Page 123 of Taken By the Lord of the Nocturne Court
I rip it out, filled with fresh rage at Heartbreak and stab my sword into the black, pulsing organ. I don’t know who this heart once belonged to, but they are no longer with us.
The beast stirs, making everything around me shake, and my blade cuts into the twisted mass making up most of the monster as gravity pulls me back toward the water. I bite the inside of my cheek when I need to kick away a wretched, rotten arm. When my sword catches on a bone, I stop sliding down and grab at a misshapen appendage to steady myself before glancing to the side, at the gray figure standing next to me as if gravity didn’t work on it at all. Luke nods at me, as if to signify he's fine.
The monster beneath my feet growls, sending a tremor up my limbs. I solidify my shadow to give myself more support as I start my climb, trying not to think too much about the soft mass under my feet being the flesh of elves Heartbreak has accumulated over centuries. Countless lives lost. And for what? To feed its insatiable hunger?
Three shadow tendrils grow out of my back, assisting the ascent, and while the monster is monitoring me with fields of mismatched eyes, I ignore them, on my way to the top.
Luke is right by my side, crawling up on all fours without trouble, because his immaterial fingers easily slide into Heartbreak, and he weighs nothing. Most importantly, he cannot be killed by a physical force when he’s like this, so I don’t have to worry about him.
Anatole’s cursing my whole bloodline, the Realm, and the Sea of Sorrows, but when I spot him at last, he’s almost unrecognizable, with dark blood coloring his skin and hair. Heartbreak growls and shifts to the side, like a ball turning in the water, and momentum sends me toward Anatole.
He squeezes a fatty mound with his thighs and slashes at a whole cluster of black, pulsing hearts, shrieking like a madman. Without a Dark Companion, he had to infuse his blade with his own shadow and it flickers, fading with every heart he manages to pierce.
I fight gravity as the beast keeps turning in an effort to shake us off, but just as I’m about to lose my footing, Luke solidifies next to me, keeping me from tumbling off, and I seize the opportunity to slash at a big, red blob. Rancid blood explodes all over me, and I press my tongue against my palate in a desperate attempt not to smell it. But the beast thrashesand shakes, so I continue, getting ever closer to Anatole as Heartbreak shifts, forcing me to move.
Beyond my cousin’s back are the green lights of the arena, and I roar, stabbing another heart while Luke assists me, unaffected by the shaking.
Anatole falls over, frantically grabbing at a white rock oddly reminiscent of a chair-sized tooth, and when his eyes peek at me, two white ovals embedded in blood-red features, he sneers, gasping for air.
“You cheated all of us. You never deserved a Dark Companion to begin with, Sunspawn!” He spits the insult out as though he might resentmemore than the beast we’re both fighting.
He jabs the flesh nearby to stabilize his position, the flesh mountain stirs, and I lean back when the surface under my feet parts. Rows of pearly whites—smooth, flat, or extremely sharp—peek at me from inside the gash opening in the monster, wide as if it was struck by a castle-sized axe. They’re not arranged in any sensible way, yet form a mouth, which makes the sight even more of a horror.
I stumble away from it just as the beast’s toxic exhale reaches my senses, only to meet a hard body. I look back to see a flash of blond hair soaked with dark red blood, but before I can decide what’s happening, a shove sends me toward the huge mouth with a throbbing sphincter at the very bottom of its red throat.
Terror flashes through my body, but as my Dark Companion slows my descent, I twist my body and yank at Anatole’s arm. The beast chooses this moment to shake in a spasm of muscles, and my cousin rolls past me with a shriek. His shadow tentacles grab the first rows of teeth, but the intestines twitching inside the monstrous mouth have already captured him, twisting around his limbs and midsection.
Anatole’s eyes are wide when his hand slips, and he hits his chin on a large tooth, but when his gaze meets mine, he reaches for me, as if he didn’t attempt to toss me into that very same hell moments ago.
I see his shadow wrestle the creature’s appendages, but he’s weakening and utters something through his teeth. I can’t understand the words, but I know what he’s asking for.
Mercy. For me to help him, whenhewouldn’t piss on me if I were on fire. When instead of fighting alongside me, he tried to push me to mydeath.
For a split second, I consider that maybe he could be useful in the future, but the truth is that he’d stab me in the back at his earliest convenience.
So I slice apart another heart instead of moving any closer.
His eyes fill with tears that soon spill, washing away some of the blood on his cheeks, but the sound he makes is pure fury. At least until it turns into a scream of agony when the fleshy tentacles wrapped around his body coil. Anatole’s face pales, and his eyes bulge while his hips get twisted sideways with a terrifying snap of bone. Then again. And again. Blood gushes out of his mouth when the beast pulls his bottom half off, dragging it down its mouth pit. As death claims Anatole, his hold on the teeth loosens, his shadows disperse, and his torso rolls down lifelessly.
My head’s burning with pure terror as I lean forward, watching the sphincter unclench to reveal concentric rows of fangs leading deeper into the massive beast. Anatole’s head pops like a blood-filled balloon as soon as the muscles holding the sharp teeth tighten around it. I need to fight off a wave of nausea when some of it sprays up, and I sense the tiniest bit of new wetness on my skin.
I seek Luke’s support as the lipless mouth narrows, and the monster rolls to the other side, so the farther edge of the open cavern looms above my head. I’m about to recoil and get out of reach of those damn teeth when a familiar moan makes me look up, to where flesh bulges, pushing teeth apart. It’s like watching a wart grow at an alarming speed, and my stomach drops when I realize it’s gaining the shape of a face. A familiar one at that. When Anatole, whose face I’ve just seen crushed, stares at me with terror-stricken eyes and utters a scream so sharp it could make me bleed, I sense madness knocking at my door.
His tongue rolls out, unnaturally long, and his eyes bulge, each looking in opposite directions. I can’t move. Or think. Or even yell in fear, but as I fight through the stupor, knowing I can either fight or die, something cuts my legs from under me, and I tumble down the funnel of flesh and teeth.
A creak resonates in my ear, and a part of me knows it’s Luke shouting my name in a realm beyond a thin veil of shadows, but there’s no stopping my descend toward the loosening mouth pit.
All I can hope for is that when my body becomes one with so many others, my spirit will not stay alongside it.
Because I'm about to die, crushed and ripped apart like my cousin.
Full of regret, I cling to memories of the one thing that was good about my life.
My Luke.
Chapter 46
Kyran