her soul to take (Harley Laroux)

page 33

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Her Soul to Take
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Itcouldn’tbe real.
But itwas. Snarling, white eyes shot through with reddened veins rolling about in its head, it stalked into the church and rose up on its thin, deer-like back limbs. Its teeth clipped eagerly, a sound like the chattering of a cat chasing a bug emitting from its bare bone jaws.
“Leon,” my voice was a hiss, tense and desperate. My hands were knotted up in his shirt. “Leon...do something…”
“Do something?” He shot me a narrow-eyed glare, and said mockingly, “Oh Leon, do something!Save me, please, oh please!What happened toBe gone, demon? What happened to trying to bash my head in with a crucifix?”
The creature snarled at the sound of his voice. It was swaying in its stance, sizing up an attack. The smell rushed in my nose again and I nearly gagged. In the church’s dim light, I could see the beast’s body in all its wretched horror: skin that was gray and moldering, the bones pock-marked with little holes of decay, the teeth blackened, sharp, and jagged.
“What is it?” I whimpered, too terrified to be angry at Leon’s sass. “What thehellis that thing?”
Leon cracked his knuckles and rolled back his shoulders. “One of the Eld. They’re ancient creatures born of the blood and misery of dark places.” He glanced back at me over his shoulder. “They’re the kind of things that come skulking around when you cling to dangerous magical artifacts you have no business keeping.”
Before I could retort, before I could be furious he chose now of all times to keep pushing about the damned grimoire, the creature threw back its head andhowled. Not like a dog, but like a man. Like a man in agony, like a man unleashing years upon years of pain and fury into one gut-wrenching cry. Then it leapt and, somewhere between what my eyes could see and my brain could process, Leon collided with it.
They slammed into the seats, sending wood splintering and screeching across the floor, and I had to leap back to avoid having a pew slam into my gut. I shrunk back against the wall, unable to tell which beast was winning in all the chaos. Their movements were too fast, too unnatural. I blinked rapidly as my vision blurred, but it was only because their speed was too much for my eyes to follow.
I’d seen large dogs fight before—the snarling, screeching, and yelping had haunted me for days. But this was so much worse. The sound of them was ungodly. It rumbled through the chapel’s stone floors, echoed from the corners. It was the sounds of something living being torn apart, the sounds of a monster bearing down on its prey.
Suddenly Leon rose up, the monster’s skeletal head gripped between his hands, and crushed its skull like an egg bursting open.
“Oh my God...oh my God…” My mouth hung open. The long-limbed, rotten monster lay destroyed in the rubble of the pews. The stone floor had been deeply scratched. The smell of death hung thicker in the air than ever. And Leon…
Leon didn’t look human anymore.
His hoodie had been torn apart in the struggle, laying his chest bare. His myriad of colorful tattoos couldn’t cover the long, deep scars etched into his skin. The veins in his arms had gone black, like inky roots snaking their tendrils up from his clawed fingertips. He hung his head back, catching his breath, his teeth all elongated and sharp. He ran a gory hand through his hair, streaking the blond with the dull red of the monster’s blood. His eyes, when he turned them on me, were as bright and golden as the sun.
“Now,” he said, drawing in a heavy breath. “Where were we?”
“What the fuck,” I clutched my head in my hands, inching around the toppled pews. Blood and gore were spattered across the floor, and the creature’s body wasmelting. It had become a goopy, blackened consistency that squirmed with living worms. I clapped a hand over my mouth. I was going to be sick—
“More will come for you, Rae,” Leon said, discarding the shredded remnants of his jacket. He walked over to the bénitier near the front of the chapel and dipped his hands in the holy water, scrubbing off the blood and tinting the water pink. “I told you what you started isn’t easy to undo. This beast is theleastof what may come hunting you.” He splashed water on his face, droplets streaking down onto his chest.
As he stood there, stained with the blood of a monster—fanged, clawed, a monster in his own right—I thought he was simultaneously the sexiest and most terrifying thing I’d ever seen.
Dazed, in utter disbelief, I turned and wandered out the church’s open doors. The cemetery seemed peaceful now that the shrieks and cries had been silenced, and only the chirping of the crickets remained. The night air was cool, crisp and clean; the smell of death was fading as the monster’s body dissolved.
This couldn’t be real. This had to be a dream or...or a nightmare. I rubbed my hands over my face. Here I’d thought I only had a demon to deal with, but this was so much worse.
“We were in the middle of something, Raelynn.”
I whirled back around. Leon stood in the light at the bottom of the chapel steps, hair damp, dark bloody stains on his jeans. I remembered suddenly—just before that monster burst in, I had been about to allow myself to do the unthinkable.
I had been about to give in. I had been about to beg him to shove that unholy split tongue down my throat. After what I’d just seen, I should have been entirely turned off, horrified, disgusted. I should have been running.
But instead, I wanted him to wrap those blood-stained hands around my throat. I wanted him to manhandle me with even a fraction of the strength he’d just used to rip that thing limb from limb. I was staring down what was very likely the most dangerous man in Abelaum, and I wanted him to rip my clothes off right there in that graveyard.
“Thank you,” I said tightly. “I...I might’ve...if you weren’t here…”
“You would be dismembered, but alive, being dragged deep into the forest where they could consume your body slowly.” He smiled. “And I prefer thanks in actions, rather than words. Give me the grimoire.”
I backed away until my thighs bumped against a headstone behind me. Leon advanced, impatience in every step until he stood right before me. The rise and fall of his chest, his breathing heavy, was hypnotizing. His body was slim but his muscles had swelled. I wanted to caress my hands over the tattoos—saints and angels and snarling wolves—and over the scars beneath them.
“Why do you want the grimoire so badly?” I said, stalling.
“It contains my mark, my sigil,” he said. “It’s the last physical record of it remaining on earth, and having my mark means being able to summon me. Once I have it, I’m destroying it.” His eyes lit up. “And I’ll never return to this god-forsaken town.”
“If I give it to you,” I said slowly, “will those things go away? Will they stop coming after me?”
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Harley Laroux's Novels
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