When the shadow drew near enough, she slashed with her dagger. Incredibly fast, the creature easily flowed out of the reach of her small blade. She did not pursue it, instead standing protectively over Meena.
Cale was almost there.
Suddenly, with bunding speed, the shadow darted in and flashed a claw. Thazienne leaped to the side but the blow still torera gash in her shoulder. Immediately, her face turned ashen. She staggered, clutching her shoulder, and fell to her knees.
"No!" Gale shouted, but knew his cry to be futile. Thazienne stood perfectly still and the suddenly vacant look in her wide, haunted eyes burned holes into his soul. Her dagger clattered to the floor.
"No!"
Before he took another stride, the shadow slashed again, tore open her gown, and opened a wound in her chest. Gray vapor began to pulse from the gash toward the shadow's waiting mouth. Thazienne's mouth fell open.
Cale could feel the creature's eager anticipation. The thing radiated hunger like heat from a fire.
"No, gods damn you!"
He leaped over the last chair in his way and charged into the shadow at a full run. Flailing wildly with his fists, he ran right through the insubstantial body of the creature and felt nothing but a pitiless cold, as though he had stepped unclothed into the freezing air of a cold Hammer night. Unable to halt his charge, he crashed into Thazienne and knocked her flat Forcing his numb limbs to answer his commands, he turned to fight, turned to protect Thazienne. He faced the shadow, filled with the heat of rage, and charged it again, fists first.
Taken aback by Cale's fearlessness, the creature darted backward, out of his reach. Cale did not pursue. He stood his ground over Thazienne, fists clenched. His breathing came in labored gasps and his body shook with emotion. He stared without fear into the shadow's flaring yellow eyes.
"Come on!" he shouted, and beckoned it toward him.
The shadow circled around him, watchful, curious, predatory. He turned as it moved, kept his eyes on it all the while. The shouting and growling all around him seemed to fall away. There was only Cale and the shadow, nothing else mattered.
He sensed its amusement with him, the same way he had felt its hunger, but he felt no fear. Let it come.
Weaponless but for his hands, he dared it with his eyes to try again for Thazienne. He momentarily lowered his gaze from the shadow to her and saw that the vapor that had bled from her wound still clung in wisps around her body. The creature had net yet fed. And it never will, he vowed. Not whilfrllive.
"Come on," he challenged. "Come on."
Meena Foxmantle, now awake and trembling with sobs on the floor behind him, pulled pathetically at the leg of his breeches. When he tried to reassure her with a quick glance, his eyes fell on Thazienne's dagger- Thazienne's enchanted dagger-lying on the floor only a few feet away.
Without a moment's hesitation, he dived for the blade. As he did, he noticed with his peripheral vision the shadow darting in to strike. He grabbed the steel, rolled to dodge the shadow's attack, and jumped up with the now glowing dagger held before him. The moment he stood, the cut of a shadowy claw tore open his side.
His body went instantly numb, as though he had been immersed in ice water. He kept his fingers wrapped around the dagger's hilt only by sheer force of will. No blood flowed from the deep cut in his ribs-‹he would have welcomed the warmth-rather, he felt a nauseating yet seductive tug on his soul. In his mind's eye, he saw a horrible vision of his desiccated, pruned body falling in dried pieces upon Thazienne and Meena. In that terrifying instant, he realized that he faced not merely an undead creature, tike ike ghouls, but a demon from the Abyss-for only a demon could drink a man's soul.
Seeing his vulnerability, the demon's yellow eyes flashed in the void of its oval head and it raised a second claw high to strike. Again, Cale felt waves of hunger coming from the emptiness of its body. Its over-long arm extended high and seemed to Cale to reach all the way to the ceiling rafters. The claws looked as long as broadswords.
Desperately, he willed his numb body and thick brain to answer his command to move. Move! Move!
The claw sped downward for the kill.
At the last possible moment, he dived under the demon's arm and reflexively stabbed upward with Thazienne's dagger. Unlike his punches, the blow from the enchanted dagger actually bit into the demon's shadowy substance. Cale felt resistance as the blade penetrated the demon's being-soft tension, then sudden give-as though he had poked a hole in a wineskin. His hand hurt from the cold.
The demon jerked back and Cale sensed rather than heard a surprised howl of rage and pain. Black, foul-smelting smoke hissed from the wound in its arm. It jerked back and circled him at a distance, leaking foulness. Its yellow eyes narrowed. Cale sensed it hiss. It was no longer amused.
His eyes fell on Thazienne, motionless on the floor, and he charged it with a roar.
Startled, the demon's yellow eyes went wide and it flowed backward. Cale chased after and stabbed maniacally with the dagger. Heedless of the creature's daws, Cale attacked. He was interested only in killing the thing that had harmed Thazienne.
With each telling cut, the demon's shrieks of pain and surprise thumped in Gale's brain and fed his anger. He stabbed, ducked, rolled, and stabbed again. Shadowy claws flashed about him but he kept moving and avoided them all. He spun, ducked, and cut again. As he fought, he shouted incoherently, bellows of primal rage.
Reeking shadow stuff streamed out of the demon from a handful of dagger wounds. Cale pressed it relentlessly.
Without warning, the wounded demon suddenly took wing and streaked, still bleeding, from the feast-hall. Cale sensed its pain and shock. He chased after it on foot for a few paces, waving the dagger and shouting challenges.
When it left his sight, he came back to himself.
Except for some soft crying and pained moans, the feasthall was silent. Cale looked around.
The ghouls had ceased attacking and now stood idle, as though the defeat of the demon had left them stunned. Their faces hung slack. Their expressions were vacant.
Jander Orvist needed no better opportunity. His voice boomed from across the feasthall. "Now!" he ordered, and the house guard charged, blades held high.
The ghouls did not even move to defend themselves. The surviving Uskevren house guards brandished then* long swords and began to chop them down tike farmers harvesting wheat. ‹3ale dropped the ice-cold dagger and rushed to Thazienne's side.
As though freed to return by the absence of the demon, the white vapor that clung in wisps around her body-her soul, Gale now knew-flowed back into the slash in her chest. Immediately, the wound knitted itself shut to leave only an ugly pink scar. He knelt beside her and brushed the hair from her forehead. She looked so pale. Her body felt as cold as Oeepwinter snow.
Ignoring the pain of his own wounds, Gale pulled her limp body close and cradled her to his chest. She still breathed, he realized, but only barely. His eyes welled as he rocked her back and forth. Please, gods, not her, please.
Thazienne," he murmured. "Please come back, Thazienne." He buried his face in her dark hair and tried to warm her cold body with the heat of his own.
Moments later-it seemed an eternity to him- Meena Foxmantle's sobs brought Gale back to himself. She lay on the floor near him, curled into a fetal position, trembling so badly that she looked as if she were convulsing. Her terrified eyes stared vacantly at him. He reached out and gently placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She grabbed at his arm like a drowning person clutching a lifeline and held so tight that he lost all feeling in his hand within moments.
"It's all right," he said. "It's going to be all right." He wasn't sure if he was trying to convince her or himself.