A Single Light by Patricia Leslie

Author:Patricia Leslie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Odyssey Books
Published: 2016-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

Midnight. The cusp of days, bridge between night and morning, old and new, dream and truth. And they’re all still awake, dammit! Lael waited with draining impatience for the five humans to shut up, stop thinking, and get to sleep.

She had a lot to find out, a lot to share with them, had to figure out what to do and where to do it. The stench the Ghouls gave off grew stronger with every lost hour. They were coming to this area like ants to the honeypot. Somewhere to the south, she thought, though distinguishing their location from smell alone, when she was trapped in her motel room waiting for gabby humans, was difficult.

The atmosphere in her room was close and hot with the window and door locked. Candles, flames fluttering as she paced past them, smoke eddying in mini-tornadoes of air, filled the spaces in the room with a lingering fragrance. Lael had enjoyed their smell when she first lit them, appreciated the mask they threw over the tainted air of the Ghouls. Now, she found the aroma sickeningly sweet, corrupted by the Ghouls and the lack of ventilation. She needed air, needed action … needed those humans to sleep so she could get on with things.

‘Bugger it!’ She had to find out where the Ghouls were.

Lael unlocked and wrenched open the door and nearly swooned at the acidity of the night air. She ran then, urgency gripping her as the screams of dying souls mixed with the stars and faded into obscurity—even the heavens closed to them, the flames of hell a passing fancy when existence and being has been snuffed out of the universe.

Her footsteps clattered on the stairs, thudded along the drive and then vanished from hearing as she hit the shadows, changed form and flew into the night, an invisible hawk hunting for its prey.

The scent sharpened as she drew away from the buildings and trappings of humanity, crystallised into an aromatic arrow pointing out the path she should take. Glittering trails in a broad expanse of blackness acted like a giant X, marking the spot. The black area was the Royal National Park, a long tract of natural bushland that divided the cities of Sydney and Wollongong. Not the usual feeding grounds of the Ghouls, but skirted by enough blinking lights indicating townships to turn the area into a killing field.

The trails led out from those townships like a spider’s web, if the spider was tripping on cocaine; straggly lines showing no discernible pattern, following no pre-planned strategy. Like the Ghoul at Cronulla, indiscriminate and careless.

Lael had feared that the Gathering had started, that she was defeated before the battle had begun. In truth, knowing that the tell-tale sign of the Ghouls hunting and feeding meant that people were dying, she knew that even now the battle was still to come. It could not be joined too soon, could not be faced unprepared or all indeed would be lost; and all was the much larger worry.

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