Page 129 of Grave Beginnings

The tiny creature landed on the ground; wet, and horribly still. I dropped to my knees and picked it up, instinct taking over.I’d taken an animal first aid class last year with Nikki, with the thought that if anything terrible happened to Peanut Butter, I could help him survive long enough to get to a doctor. Now, I used that knowledge to rub the creature’s chest, trying to feel for a heartbeat or movement of its lungs. But it lay still in my hands.

“Please don’t die,” I pleaded with the tiny creature, and pressed my mouth over the top of its snout, breathing oxygen into it. Twice, and three times, before the little thing finally took a breath. The fragile creature was pale, with shimmery scales gleaming under the dim light and a set of delicate wings tucked close to its tiny, shivering body.

I had a half second to fear that it had needed the blue liquid to survive and would die in the open air, but it breathed against me, its lungs sucking in air as it nuzzled tight to my side. Was this like the lights overhead? They glowed bright but all I could make out were wings—all silvery, like butterflies pinned in the light to die as their glow vanished. The creature trembled against me, shivering terribly, and I plucked it from my chest and shoved it underneath my vest and shirt, against my skin, to warm it.

As I rose shakily to my feet, I realized the blue liquid had soaked into the knees of my pants—which should have been waterproof—and a numbness was seeping into my legs with sharp tingles of icy pain and vanishing support. I examined the blue globs splattering my pants, and saw that the liquid was eating away at the fabric.

“Fuck!” I cursed. Everything in this godforsaken world was lethal. I stripped off the gloves, as bits of goo clung to them, but I felt no change in sensation where the little creature touched me.

I stumbled away from the pool of ooze, heart pounding as I gripped the tables for support, and shoved my pants off, trying to peel the fluid away from my skin before it ate through my flesh too. I tripped over the fabric pooled around my boots, but was certain the jar had been the same material that made up thetubes, even if the color was different. Maybe the makeup of them varied by species?

Could I tip them over and break them? I eyed a metal shelf not far from Ezra’s tube, and forced my wobbling legs to hobble that way, pausing to cut away the fabric with my utility knife. My knees bled. Long, red drips warmed my shins. I didn’t have time to triage a scrape. I had to get Ezra out.

My heart raced, and the numbness crawled up my legs, spreading until I had to lean against the far wall, vision swirling as I gave the bookcase a shove. It moved a little, but winded me. Well, fuck. What was in that goo? Maybe I was losing too much blood? The tiny creature curled against my chest beneath my vest, spreading a slow pulse of warmth, but I sucked in air as if I’d run a mile.

With the last of my strength, I threw my full weight against the metal shelving unit. It groaned in protest before toppling forward, directly onto Ezra's tube. The glass exploded, a shockwave of icy fluid bursting outward, and I hit my knees as the second tube erupted too, hit by shards of the first. Both men slid out in the rush of fluid. All the other tubes shattered in a chain reaction, fluid filling the room, ankle-deep.

Ezra gasped and flailed, pulling himself out of the goo while I blinked at him from against the wall, unable to keep my feet as my legs screamed in pain. The blue-haired stranger came up swinging, eyes wild with panic, scrambling to his hands and knees. Two sets of confused and terror-filled eyes found me a second later.

“Hey.” I waved weakly. “Step one, complete. Free the sleeping princesses.”

“Fuck you,” Ezra choked.

“What’s step two?” the blue-haired guy asked, crawling away from the center of the tube toward me.

“Why are your pants down?” Ezra asked. “Are those duckies?”

“Long story,” I said. “Is the goo hurting you? Too cold? Anything?”

“Fuck, you’re bleeding,” Ezra said as he slipped and ended up lying a half foot away, on his back in the goo, staring up at the blinking fairy-light ceiling. His breathing sounded narrow and strained, which worried me. The blue-haired dude got to his feet, and it was the first time I noticed he had pointed ears. Fae? Or something else?

“Cold, but not hurt,” the blue-haired man said with a slight accent. “Maybe a little magically drained. Thanks for the rescue.”

I blinked at him as my vision narrowed around the edges. Pain and blood loss, or was the room getting darker?

The overhead fairy lights popped one by one, each extinguishing with a horrible, echoing scream that sounded far too human. With each death, I felt a rush of energy slide through me, as if the dying creatures gave their last breath to heal me. But the room plunged into darkness with only the dim glow of a few remaining intact jars. The remaining vials shattered in unison, glass exploding outward like shrapnel. I threw up an arm to shield my face. The stranger leapt across the distance, snatched Ezra up with preternatural speed, and barreled into me, shoving us all back into the wall as the glass and fluids rained down on us like daggers. I heard the stranger react, like he’d been hit, but he held us against the wall, using himself as a shield.

The clarity of the room vanished beneath the rise of shadows. Was I going to pass out? Or was the darkness coming from the floor? Dark shapes twisted along the walls, expanding upward like living smoke.

The shadows surged, growing from the walls and devouring everything they seeped over as they spread across the room, a mass of black tendrils. With my back to the wall, I had nowhere to go, and my breath came in ragged gasps as a nightmare erupted from the darkness—a giant, Cthulhu-level of hungry rage directed at us.

“Of course. Because evil science tubes weren’t enough. Now we need the sentient, hungry darkness.” I threw my arms up around Ezra and the stranger, trying to warn them of the coming darkness, but something grabbed me from behind and yanked me backward. I clung to the other two as my vision popped and swirled with colors, threatening to suck me into unconsciousness, and all three of us tumbled through an opening in the wall that hadn’t been there seconds before.

46

We all hitthe floor in a heap. I had the breath knocked out of me as someone landed a knee in my gut. Angel was at my back, and his magic swarmed over me, calming the raging panic in a heartbeat.

“Stay awake,” he commanded as he tried to untangle himself from our mess of bodies, and I realized he was in his human form.

Ezra rolled off me, struggling to his feet. The stranger lay on his stomach, half across my legs, his breath uneven. I blinked a half dozen times, my struggle to keep awake dragging me deeper. Was Angel naked?

“Eyes up here, pretty boy,” Angel snapped.

I tried to focus on him. “You’re naked.”

“I was in my cat form, remember?”

“Vaguely,” I said, feeling like that was a lifetime ago.