The Demon's Librarian by Saintcrow Lilith

Author:Saintcrow, Lilith [Saintcrow, Lilith]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: ImaJinn Books, Inc
Published: 2009-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

Eleven

Her knees turned to water. She slumped against the wall, staring at the young man who had just appeared. He was slim, Vietnamese, and no taller than her—but then he started to grow.

The horrible stench from the room full of dead people made her want to gag as she watched the human shape at the end of the hall stretch grotesquely, as if he was made out of rubber and was being pulled from both ends. Her jaw went slack, and she wondered when, exactly, her life had gone down the rabbit hole.

There’re dead people in there. She’d only looked for a moment, but the sight was seared into the inside of her head. She suspected even a hot shower and scrubbing her eyes with bleach wouldn’t make it go away. The horrible throat-cut grin under the slack face, blood spattered in a high arc and soaking into tattered wallpaper, the gassy, terrible smell—

The man at the end of the hall made a low, hoarse sound like a scream of pain. He wore a faded Jericho Warriors sweatshirt that kilted up at the bottom as his lanky frame stretched into something skeletal and hunched, bones cracking as his dark eyes lit with red sparks. His hair, in the layered razor-cut so popular with young men nowadays, fell in his eyes as his shoulders rotated inward, hunching. He looked like a cartoon, except for the claws that sprang loose from his lengthening fingers. The claws looked like bone, and his bony hand jerked out, claws slicing through the faded paint on the walls, dust puffing down.

Ryan moved forward, his shoulders almost seeming to fill up the hall. “Just a spider,” he said, the razor edge of contempt slicing the air. “An Inkani spider. Used to hunt during the day. A filthy maggot with the worm inside him.”

That doesn’t make any sense. “Um,” Chess managed through the pinhole her throat had become.

“Left here to provide a little surprise, eh? Only you wandered from your post, slave.”

The boy snarled back at him, a thin thread of sound that ended on a yip. Chess wished she could stuff her fingers in her mouth to bite down and push back the scream trying to work its way free.

Then the bone-clawed boy yanked his fingers free of the wall and leapt forward, claws outstretched. He didn’t aim for Ryan, who was definitely in his way, seeming to take up most of the space; instead, his red-flecked eyes fixed on Chess and his hands outstretched. He even foamed at the mouth, champing like a horse with the bit in his teeth.

Oh, Christ. Oh God. She stood frozen in place, staring as Ryan reached out with one hand and backhanded the boy.

“No!” Chess yelled.

The boy went flying, smashed into the wall. More dust flew. He shook his head and scrambled to his feet, but Ryan was on him, moving with a spooky blurring speed, inhumanly fluid and graceful. His fingers sank into the boy’s throat as the thing writhed and cackled, its claws tearing and beating at the air.

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