Page 29 of Gods and Graves

Thea steps forward—my beautiful, broken bird, free for the first time—and her voice trembles. “Rafe…I…I changed my mind. I don’t want to hear what the oracle has to say. Let’s just go.”

And for a moment, I feel the weight of her plea. It presses down on me, making it hard to breathe.

She’s scared, scared for me, and the thought makes my heart pick up speed.

But it’s not enough.

Thea’s going to die if I don’t do something.

I jerk against their hold, my pulse thrumming.

“Rafe!” Everett bellows as I tear him away with a flick of my wrist.

“Good boy,” the oracle coos, extending a ghastly pale hand for me to take.

A growl rises in my throat, and I shoot my arm out. Blood-red whips slash at the oracle as she cries and screams.

“Holy crap!” Thea screams, stumbling a few steps away, her mouth agape.

A startling silence settles over us all. All I can hear is my own erratic breathing and the pounding of my heart.

The air in the room shifts. It thickens, like a fog rolling in, suffocating and dense. It presses against my skin. The oppressive silence suddenly breaks, replaced by a low, rattling noise.

The oracle’s frail form trembles, the cane she’s been holding twisting and bending as if it’s alive. Her skin, so pale and delicate before, begins to crack and split. The jagged lines spread like a spider’s web across her face and body.

Her once serene smile turns into something far darker and sinister—her lips stretching impossibly wide, the corners of her mouth splitting like a cracked vase, exposing rows of needle-like teeth, black and gleaming.

A low growl builds in her throat.

Her eyes train on me, but they’re not white anymore.

They’re black pits, endless voids, capable of sucking in the light around her.

Her head jerks, the motion too quick, too unnatural.

The cracks in her skin widen, and something—a shape—begins to bulge beneath her flesh, shifting like something is crawling underneath the surface.

Her limbs elongate, the bones snapping and twisting in grotesque angles. Her skin stretches and morphs into something monstrous—pale and slick like an eel. She looms over us, her body towering high above, her form now a hulking, grotesque shape.

The creature’s mouth opens wide—impossibly wide—and her jagged teeth resemble shards of glass. Her hands, no longer frail, stretch towards us with claws that are long, sharp, and dripping with some sort of dark substance. Every time it puddles on the ground, it hisses and sputters.

Fuck.

A cold smile unfurls on my lips.

This bitch wants a fight? Then a fight she’ll get.

Zaid, his wraith form flickering, is the first to react.

He raises his hands, and shadowy tendrils shoot from his palms, curling around the air like smoke and grabbing at the creature’s form.

The monster roars and twists, her body contorting in ways that shouldn’t be possible. The tendrils snap like twigs.

She throws her head back and screams, and that sound—god, that fucking sound—digs into my skull, making it feel like my thoughts are being dragged from me.

I don’t wait for her to get her bearings as a deep, primal rage rises inside of me.

I grab my dagger and slice at my palm, allowing my blood to well. Then, I shoot projectile after projectile at her, though I’m not sure what good that’s doing. She barely seems to react.

Krystian’s bowstring hums as he fires a shot, his arrow flying through the air with expert precision.

It hits the oracle-monster in the shoulder with a sickening thud, though the creature barely even flinches.

Her eyes—those hollow, void-black pits—focus on him, and with a flick of her wrist, she sends him flying across the room like a rag doll.

He crashes into the wall, but before his bow can shatter on impact, it disappears and then materializes in his hands once more.

“Not today, Satan. Not today,” he mutters under his breath, grabbing another flesh-eating arrow from his quiver and nocking it into place.

He pulls the string back, his eyes narrowed in determination.

Already, I can see the first one is doing its work. The skin surrounding the puncture wound is sizzling and hissing as the poison eats away at the oracle’s flesh.

“Wait!” Zaid yells abruptly, moving to stand in front of Krystian and stopping him from letting his arrow loose.

“What the fuck, Zaid?” Everett roars, his eyes glinting with the appearance of his beast—a beast he won’t let free, unless there’s no other alternative.

“We can’t kill it!” Zaid insists.

“Why the fuck not?” Everett demands.

In answer, Zaid flicks his gaze towards Thea, who stands slightly behind us, holding a borrowed dagger in her hand. Zaid’s, if I had to guess.

It occurs to me then what Zaid’s saying.

If we kill the oracle—a beast who is alive—then Thea might…

She might leave us.

The minotaur was crafted out of machinery, but this beast… This beast has flesh and a heart and blood.

“Don’t be an idiot!” Thea screams as the oracle staggers and roars, swiping a clawed hand at us. But her movements are sluggish, the poison eating away at her skin. “I didn’t disappear when we killed the hellhounds, did I?”

“The hellhounds were already dead when you turned corporeal!” Krystian points out, lowering his bow. “And who’s to say that the one you killed isn’t what caused your dagger to…merge with your flesh?”

His gaze dips to the waistband of her jeans, where, underneath all of her clothes, is the reminder of her looming deadline.

“If we don't kill it, it’ll kill us!” Thea insists.

“Not if I can help it,” I growl.

Then I charge, moving faster than I ever thought possible, thoughts of my little bird spurring me on. My blood surges with the heat of rage and desperation.

The oracle-monster looks at me, that demented grin stretching wider and wider.

She swings her poison-tipped claw at me, but I’m faster, ducking low and then spinning to the side until I can come up behind her.

But I can’t get close enough to strike. Not yet.

And I think I know exactly where to aim this time around.

Krystian’s arrow hits again, this time in her knee, and she stumbles.

That’s all the opening I need.

The blood in my palm solidifies until it forms a blade, and I jump on her back, clinging to her neck with all my might. I slam the blade down into her right eye.

Again and again and again and again.

A black substance oozes from the wound and hits my skin, causing it to burn. The pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt before, and instinctively, I cry out, releasing my grip on the creature’s neck. I fall to the ground with a pained shout.

“Rafe!” Thea screams, racing for me.

Zaid reaches for her, but Thea’s faster.

She swings her borrowed dagger at the monster’s stomach—the only part of the beast she can reach—and the monster staggers back. The oracle cries out and falls, slamming against the door she was attempting to lead me through only moments earlier.

The wood shatters, revealing hundreds—if not thousands—of corpses. Yellow bones litter the entire room.

Zaid was right.

If we were to ask her questions, we would’ve ended up just like them.

“Thea!” Krystian roars, shooting arrow after arrow at the beast in an attempt to distract her.

But the oracle doesn’t peel her pitch-black gaze from the approaching reaper.

The strangest thing begins to happen.

Thea’s skin begins to glow—an unearthly luminescent sheen that makes it appear as if she’s been dipped in sparkles. The dagger in her hand transforms before my very eyes. While before it was an unassuming, somewhat blunt dagger, it’s now sharp and covered in ancient runes.

The dagger Thea arrived with.

The dagger that has somehow melded with her body.

“Thea!” I stagger to my feet and race for her.

No. No. No. No.

Thea doesn’t seem to hear any of us. It’s as if she’s in a trance.

She lifts her arm in the air…and then brings it down, hitting the creature in the heart.

And while our attacks did nothing to stop the grotesque monster, Thea’s has the opposite effect.

The oracle-monster screeches, her form twisting and distorting as the entire room reacts to her demise.

The walls begin to shake violently, and the floor crumbles beneath us.

The creature’s massive body starts to unravel like twine, her form breaking down into nothing but tendrils of darkness that dissolve in the air.

The room pulses once, twice, three times, then—everything stops.

The oracle is gone. The walls and floor have stopped trembling. The air, once heavy and suffocating, feels lighter.

And Thea stands in the center of the room, the dagger in her hand normal once more.

“Little bird,” I whisper, taking a step towards her.

She whirls on me, desperation painted across her face, and drops the dagger to the ground. She begins to scratch erratically at her skin, her gaze flicking this way and that.

“We’re out of time,” she whimpers, a pained cry leaving her. “They’re here. The voices…the hallucinations… They’re all here.”