Prince of Demons by Victoria Danann

Author:Victoria Danann [Danann, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BA
Publisher: 7th House Publishing
Published: 2015-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

“Lana.” She felt herself being roused, but resisted, moaning a protest. “Lana. I hear something. We’ve got to go.”

After a second, Brave’s words penetrated. She came fully awake and sat up. “Where? What? Okay.” She pulled herself up hoping that all her body’s systems were checking in and on board with a rushed and anxious rising.

He was already at the door, still looking sleepy himself. “Come.” He motioned for her to move quicker.

The sky was pink, but the sun wasn’t yet up.

He led her away from the way they’d come. She heard the bark howling that they’d run from the day before.

“Is that the, um…?”

“Straithgard. Yes.”

They moved into deeper thicket, but within a few yards it gave way to a darker forest with a bare hard packed floor. The trees were so tall it was impossible to see the tops, only seemingly endless stretches of black smooth tree trunk. The starkness of it was eerie and foreboding and Lana’s intuition was screaming in protest of venturing further.

“Brave, I have a bad feeling about this place.”

He stopped and looked at her. “I know. I’m hoping the straithgard feel the same way.”

“What are they exactly? You said canines. Like dogs or wolves?”

“Yes. Bigger and their fangs are… more impressive, I think.”

After mulling that picture over in her mind, she decided she would rather face Maleficent’s Dark Wood. “Okay. Let’s go.”

The sounds of straithgard on the hunt became fainter the deeper they went, which meant that Brave’s strategy was sound. But the tension that lingered in the air came from reasoning that the straithgard wouldn’t refuse to enter unless there was a good reason.

Within ten minutes that reason presented itself. At first Lana thought she was seeing things. When presented with something impossible, the mind tries to make sense of it according to its understanding of the parameters of reality and the operations of physics. When nothing fits, there’s a delay in between perception, terror, and fight or flight.

She blinked a few times when it looked like a black blob of ooze separated itself from a tree trunk and began wiggle-flopping its way in her direction with squishing sounds. She grabbed onto Brave with a death grip, but couldn’t get her vocal chords to respond to the scream she wanted to release. If the thing had a face or any orifices at all, she couldn’t locate them, which was somehow worse than encountering a gaping maw of sharp teeth.

By the time Brave had turned to witness what she was seeing, there were more of them pouring out of tree trunks.

All her life Lana had read about people being so frightened that they were shaking all over, but she’d never experienced it before. She knew that, if she somehow managed to survive the predicament, she would never forget the discomfort of that feeling.

With his gift for being succinct when necessary, Brave simply said, “Run.”

He grabbed her hand and she did just that being helped along by the pull of his strength and greater speed.

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