Page 75 of Witchbane
Seb, hear me!He sounded desperate.
I swiped at a line of monsters. I was surprised to find my paw larger than most of them, and filled with claws that appeared like giant ice blades. I tore through the batch, their screams and wails lasting only a few seconds. And I fed. Scooping up bits and swallowing them down to try to fill the gaping void in my gut. I was incredibly hungry. If I killed them all they couldn’t hurt Liam. I could feed on their guts and bones, and devour the magic that sent them wriggling despite being ripped to shreds. I could stop them. And I needed to eat.
No, no, no, Seb!
The world vanished again for a few seconds, returning with the sound of Liam’s panicked voice. I couldn’t make out his words now, but turned his way to try to help. The pieces of fallen monster were distracting until I snapped each up, away from growing vines reaching for them from the ground like tiny hands.
Liam was still battling the horse tentacle thing. I leapt onto the one Nick and Liam had been fighting and bit down, the spray of blood from it dark and viscous. But I ate that too. Liam stared up at me, even as he backed away.
My heart lurched, a giant ripping ache at the thought that he was afraid of me. My Liam. Afraid of me. How monstrous had I become to make him fear me?
But more monsters were coming. I lifted my muzzle to the sky and screamed for them. A demand to end them all, a challenge that I planned to fulfill. They thought they would come for my mate, but they would find death. The rolling sickness of their remains seemed to expand in my gut. Not making me less hungry, but more intent to devour them all. It gurgled and shifted, moving like a living mass of writhing limbs inside. It hurt. Yet I still needed more.
Nick put his hands over his ears, as if my wail hurt him. Liam bumped him, trying to push him back.
I needed to eat until I could see straight again. The pain of hunger pulsed in my gut, and each bite seemed to make me grow. The mess of parts, magic and pain, formed a ball of mounting energy. And it was like I had to expand to accommodate it. My size was ballooning, even while I kept swallowing parts, snapping up the monsters who got too close, and lapping the ground for any missing chunks.
Liam plowed into me, hitting one of my legs with a wrecking ball of force, knocking me over with an awkwardthwapof momentum. The world spun for a few seconds and I was disoriented from the blow. The stop was very sudden and left me sprawled, confused, and aching. The wound in my side throbbed, and I felt the vine threading itself back over my leg, and up to the bloody tears in my side, like it too wanted to feed. Only it planned to feed on me.
Liam lunged at the vine, trying to rip it away, except now it was more like a tree trunk than something small and breakable. He worried at it with his teeth and it hurt. But he tugged and pulled and tried with every bit of his strength to remove the section of vine. It had worked its way higher than the last time, ensnaring my ribcage, constricting.
A tentacle snaked up from behind Liam and grabbed him. He yelped as some sort of teeth cut into him and he was ripped away. I howled, shambling back to my feet, even with one leg not working right, and the vines wrapped tightly enough I could barely breathe.
Liam was mine. That was the only thing that was clear in my head. Everything else spun fromneed to eattokill them all, except Liam. Who wasmine.
A roll of wriggling darkness latched onto him from the bite, like it was trying to take him over too. A black ooze began to trail over him, freezing him, ice creeping through his fur, lapping at the cuts, and freezing his gaping blood. Even through the dark gray of his coat I could see gashes along his side. The blood poured from him as his chest rose and fell; he was trying to catch his breath. He fought like a demon, twisting and snarling, digging in teeth and fangs, even while his flesh seemed to blacken from the growing ooze.
Nick brought his sharp blade down over the tentacle and severed it from the rest of the beast, while I dove in to tear the beast limb from limb. I ravaged it, lapping it up as though it were sweet bread rather than monster guts.
Seb…Liam’s voice called to me. And I glanced his way, my muzzle still buried in the innards of a monster. He looked tiny, covered in spreading ice. Like the vine that was feeding on me, only made from something frozen.
Liam wasn’t moving much. His breath labored, and he wasn’t healing. His unease tightened the bond between us. His kitsune screamed of danger, fight, run, a mass of conflicting emotions, but a need to get away and protect me, burning through our bond. He also begged me to come back to him.
Hungry, I told him.
He chuffed at me, trying to get to his feet, but the ice made it impossible. Nick tried to help. The kitsune was too big. He’d have had more luck lifting an elephant.
The ground rumbled again. Buildings rolled with the shock tremors of something big. Bigger than me? I glared around the area, gazing at the remains of my spoils, dismayed to find the ground was swallowing them up. Pulling down the parts I’d missed, with vines, to devour them. I snarled, ready to rage at what had been stolen from me. The weight of the monsters in my gut churned painfully, as if they were still living and trying to get out, even while I was still ravenous.
The vine wrapped around me tried to drag me down, too. Like the ground would swallow me up. But I snapped at it, rending the connection to the ground and slowing the spread of it over me.
The remains of the city lay in a wall of fallen stone, spanning the distance as even the tower we’d first entered had fallen. But now the mass of it moved, as though something had been buried beneath it, shifting like some sort of snake moved beneath the surface. Ominous and slow, it crawled upward. All those pieces were coming together, reforming. Where the monsters came from, I realized. Not one or even a dozen corrupted fae. But the remains of thousands jammed together in some stew of epic grossness. Yet I wanted to eat them all.
Liam clamped his jaws down on the fur of my front leg and tugged me away; even though he couldn’t stand, he pulled, his panic clear. I let him guide me, trying to find my own feet while my back leg throbbed and went numb and my stomach churned. Liam stumbled and I did too, when the leg went out, falling to my side and suddenly feeling like I could hork up a giant sludge of monster guts.
How was it possible to be insatiably hungry and sick all at once?
What emerged from the remains of the rubble a moment later was something almost impossible to identify. Much like the beasts I’d met in Underhill in the past, it was a morphing, changing thing. A giant bug one second, then a mix of a lizard like a dinosaur the next, then a fiery horse, and beyond. Part of it pulsed, huge and engorged like a pus-filled wound or even a gut about to burst. The sewn together remains of the monsters. It bonded together, piece by piece, adding a tentacle here, and a paw full of talons there, until it was unidentifiable, and as large as I was.
I snarled at it, struggling to my feet, keeping the pressure off the injured leg and hip, even while the bits I’d eaten wriggled and churned inside. It was almost as if they were forming something inside of me, another monster that would rip its way free any second. I shook my head and focused hard on staying conscious, the coming monster, and Liam who needed me.
The lines of magic swirled to definition around me like a finely woven tapestry. The parts I lapped up were a lot like a giant plate of spaghetti, mashed with threads that made up the entirety of magic. I hooked a claw on the ice magic wrapping Liam up in cold and darkness, tearing it away with little effort, leaving him gasping and human, not kitsune. That fast he’d changed. But he was covered in wounds and splotches of blood.
Nick grabbed him beneath the arms and dragged him away as I turned to face the remnants of Underhill’s terror. Every last piece of the remaining monsters swirled into one giant mass, moving like some monster jellyfish of demon parts. A thousand bug-like eyes stared back at me as it continued to pull itself together.
For a few seconds I could see my own reflection in its eyes. It was that close, that large. I wasn’t kitsune anymore. No, everything about my reflection saiddemon. It was an enormous mix of fox, kitsune, and something with far too many teeth to be classified as any animal I knew. My fur smoldered like it burned, a billowing smoke of red haze, and behind me, more than a half dozen tails whipped up the wind.
This wasn’t beautiful, I thought, briefly finding my own mind beyond all the pain and hunger. This was a monster. Something I’d never wanted to be.