

“Good.”

“We have to go. There may not be any more threats nearby, but this place has been compromised.”

“I know somewhere else we can go,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

She spun away from me and ran into the living room. I watched as she snatched a cushion from the couch, sliced it with her knife and yanked the cover off. Stuffing the cover under her arm, she raced into the kitchen and flung open the cabinet doors.

She shoved the food and water into the cover, blew out the candles, and dumped them in too. She dropped the box of matches into one of her empty jars, recapped it, and shoved it into her makeshift bag.

I took the cushion from her when she returned to the doorway. When I stepped aside, she slid by me and out the door. The wind whipped her hair around her as she ran over to the terracotta plant, lifted it, and shattered it off the porch. Lifting a piece of broken pot, she slashed lines across the numbers before dropping it. She returned to the broken door and shoved it further open, making it clear that this place was no longer safe.

She didn’t protest when I took her hand and led her into the storm. Her eyes scanned the surrounding homes as we raced down the road. Water splashed up around us as we ran, plastering our clothes to us. We were halfway down the street when she tugged on my hand and pointed.

“There!”

I barely heard her shout as the wind and rain stole the word from her, but I saw the small brick house she pointed toward. Lifting her, I held her against my chest as I bolted down the walkway and up the steps of the porch with her. The macharah most likely had chased everything else away from here, but I had to hold her and feel her against me right now. That thing had tried to take her from me, and there were so many other things out here that wanted to do the same.

My feet didn’t touch the steps as I leapt onto the porch. Wren’s wet hair stuck to my neck and face when she squeezed my shoulders and squirmed in my arms. “It’s safe,” she said. “You can put me down.”

“You don’t know that.”

She pointed behind me, and I turned to look at the numbers carved into the wooden roof over the stairs. The last date was from two weeks ago. “There are two safe houses in this town,” I murmured.

“Yes,” she said.

I set her down but kept my arm around her waist. Gripping the doorknob, I turned to study the night once more, but all I saw was the endless rain. The lightning illuminated the night, but it didn’t reveal any enemies coming toward us.

When I turned back to the house, another burst of lightning illuminated the number twenty-five on the mailbox hanging next to the door. I twisted the knob, and rested my shoulder against the door to shove it open when the swollen wood stuck for a second. The door gave way and swung open with a squeak of rusted hinges.

The scent of mildew wafted out to me, but I didn’t detect the odor of anything else as I stared inside the house. Another flash of lightning pierced the darkness to illuminate our shadows on the floor before me, but little else of the house was revealed. I searched for a predator before the light vanished once more.

Wren’s shiver drew my attention to her. Her lips were taking on a bluish tint. Her wet hair straggled around her shoulders and her clothes stuck to her skin. The idea of being inside one of these houses again wasn’t one I relished. After the macharah’s attack, I was too wound up to be stuck inside again, but there was no other choice, she’d freeze if she stayed out in this storm.

Wren’s hands rested on my chest when I lifted her again, stepped inside, and closed the door behind us. With the door shut against the tempest, darkness descended on the house. I stiffened, my nostrils flaring and my ears twitching as I searched for any hint of something approaching us. The storm masked most noise, but my hearing was sensitive enough that I should be able to detect something approaching before it reached us.

“Give me the sack. I’ll get the candles out,” Wren said through her chattering teeth.

Reluctantly, I set her down and handed her the cover. Her fingers brushed mine as she took it from me and set it on the wooden floor with a small thud. Jars clinked together as Wren dug through it, and then the scratch of a match sounded. A small flame flickered to life before me. Wren extended a shaking hand to the wick and lit a candle.

“Stay here,” I told her.

She glanced at me and then froze. I don’t know what she saw on my face, but instead of protesting my command, she handed me the candle.

Turning away from her, I prowled into the kitchen, living room, and bedroom in search of anything that could be hiding in the house. Adrenaline continued to pulse through my veins in waves that had me on the verge of shredding the furniture in the rooms I stalked through. I almost hoped something was hiding in here so I could unleash some of my lingering tension on it.

I discovered Wren in the kitchen when I returned. She’d lit more candles and set them on the counter as she unpacked the jars and placed them in the cabinets next to more containers of food and water.

“It's safe down here,” I told her. “I’m going upstairs.”

So focused on her task, she didn’t look at me as she responded, “Okay.”

I heard the click of the cabinets closing before I bounded upstairs to search through the bedrooms and bathroom there. Wren had clothes in her hand and was coming from the lower bedroom when I returned to the top of the stairs. She’d wrapped a towel around her and held it against her chest. Beneath the towel, the straps of her bra were visible across her shoulders. She set the clothes on the back of the couch along with another towel. Her boots were turned upside down by the front door.

“I found us some more clothes,” she called to me. “We should both get dry before we freeze.”

I stood and stared at her as she gazed up at me. The dim light of the candles danced over her pale skin. Her wet hair had curled at the ends and waved around her face. In that instant, I knew only one thing could calm me again—her.

Water dripped from me as I descended the stairs toward her, closing the distance between us in less than a heartbeat. My rapid descent made her gasp and step back, but she didn’t try to pull away when my hand slid around her nape and I drew her flush against me.

Her hand tightened on the towel. I waited for her to tell me no, but she stared breathlessly up at me, her chest rising and falling against mine. I stared at her for a second more before crushing her against me and claiming her mouth.