'Well, I’m here,' I said to no one, as foolish as Aar could be at times. ‘Helloooooo? You wanted to talk?’
This time the voice chose to remain silence, and instead it was my own voice somehow reverberating through the empty alley.
I laughed, listening to each throaty articulation carefully, feeling like an insane person. ‘Well, bye now. Things to do and places to be.’
I turned to leave. Before I had completed my fourth step, however, I heard a strange sound behind me. This was a real sound, not inside my skull. A mewling. No, it wasn’t as simple a sound as that. It was mewling and sobbing and guzzling . . . and crunching and tearing and I don’t know what else.
All I do know is that my flesh broke out in goosebumps, and I did a 180 degree whirl to see what had to be the last sight I had expected to see.
He was dressed in tatters and covered in grime. He looked shrunken, looked much, much smaller than I remember him to be, and his neck was drooping like a drying Begonia flower, making his head – his somehow dented head – loll down to his sternum (that’s the chest bone, you should know). The raven-branded claws that he had for hands were dangling in front of him, his bony elbows buried into the pit of his stomach so that were projected outward at a right angle to his vertical height. The nails on them were long, and honed as tiny swords.
'Help,' Rasthrum groaned. ‘Help . . . me.’
I stood there gaping, my heart pounding in a thousand different spots.
The son of the Grahi Witch had dark, clotted blood dregs on his face, and under his nails, and on the ribbons he wore for clothes. Involuntarily I took a step backward.
But Rasthrum did not. He lurched forward, like a stalling car on its last pump of diesel. ‘Please,' he rasped. At least his voice hadn’t changed; it was still deeper than the Gulf Of Mexico. ‘Please . . . they'll kill us, they’ll kill us all!’
Then suddenly a hole seared into each of his legs, a hole made of glowing, purple light. It seemed to cause him a great deal of pain, for he howled loudly, and I worried that someone else would come into the alley and think – well, I don’t know what they would think if they saw a man in rags with light instead of skin on a portion of his legs and a catatonic girl, flames licking her head, together.
Rasthrum staggered forward again, his claws scraping my shoulders as he reached forward. He smelled like mud and metal. ‘Save us. You can.’
This felt too unreal. This wasn’t happening. I was just undergoing a transition from oppressed to happy, and this was my brain –
Rasthrum grabbed me by both my shoulders, his grip firm and hard. I saw as another hole of light sheared through his chest; he was vanishing. ‘They’ll kill us,' he grated. ‘They’ll kill us . . . they’ll kill us all if you don’t . . . don't help . . .’
*gulps*