Daydreams And Nightshade (DaN #1)

Chapter 36: Hostile hijinks

It seemed impossible for Vincent to pick which side of Luna to defend. His eyes darted between the seemingly endless amount of faces and the beast on the other side of where the portal should be before turning to Zamora.

"Stay still where you are," he said as he pushed Luna forward so she stood behind the captain. Zamora didn't pay attention to him, but stayed still regardless.

"I don't need meat shields," Luna protested quietly enough so no one actually heard it, and she admittedly didn't mind keeping some distance from the two potential threats. She looked up at the faceless corpses in the sky again. "Do you uh... You don't suppose those corpses lost their faces to this... Fellow over here?" She gestured at the headless creature.

"It doesn't have a head, so it's possible it can't see us," Vincent whispered, ignoring Luna's question. "Let's keep as quiet as possible and move towards the portal."

"Actually, I have a feeling it has a very large amount of heads," Zamora retaliated through gritted teeth as he looked around the area. "Not to mention those." He turned his head to nod at the blister-like faces covering the creature.

The sound of stone sliding against stone alerted the group to look in the direction of the creature again as the two archway pieces slowly united again. Luna could guess the other two were torn about what to do. Roya and Alexei must have opened the portal again, but if the creature was waiting for them to come closer for some hostile hijinks they probably shouldn't risk going over there.

"That was the portal, right?" Zamora was still turned the other way, making sure the heads wouldn't try anything. "What is that monstrosity doing?"

"Nothing, it's still just standing there." Vincent sounded like it was a bad thing, but Luna was pretty sure she'd beg to differ.

Suddenly, one of the heads surrounding them shot forward towards her and Luna uttered a disgusted yell.

"No, no, no, ew!" She almost tripped as she tried to back away from it.

Quick as always, Vincent moved from his spot to shield her and tried aiming his gun at the threat but it was too close to him already. Vincent wouldn't let that stop him from doing his job however. Instead he swiftly raised his elbow and delivered what seemed to be a devastatingly crushing blow to the creature's nose.

Before the head had time to do anything to retaliate Vincent punched it in the side while moving backwards, giving him the space to fire his gun at it.

The ear deafening sound echoed against the cliff sides as the head shot backwards with a bullet piercing its forehead, and a tremble went through the body of the giant beast. Luna let out a nervous laughter as the neck slithered down into the chasm again, but it was a short lived moment of triumph as Vincent soon cursed loudly, with three more heads surrounding him.

While Vincent had certainly proved himself worthy of his job as Luna's bodyguard, fending the heads off with decent results, there were still too many of them, and before anyone had a chance of noticing, a fourth head dove in from above.

"Vincent!" Luna raised her hands to cover her mouth as a long, tongue like organ shot out of the creature's mouth and latched on to part of Vincent's face. Despite her disgust, she forced her hands down from her face and instead tried to look for something to aid her in freeing Vincent from that monster, but the ground was next to empty. There weren't even any sizable rocks she could use.

Luna's mind reeled. What could she do? Why was she so useless at a time like this? She let out a series of curses and reluctantly grabbed hold of the long neck, pulling as hard as she could to make it let go of Vincent, but to no avail. Then just as she was about to let go, something shiny flashed before her eyes as a large knife pierced into the creature's neck right next to Luna's hands.