Moontide
Read Along Chapter 28
The creature opened its mouth and the grayish-blue skin of its face stretched tight over its skull as it let out a hissing sound. The noise was shrill, discordant like metal on metal.
Cindy tried to cover her ears. She wanted to hide her face in Ronan’s shoulder, but the thing was so frightening that she couldn’t look away. The heavy feeling in the air intensified again at her back. When she and Ronan turned, they saw they were surrounded on all sides by more monsters.
There were probably six of the demons closing in around them. Their glowing eyes grew brighter the closer they got. Ronan stooped down, reached inside his boot and pulled out a long deadly looking knife. Cindy was glad one of them had a weapon, even though it didn’t look like it would do them much good.
“Stay behind me,” Ronan said without looking at her.
“What are they?” she asked, her voice quavering.
“I’m not sure, I’ve never seen their kind before. Stay close to me. Don’t let go, no matter what you do.”
Cindy kept a hand on his shoulder while she pulled out her phone. If they were going to die tonight, at least maybe she could get a picture to leave behind for the crime scene investigators. That’s the way things happened on TV, right?
“Two as one.” A raspy voice hissed in her ear, making her jump.
She didn’t stop to think about the thing’s meaning before she whipped around and snapped a picture of its awful face. It shrieked, recoiling from the flash. This made all the demons stop and move back.
“The light,” Ronan said, “it bothers their eyes! Keep your contraption in hand, cara.”
Go figure. Maybe she could create a new demon repelling app and make millions! She honestly hoped it didn’t come to that.
Armed now, she snaked her arm around Ronan’s waist and stepped to his side. He made a low noise in his throat. Cindy took this for a warning not to go against his order to stay behind him. She didn’t budge. If they were going to die tonight, she wasn’t going to cower and just let it happen, especially not now that she had a weapon!
The fiends started moving in again. Ronan widened his stance, knife at the ready. The corded muscles of his back were tensed, ready to do battle. His body vibrated with anticipation and Cindy felt a change come over him. She tried to mimic his stance, her phone held up, ready to flash. She wouldn’t think about how ridiculous she looked until later.
The dark demons drifted toward them, their luminous eyes piercing the night as they closed in. The wind blew again. Cindy felt an icy finger touch her neck then lift her hair. She screamed, spun around and flashed her camera all at the same time. Ronan turned with her, catching the creature in the neck with his knife. It fell back, oozing a deep dark liquid from its throat. The creature sputtered and gasped.
Everywhere, the cloaks fell away from the demons. Their ghastly skin shone in the moonlight, but in a way that turned your stomach, as if they weren’t fully developed or something. They looked like they’d dragged their way out of some primordial soup before their time. Together, the gray-blue monsters raised their heads and let out a shrill cry before they flew straight up in the air then swooped down on Ronan and Cindy.
Demons flew into them from every direction. Cindy ducked, one arm thrown over her head the other holding onto Ronan. Even with his knife and her cell phone in hand, she figured them both for a pair of goners. Those things, whatever they were, were lightning quick and mad as hell. She didn’t dare look up from her crouched position, even when she heard a series of swishing noises slice through the air right over her head. Cries ripped through the atmosphere until, finally, she pried her arm away from her face to find the sounds were coming from the demons.
Another lethal looking figure in black had appeared from out of nowhere. Cindy wished she’d just kept her eyes closed. This attacker was even more deadly looking than their new friends. But as the figure came further into view, the face and form of a man appeared. Before she could determine whether this newcomer was friend or foe, he started slicing through the demons with a machete. The weapon, polished to a blinding gleam, flashed through the air, reflecting moonlight with each swipe through the air.
The stranger laid out three of the beasts in the blink of an eye. Their bodies fell, sprawling on the beach. Cindy didn’t want to study them too closely, pretty sure their heads were nowhere to be found. She heard fighting noises to her back and turned just in time to see Ronan lunge at a demon’s throat, slicing it through all the way from its chest to its chin.
“Run… now!” Commanded a deep voice in her ear.
She gasped, then turned her head to look up into a pair of dark eyes and a grim mouth before the stranger’s words registered. He didn’t need to ask her twice to get out of his way. She scooted backwards in the sand, gained her footing, then ran to hide in the bushes. Watching from her hiding spot, she saw Ronan stab another of the gruesome creatures. It fell to the beach next to the other one.
The man with the machete stalked toward the beasts. He kicked one over. It stared up at him as it coughed up a bilious, dark substance. He spoke to the creature in a language Cindy didn’t recognize as anything she’d ever heard a second before he lifted his weapon and swung it in a single, downward stroke. Just like that, the demon’s head flew from its body. “Like a hot knife through butter” the analogy rang through Cindy’s head. She shrank further into the bushes.
She stopped moving, though, when a sharp chill ran the length of her spine as something hissed in her ear.
“Kassa,” she heard a voice say as she was grabbed from behind.
*Oh me, oh my! Demons and strangers and machetes on the beach! What do you think of these scary creatures? Who’s the guy decapitating them? And what’s going to happen to Cindy?
Don’t worry, you don’t need to answer. All will be revealed next we meet, book Monsters!