The Shadows We Make by Jo Allen Ash

Author:Jo Allen Ash
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robin Maderich Publishing

19

Grace

The creature stank of decomposing flesh; rotting, reeking, dying flesh. I couldn’t immediately see the reason why, and then I spotted what hung suspended between its teeth. A snack, Duncan would have said, for later.

I had all I could do to keep from retching.

In the moment when the creature drew back warily—due, in part, to the fact I’d smacked its broken leg again with the stick I held—Carina dropped to her knees, gathering up stones from the mud. She shoved them into her pockets and rose with two clutched tightly in hands nearly too small to contain them. I saw her eyes narrow, taking aim. Sweet little Carina. This creature stood more than three times her height, bulbous but snake-like with heavy legs and talons, yet she maintained her ground beside me rather than running.

She had no choice, really, unless she took off in a lateral direction. Behind us a strange wind soughed up from a chasm whose depth I did not care to imagine.

“Look over your shoulder,” I whispered quietly. “Tell me what you see.”

“It looks like everything drops away. I can see…I can see some vegetation and then nothing. It’s just black.”

I’d heard Duncan calling my name right after the beast made its accelerated and unanticipated descent, but not since then. He was either following in silence, seeking an opportunity to dispatch the creature, or something had happened to him. I wasn’t counting on his help, though. I couldn’t, when help might not come.

“Let’s back up slowly,” I said. “You need to be my eyes. I want to know when we get closer.” I spun the narrow branch again. Having learned a canny wariness, the creature withdrew slightly at the whistling noise. “And when I tell you to run, Carina, I want you to do it, do you hear me?”

Her head whipped back around. “No! I won’t leave you, Grace. I won’t!”

“I need the creature to be distracted. Hopefully, you won’t have to run far. I’ll be right behind you.”

Her breath huffed out, ragged and frightened. “Which way?”

“Left. Your left. Its damaged leg is on its right. It’ll hesitate.”

“You’re a brave girl, Grace,” Carina whispered, barely audible over the wind rushing up from the deep gorge.

“I’m not brave,” I said. “I just don’t want to die this way.”

“Me neither,” Carina answered with a snort. “Let me know when you want me to go.”

I wove a pattern in the air between myself and the beast, darting forward to strike the injured leg and withdrawing, to disorganize it, to make its movements clumsy and ineffectual. This was my plan. I didn’t hold out much hope. Yet some was better than none.

“How close are we to the edge?” I asked. Carina glanced behind.

“Maybe three big steps? Wait. Let me check.”

She disappeared from my peripheral vision, appearing once more at my side a moment later. “Yes, no more than that. I can’t see the bottom. Before I run, I’ll aim one of these rocks at its face.”

“Do you think you can hit it?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, with a grin.

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