Ruby Shadows (Born to Darkness #3)(6)
Next I tried heaving myself up with my hands but it wasn’t easy. I did my fair share of cardio at the gym but I never hit the weights the way I knew I should. Now I might pay for my poor upper body strength with my life.
“Come…on…Gwendolyn,” I grunted to myself as I heaved upwards. “Get…your ass…moving.” Nothing like a little positive self-talk to motivate you, right?
I was doing pretty well and had managed to haul myself up until I had my elbows on the lip of the crumbling hole. I was about to swing one leg up and out and get the hell away from the sink hole that had suddenly and magically appeared under Gram’s bed when that something else I’d been trying not to think about or imagine happened.
Something grabbed my ankle.
Something long and slimy—it felt like a tentacle…no, a tentacle would be cold and clammy but this was horribly hot. It was a tongue, I suddenly realized. And I could just imagine the mouth a tongue like that would come out of—it would be vast and black and full of sharp yellow teeth.
I screamed breathlessly for Grams as I scrambled to get away. Still she didn’t come, but whatever was holding me eased its grip just a little bit—as though maybe it had been scared by my shout.
I pulled harder, feeling the hot, slimy thing slip slowly away from my ankle. I was going to make it—I had to make it out of the pit. Grimly, I pulled upward, my heart pounding, my head spinning. I was so scared I felt lightheaded—like I might faint at any moment. But if I did that, I might as well be signing my own death warrant. I held on to conciseness as tightly as I held on to the lip of the hole.
In the back of my panicked brain I was thinking that I ought to say a spell or work a charm but the magic I do is so much more than words. Most of it is wrapped up in ritual and incantation. It’s kind of hard to work a protection spell which requires all kinds of paraphernalia when you’re hanging on for dear life and trying not to fall into the jaws of a waiting monster. I did mutter a prayer to the Goddess for protection but I doubt she heard me. After all, I hadn’t exactly been working the whitest magic lately.
I was making progress, feeling the thing slip away inch by inch as I clawed my way out of the hole…
And then, as though it had just been toying with me, the slimy tongue-tentacle tightened its grip and gave a mighty heave, like a fisherman reeling in a big one.
Oh my God! I was dragged backwards, my fingernails full of splinters as I clawed desperately to get out of the hole. No…no, no, no! I was in full panic mode now, my heart pounding out of my chest, my body locked into a flight-or-fight response. I screamed for Grams again but of course she didn’t come. She was probably still peacefully asleep and when she woke up, she’d come into her room and see a massive hole going down and down and nothing else because I’d already be digesting in the belly of the beast. First it would eat my body…and then my soul.
“NO!” I screamed, kicking out at the thing. Which didn’t help a damn bit—it just tightened its hold on me and pulled harder. Clearly it had just been toying with me before but now playtime was over and I was about to be lunch. Or a midnight snack—whichever.
Your mind goes through weird thoughts at a time like this and all mine came up with was this: I can’t go now, not like this. I can’t…I can’t. I don’t want to die a virgin!
The minute the thought popped into my head I knew exactly what I had to do—who I had to call. I had sworn never to see him again but this was definitely an extenuating circumstance. I just hoped he wasn’t too pissed at me to answer.
“Laish!” I gasped aloud, still kicking at the ever tightening tongue-tacle. “Laish, please—I know I said to leave me alone but please—I’m in trouble. Please, hellllll…”
The last word was a scream because the thing below me gave one last mighty yank on my ankle and I lost my tenuous grip on the lip of the hole. With a shriek, I went plummeting down into the hole, heading straight into its gaping mouth.
Chapter Three
Laish
I stared in irritation out of the window of the mansion I kept as a place to stay in the Mortal Realm. It was a vast stone structure located on Siesta Key, just outside of Sarasota, Florida. There was a view of my private beach with its pristine white sands. They were some of the most beautiful this realm had to offer and I ought to know—I’d been sitting here for hours, staring at them. The sunset had been particularly breathtaking that evening—all purples and oranges and golds with a fair bit of fiery red at the end which reminded me of my other, more permanent residence.
Which is where I ought to be now, I thought, drumming my fingers on the windowsill. I should sever all ties from this place and attend to other business. And yet, here I still was.
The question was why? The little witch had banished me from her presence over a month ago—so why was I still here?
I stood and began to pace, my fine leather shoes whispering quietly over the rare oriental carpet. It was over five hundred years old and the humans thought it quite an antique. To someone like me, a being older than time itself, the idea was laughable.
Almost as laughable as the idea that a little witch with creamy brown skin and vivid green eyes could have caught my interest and held it. Held it so strongly that though she refused all my advances and sent me away, I still wasn’t able to go.