Page 17 of Ashwood (Wallflowers and Demons #1)

POISONOUS THINGS

KATHERINE

E veryone looks up from their plates and cups. The butler stands straighter.

“‘Tis just the wind,” he says. He exits the room. A thud echoes through cavernous walls. Mr. Everly returns moments later. “As I suspected, just the wind.”

A single candle flickers. I ignore the unease in my belly and lift then roasted pheasant to my mouth. It is succulent, brined and fragrant, Sweet wine burns my throat as I wash it down.

Dorian eats in silence, his eyes diverting often to Gabriel and his two Runners.

A shape appears at the end of the table .

I think nothing of it.

It’s a shadow at first. Then another descends from the stairs — small, hunched. From this distance, it appears to be a child.

My brows furrow.

Why is there a child here?

We are in the middle of nowhere.

Nora steps forward and extends a hand. “Where’s yer mam, sweetheart? How did you get here?”

But the butler moves fast. He stops her with a grip on her shoulder. “No, Miss. Don’t—”

Something is wrong.

I feel it before I see it. Gooseflesh blooms over my arms. My spine tightens. My scalp goes hot.

The thing steps forward.

That. Is. Not. A. Child.

Its limbs are too long.

Its face…

A rat. Bald, sickly, its skin stretched tight over bone, its eyes rotund, black and wild. Sharp teeth drip and breath comes shallow and hard. Behind it — more shadows.

Children.

But not children.

Monsters.

The first one wails.

‘Tis an awful, shrieking sound.

Then, it launches over the table and bedlam erupts.

Mr. Everly, the butler, draws a pistol from behind his back and fires. Blood splatters the cloth. The Runners leap up, weapons out. Gunfire echoes in rapid bursts.

Dorian...

One moment he is a man, the next — monstrous. He vaults across the table, claws out, tearing through the first rat in a spray of bone and viscera.

Nora screams behind me.

“Someone!”

I stand from my chair and back away.

Gabriel bellows orders as rats pour in from the hallway — dozens, maybe more.

“Keep your backs to the walls! DON’T LET THEM BEHIND YOU!”

A servant screams — then is silenced as claws rip across his throat. Red blood spurts upwards and over Gabriel’s face.

His man is dragged down. Gabriel suffers as his pistol falls uselessly to the floor.

Another scream — Nora.

Dorian hears it too.

The butler fires another shot.

I shove Nora hard, and she tumbles away, scrambling into the kitchen and slamming the pantry door shut. I follow closely.

Behind us, he comes.

“Blast!” I yell.

Nora makes it in and without thought, it slams closed before me.

“No! ”

I throw myself aside at the last minute.

Dorian howls and slams himself against the door to pry it open.

“No!” I scream. From the stove nearby, I steal a cast-iron pan and hurl it at his back.

It lands but not hard enough.

“Oh, drats…”

He turns and snarls.

He sprints closer and all I see is moving red flesh.

All reason departs.

I turn and flee.

Dorian gives chase.

I find the lamp, smash it, and light the oil. Flames. I throw the lamp and it sails into the air. Glass shatters as it makes impact.

Torn clothes catch fire.

He doesn’t stop.

Egad! This is madness!

I run and smash into the edge of a countertop. A glint appears.

Without thought, I grab a knife.

Dorian parries and I slash.

“Oomph!”

His arm drops — completely severed.

Blood sprays into the air before turning to ash. As I stagger back, he reaches out and I watch as muscle regrows, bone reconnects, and skin pulls tight again.

“Christ above, and all that is good,” I whisper. Horrified, I step back and my elbow hits the jutting brick wall. It cuts me deep enough.

“Ah!”

And the rats grow still.

And His Grace…he does too.

“Oh, this is quite awful…”

My heart stops as I meet a sea of black eyes and scorched red skin. I lose count of how many demons.

My brain screams.

Run.

I flee through the side door, into the rain.

Lightning cracks across the sky. The storm is alive now, wailing in tandem with the beasts behind me. I look back — and watch as Dorian, still aflame, pursues.

The rain douses him and slaps my face. Lightning sears the world in bangs of white, and I see them, beasts. A hundred, perhaps, emerge from Dorian’s shadow.

They step out, the size of a child, bald with taut sinew, long snouts? Gangly arms that hang down below their knees, and eyes black and wild without restraint. I turn and through the sheets of water, it appears, that old structure in the woods.

Yes.

The glass conservatory.

I run toward it, with my heart lodged inside my throat.

I can survive.

I must .

Another howl comes. Then, many.

They appear in the shadows behind me, dancing inside the lightning storm, rows of damned children.

No. I require more time!

I reach the doors of the conservatory, but find it locked. Without a key, I have no choice. I scale the side instead.

Rain peels my cheeks as my fingers scrape metal and stone. I climb. Higher each moment, with my fingers slipping against the wet.

I do not look over my shoulder.

I mustn’t.

Their shadows chase me up the conservatory until I reach the top. It is a roof made of glass, iron and flecks of diamond.

I turn and they’re there.

There are so many.

They surround me and at the centre, he stands, a giant aberration, demon made with crimson flesh and sinewed muscle.

Dorian.

I fall back, wind knocked from my lungs as he pounces atop me.

Claws dig into my hips as his monstrosity weighs me down, and into the panes of the skylight.

The abyss of the castle’s library awaits beneath us.

It awaits to devour us whole. He keeps me there, inevitable with strength and maddened desire with the sky wild above us.

He is no more than a senseless, rabid beast.

His breath pants hot against my cheek with an insatiable hunger made apparent with each rasped word. “You lose, Princessss.”

A tail chokes my thighs. Glass creaks, before fracturing beneath my spine. In one fluid motion, he slips between the slickness of my cunt, driving into me and the glass. I gasp aloud. “Your Grace…”

He is huge, thick, impossibly stretching me as his transformation continues, cock growing and ripping into me from the inside out.

I push away at the fullness. My fingers scratch against his chest, but it’s without use.

He pulls me closer and that noose elongates around my breast. It tightens and I mewl.

“Please…Dorian…”

He ignores me, lost inside that inhuman rhythm. The walls of my sex clenches around his girth, all thick, slick and wet, and hot inside me. His cock trembles alongside my beating heart. A snarl rumbles from his throat, deeper, rougher, as he locks his hips to mine and thrusts.

“MINE.”

The impact slams through my body and the fragile barrier beneath us. The skylight groans.

Then, the glass finally shatters and my heart stops.

No. We’re doomed.

My stomach plummets to my throat. I become weightless as the world collapses beneath me.

Cold air whips against bared flesh, against my arms, thighs, and through each strand of hair.

The Duke does not stop. His arms lock me against him as we plummet.

Around us, as the night erupts, they come by the horde.

Half of them are swallowed by the midnight sky and blackened clouds, the others, are illuminated by oil lamps.

They pour through the ruined ceiling, shrieking and writhing as they fall, bodies flinging left and right inside the storm-lit void.

Still, the Duke does not stop.

His hips pound into mine, his monstrous body rippling as he continues growing inside me, unbearably thick. I feel every inch as it pulsates.

As he withdraws.

As he fucks me.

Pleasure and terror become one. My cunt flinches against him. I cannot withstand his size. His grip bruises me. It tears at my flesh alongside his swelling cock.

He drives into me.

He wrecks me.

A monster lunges too close. The Duke snarls, and with one savage motion, he tears it apart.

Blood sprays through the air in a grotesque arc and the decapitated head is lost to the darkness.

Ashwood kills without hesitation. One hand rips through anything that dares approach.

The other keeps me pinned to him, flesh and heat, pressure and an unholy force.

Still, his cock grows, thicker, larger... more devastating, until my arousal coats him from tip to hilt. I cry out, my spine arching, fingernails scoring him, but helpless against the stretch — against the force of him.

“Dorian,” I whisper but I don’t know what it is I yearn for.

Is it to be saved or to be consumed?

All I know is that I am a fiend.

Inhuman.

The ground rapidly approaches. I wait for impact, even as the tip of his cock plunges against that bud deep inside me.

Time distorts and then, all I see is white.

At the last moment, as a single claw catches the stone wall and impact rips us both from the air, rain falls from the heavens, soaking the books, I hang suspended with his cock still buried inside me.

Monsters crash below, and I am lost—caught in the obliterating sensation that stretches me from the inside out. My mind surrenders. My body shatters.

“MINE,” Dorian snarls.

He is past the point of return.

And so am I.

He slides off the wall and plummets, but something in him knows.

We twist in mid-air and suddenly, he is beneath me.

I don’t see the shard until it pierces him—jagged wood, slick with old varnish and blood, a piece of the ruined balcony driven clean through his chest. I slam into him and the weight of air crushes me into the ground. He lands with a crash .

“Dorian—”

Beneath me, his form is already shifting. His monstrous body contorts inward, flesh shedding the grotesque mass. The tail and claws retract. His skin pales. I gasp as his spine arches, then cracks, pulling inward until what lies beneath me is only him.

Dorian .