The Cursed Blood, стр. 69
“She is coming,” I repeated as I sat up, rubbing my eyes clear in time to see Fazool in a pair of striped silk pajamas, old fashioned night cap, purple bath robe and fuzzy slippers shuffle in. He had his walking stick in hand and a very confused and thunderous look on his tiny face as he took in the door, the panic, and me in a glance and quickly drew his blade from his cane just as a thunder of footsteps announced the arrival of the Rovers Rest portly owner. A nicked, rust pocked old battle axe that had seen better days was in Mac’s hand and several others at his back who all peered into the room curiously from behind his stocky frame.
“Artur, what in the dickens is going on?” Mac hissed as he hefted his axe and peered about.
“We need to run,” I insisted, my words punctuated by a roaring hiss of fire that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was filled with nightmarish fiery effigies that shrieked, laughed, and taunted in a thousand voices that were anything but human, consuming almost everything it touched with roaring, hungry, demonic glee.
We only survived it because of Fazool. Muttering and waving about his hands complexly, perspiration beading and body trembling, the tiny halfling held the demon fire at bay long enough for us to flee the doomed hotel. The little Witch carried out over Aunt Milly’s shoulder—just like how Gramps carried me, shouldering through smoke, flames, screaming guests, and shadowy, horned, chittering, laughing things that were there, but not quite real.
The night was cold and rainy that we burst out into as the fire brigade with their brass, wood, and iron wheeled contraption of a tanker was pulled up by horse. Tools and rolled hoses were ignored as everyone stared in gaping, frozen, wide eyed horror at the unreal nightmare roaring and seething and bursting window glass that left me paralyzed with intense cold despite the impossible heat.
The fires crept from the windows like skittering fiends. Literally jumping and crawling, dancing and leaping into a towering hellish, horned, and roof rattling roaring monster that was there thrashing and bellowing then gone with a reek of brimstone, leaving the Rovers Rest smoking from the charred holes and frames of its widows.
None said a word save Manx who was whining and laying at Gramps’ feet with his paws over his face and trembling, never a good sign that. I remember a Darkling fireman staring, slowly doffing his bright red helmet and clutching it to his chest as he dropped to his knees and sobbed. He wasn’t alone.
“Ooh my,” Fazool mumbled as Aunt Milly helped him steady, leaning on her like a child as he stared up where the thing had been lighting the sky a moment before. “I fear it’s not over.”
“Not over?” Mac asked incredulously as he stared at the teetering shaking Halfling Witch with dawning horror.
“She said to run,” I reminded everyone.
“Who did?” Gramps snapped tersely.
“Perhaps we should listen,” Fazool advised with raised finger that shook like a leaf in a fall season wind. He was right. There was screaming and uncomfortable, wet crunching noises of animalistic butchery. Horrible sounds accompanied by monstrously feral, almost orgasmic shrieks that froze the blood of anyone who listened with heart seizing shock. Stealing the warmth from the body and chaining you with thrills of terror as the demonic horrors bounded out of the night amid an orgy of slaughter.
There are many names for these demon women things, but the most known is Furies. Things of terrible beauty twisted even more terribly into things darker and more fearsome than any nightmare can ever conjure up.
Lithe, corded with muscle, part scaled, part spined, part naked voluptuous flesh with dripping claws, whipping tails and long needle teeth that ripped and tore and gutted as they swarmed. Nothing lived once these things got their hooks into it—literally. Furies’ feet and hands have horrible curved talons.
They rip into anything they catch like a child wildly digging into the sand at the beach to find imaginary treasure as they howl, spasm, moan, and scream in a din that would drive many a sturdy soul mad to witness. Gore, limbs, ropes of guts, and blood were sent up about them in vile shower of viscera and death that I can’t forget and likely never will.
Gramps ripped out his sword with me still over his shoulder, but Aunt Milly wildly yanked him and Fazool into a portal she had swirled into being as we all stared dumbly at the hellish charnel house the street outside the Rovers Rest had become. I believe Mac dove in after us with Manx as he tumbled out onto the grass in front of Gramps’ Lodge retching, smoke wafting from his singed clothes.
Almost the moment Gramps let me down, Aunt Milly grabbed me by the shirt of my pajamas and pulled me into the house. Manx barked and howled as he galloped after us and Gramps helped an obviously shaken and partially catatonic Mac to his feet.
White Owl, who had been house sitting—and obviously unsettled by our state and arrival—opened the door for us with a toothbrush dangling from his mouth and stepped aside to let the dangerous witch barrel in unobstructed, dragging me after her. She all but tossed me onto the couch and knelt down before me, just as Gramps walked in looking serious, frightened, and confused.
“Spill it, every word, every detail, every single thing. Now,” she demanded firmly as she jabber her long-painted fingernail at me over and over with each word like an assassin’s dagger.
I told her everything.
She looked cored out, deflated, and about to faint by the time I was done. They all