Malfaer (Dusties Series Book 3) by Brett Murrell

Author:Brett Murrell [Murrell, Brett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldspanner
Published: 2017-05-01T22:00:00+00:00

49: Deadies

In the few seconds after the ignition of the gas flare, Phoebe suffered the same blinding disorientation as every other creature inside the ruins of the gatehouse. Despite the haze in her vision, she tossed aside the remnants of the third firepole, slid out her fourth, and spun in a measured circle. Her eyes adjusted quickly and she felt a strange focus, as though the world had become liquid and everything in it shone with crystalline clarity.

The mob of the monsters at the stairs shrank back in confused chaos, their fur and scales and bony hides all cast in a penetrating greenish hue. She took her eyes from them and spun quickly to scan the room: a barricaded door to the right; a breach in the wall forward at the corner; the circling of bat wings above on creatures that could only be Scarlet’s fleyes; a rear entryway with a shattered door; and all around them the racks, shelves, and tables of an armory and workshop suffering the ravages of looting and warfare.

Six firepoles left, including the two found in the war room. She returned her attention to the stairs.

Black death-shadows blotted the far wall, showing the devastating results of the first three scattergun poles. She raised the firepole in her hand, sited it in the middle of the tightly packed mob, and fired. The ash had barely time to begin falling before she drew and triggered another. Eldritch flames erupted, and death-shadows splashed in every direction.

With screams of pain and ear-rending wails, the cluster of survivors broke and stumbled back down the stairwell, out of sight.

Scarlet tugged at her blouse sleeve. She spun and chased him toward the ruined rear entryway.

The fleyes arrowed down at them.

“Scarlet!” she yelled. “I need more poles!”

She tried to reach him, to take hold of the poles at his back, and to her dismay she noticed that two of them dangled at odd angles, snapped and broken in Scarlet’s earlier rolling retreat.

She had almost reached the entryway when Scarlet leapt high, snagged something against a broken brace of the doorway, and spun. She started to slow, but he pulled her through and swiped his raised arm across his body as a fleye flashed in toward him.

The beast stopped, inches from his face, its one red eye focused on his flesh and its long black stinger dripping with poison, but its body tangled in the netting stretched from brace to hand.

Scarlet jammed the netting end around shattered wood on the other side of the entryway and dove into his satchel, pulling forth two torches and a sturdy match. Lighting them in desperate haste, he nearly buried the torch in Phoebe’s hair as he held it out to her, but she deftly dodged it and snatched it from his hand.

They turned to discover a mass of piled ruins—a tangle of twisted mosswood and fallen rubble.

“Which way!” she cried.

“Any way!” he yelled back, and they scrambled into the mist.

Phoebe tried to get her bearings, but the dark surrounded her like a giant throat.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.