Read Hounacier (Valducan Book 2) Online
Authors: Seth Skorkowsky
A loud thump sounded upstairs, like a ram hitting a door. James' light shot to the ceiling, finding nothing but cobwebs.
Another baby cry sounded. Distant. Terrified.
"Come on," Victoria said, barely moving her lips.
They crept up the stairs and out onto the second floor. The baby's wails had ceased, but it sounded like it had come from here. She shined her light up the stairwell, verifying it was empty, then stepped out into the hall. James followed behind, so close Victoria could hear his rapid breaths.
She started down the hallway when scratching sounded beyond a door to her right. The numbers had long since been pried off, but the missing space in the crackled paint read, '137.'
They shared a look. Victoria stood back, holding the gun, arms stretched before her. James leaned in, threw open the door, and shone his light into the darkened room.
Nothing.
A baby's coo came from the corner.
Something shuffled across the trash-strewn floor. Victoria's light went to the movement, finding a pale, waxy shape the size of a bread loaf. James's brilliant light fell upon it, revealing a chitinous insect. The creature's face resembled a porcelain china doll, its oily black eyes completely filling the sockets. A pair of segmented pincers twitched outward from its bristle-lined hole of a mouth.
It looked up at them and a shrill, infant's sob issued from that hideous maw.
What...no...no...it's not real
. Victoria stepped back, struggling to grasp the thing before her.
It's not real
.
A second cry issued from the room and a second baby-faced insect scuttled into the light's beam. It clacked its mandibles and sprang toward James.
"Gah!" He lurched back, swinging the light away from the room as he batted the creature mid-air with his baton.
It hit the wall with a hard
thock
, and fell to the floor, one of its legs broken.
The creature made a giggle noise and shuffled back onto its belly, the broken leg twitching awkwardly.
James screamed and kicked it. It hit the wall again, wailing its baby's cry. He stomped it over and over, crushing its plated armor, and squishing its guts out onto the filthy tiles.
More screams poured from inside. Victoria swung her light around to see the other insect charging toward James, and a third one scurrying out from an open air vent.
She fired. The gun's booming report was louder than she would have thought possible. The round missed, kicking up shards of linoleum. Victoria pulled the trigger again, blasting the hideous thing nearly in half. Its legs and mandibles shuddered as black ooze hissed out from the wound.
Her ears rang in a shrill hum.
The third creature was coming toward her, its mouth open in a scream that Victoria could no longer hear. It crawled onto a broken sofa frame, readying to jump when she raised the gun and fired.
The creature fell back into the shadows, black ichor splattering onto the wall behind it.
Heart pounding, Victoria reached into the damnable room, grasped the door's handle and yanked it shut before any more of the monsters could appear. That awful rotted stench flooded the hall.
"What the hell! What the hell!" James blubbered, his voice barely audible above the muted hum. Sweat streaked his white face. His wide eyes were locked onto the smashed bug in undeniable terror.
The creature's pale shell blackened and evaporated into misty vapor, leaving the gooey meat to sag and shrivel.
"What the hell!" James' repeated, shaking his head.
"We need to go," Victoria said.
James only stared at the dead thing.
"DC Kettington!"
He looked at her. A smear of black ooze spattered his chin.
"We need to go," she said.
James blinked, then nodded. "Yeah. Need to go."
Victoria started toward the stair when James froze, his eyes locked on the hallway behind her. She spun to see a man's shape silhouetted against the far window. James' light came up, revealing the smaller of the two black-clad intruders. He held his strange, curved sword before him.
"Stop right there!" she ordered, raising the gun. "Police."
The suspect cocked his head.
"Put the weapon down!"
The man straightened. "Move!" He charged, swinging his sword.
Victoria fired. But the man was suddenly on the other side of the hall, still closing in.
He swung. She fired again, but the man was now a full meter from where he should have been.
James screamed and slammed into Victoria from behind. The gun fired harmlessly into the wall as she pitched forward. Her foot slipped on a discarded bottle. A white hot shock of pain exploded from her rolling ankle as she fell onto the gritty floor.
The sound of ripping fabric and an awful clicking, and James' screams silenced.
Teeth clenched, Victoria twisted around to see an enormous man-sized insectile creature on top of James. Its cluster of scythe-like mandibles clacked madly against each other. Two of its four arms ended in long, serrated points. It raised one and slashed down into James' shoulder.
He screamed again and bashed his baton against the monster's head, but to no effect. The beast rammed its blade-like arm straight down into James's chest. He coughed blood but continued to bat his stick against his attacker.
Victoria screamed. She raised the still smoking gun and pulled the trigger.
Click
.
Then the sword-wielding stranger was above her. The creature's head snapped up towards him. Before it could move, the man slashed his blade into its back. Its chitonous shell split with a loud crack. The monster hissed and lashed one of its blade arms, slinging James' blood across the walls.
Dodging the wild swing, the stranger ripped the sword free. He vanished and was suddenly directly behind the monster, his weapon coming down into the back of its skull.
Cool blue flames burst from the monster's mouth.
"No!" Victoria cried as the burning monster collapsed on top of James. She reached for him and the stranger took a wary step away. Blue fire flickered along his golden brown sword.
Raised in the swamps and pine forest of East Texas, Seth Skorkowsky always dreamed of being a writer. He gravitated to the darker sides of fantasy, preferring horror and pulp heroes over knights in shining armor. His first short story sale, “The Mist of Lichthafen,” was long-list nominated for a British Fantasy Award. When not writing, Seth enjoys tabletop role-playing games, shooting sports, and traveling the world with his wife.
Dämoren
is his debut novel. Seth will also be releasing
Mountain of Daggers
, a sword and sorcery rogue collection, March 9, 2015. You can find out more about Seth at
www.skorkowsky.com
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Dämoren
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For more information about the Valducan series, go to
www.ragnarokpub.com