the feasthall toward Jander and the protective circle of guards.
Smart girl. Cale headed that way as well.
He looked up and caught the shadow creature's baleful yellow eyes. They fell on Thazienne and Meena. It stopped circling and hovered.
Thazienne!'' Cale shouted, but still she did not hear him through the tumult. The shadow began to flow sinuously earthward.
Cale threw caution to the wind. Leaping chairs and tables, he ran across the hall and through the carnage. He ignored the paralyzed but still living guests, even those being fed upon by ghouls. He ignored the hungry slavers of the ghouls, loud in his ears as they bounded after him. He saw nothing but the need to get to her before the shadow did.
Something crashed into Gale's back. A ghoul buried its fangs into the muscles of Gale's shoulder and its claws tore at his face. Off balance, he skidded into an overturned table, a snarling ghoul astride his back.
Tableware, broken dishes, and the ghoul's fangs and claws bit into his flesh. The chamel reek of the creature filled his nose and he swallowed bile. Fueled by his fear for Thazienne, he flipped the ghoul over his back and slammed it onto the table. It squirmed and slashed but he held it fast with one hand and a knee. His other hand frantically fished the debris nearby for the first sharp thing he could find. His hand closed on the hilt of a carving knife.
With a grunt, he drove the blade through the ghoul's throat and into the wood of the table underneath. Pinned, it gurgled, kicked feebly, and died.
Tazi! He wiped the blood from his face, ignored the pain in his shoulder and sides, and jumped to his feet.
The shadow had landed on the floor to cut Tazi off from the ring of house guards. Now only twenty paces from Cale, Tazi shoved Meena Foxmantle behind her and held the enchanted dagger before her in a trembling hand. The shadow flowed toward Tazi, faster now. Beyond her, Cale saw Thamalon and Shamur struggling frantically to get free of the house guard ring, but Jander refused to let them go. Cale raced for her, leaping over and through debris and corpses.
'Thazienne!'
As the shadow neared, Meena Foxmantle swooned and fell to the floor at Thazienne's feet. With its long clawed arms outstretched, the shadow darted in for her.
Tazi!' He realized how stupid it was to shout the moment he did it. If he distracted herShe showed no sign of having heard him and he thanked the gods for her single-mindedness. She paid attention only to the living darkness that swirled around her, -.-'
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.
