Back in the Tavern
"Stop eating!"
The scream tears through the room like a rent in fabric. Plates clatter, a jug falls, wine spills across the table's edge and drips onto the floor. Plink. Plink. Plink. Each drop sounds like an hour passing.
Too late.
"Run!" Tarin springs up. His bench topples behind him, beside him, everywhere. The world tilts, and he reaches for Tessa, finds her hand—it is cold, so cold. "Tessa, take Elin and Lora!"
She only stares at him in horror.
"Take everyone who can still stand," he gasps. His mouth is dry, his tongue a foreign object. "Run!"
He turns toward the door. Toward freedom. Toward the lie of freedom.
The Noctusborn are already standing. Not risen—awakened. They were always here, always ready, always hungry. Mistress Yu in the center, her smile now genuine, too wide, full of teeth that are too sharp. The Melanor to the left, eyes red as coals in fire. The others to the right—villagers, bait—they all share the same eyes. The same stillness.
Tarin draws his dagger. The knife he used for bread and sausage. For peeling apples. For the life he knew.
"Stay back!" His voice breaks. He hears it himself, hates it, needs it nonetheless. "I will—"
He will what? What exactly?
Mistress Yu laughs. Not her alone—all of them. A choir of voices that were human and are no longer. The laughter sounds like shattering glass, like wet flesh on hot stone, like something that learned in the depths of the earth to imitate human joy.
"Do you mean to kill us with that little dagger?" Mistress Yu's voice is her own choir, several tones at once, overlapping. She steps closer, and her shadow falls over Tarin—too large for her flesh, too dark for the light in the room. "You, who could not even cut your own flesh without weeping?"
She knows him. The realization strikes Tarin harder than any weapon. She knows something. About him. About Tessa. About the nights he lay awake wondering if he is strong enough, if he is good enough.
"I—" He raises the dagger higher. The blade trembles. "I will—"
"What?" The Mel'gar steps from the shadows. His limbs move wrong, too many joints, too little substance. "Save us? Punish us?"
He extends his hand. Quick. So quick. Tarin does not see it coming, only feels the pressure on his wrist, the crack, the dagger falling, the clatter on the stone floor.
"Take him," the Mel'gar says to one of the others. A young man, perhaps once a farmer, now only hunger in human form. "Take him and show him what little daggers do."
The young man—the thing in human shape—bends down. Picks up the dagger. Turns it in his hands as if he has never seen a tool before.
Then he smiles. Smiles at Tarin.
The wine on the table no longer smells of rot. It smells of nothing—and that is the worst.
Tarin notices it as he lifts the jug. The liquid inside moves wrong. Too heavy. Too... thick. He tries to run, but his legs weigh heavy, numb and heavy.
Then they open their mouths.
Not the villagers. Not anymore. The skin around their lips tears, splits like overripe fruit, and what emerges from beneath has nothing to do with humans anymore. The teeth are long. Fangs of yellowed bone that reach too far back, where no jaw should have room. They protrude over the lower lips, cut into their own flesh, and the black that drips from them is not blood. It is too glossy. Too hungry.
"Papa?"
Elin's voice. Small. Broken. She sounds as if she has only just learned the word.
Tarin turns. The twins still sit on the bench, hand in hand, and their eyes—so large, so damned large—cling to him. To him. As if he has an answer. As if he ever had one.
"The doors," croaks one of the adventurers, Darion. He stands, sways, reaches for his sword. On the wall. Three steps away. An eternity. "We must—"
One of the figures— Mistress Yu, still wearing her face, but the smile now torn open to her ears—moves. Not runs. Glides. Her feet barely touch the floor as she leans over the table, stares at Darion, and her tongue—too long, too sharp, a mucous worm quivering in the air—glides over her own teeth.
"The sleeping ones," she whispers, and her voice comes from the floor, from the walls, from the wood beneath Tarin's fingernails. "They sleep so sweetly. They can wait."
She lunges. Darion screams—once, brief, before the sound chokes in a wet slurp. His sword falls, clatters against stone, and then he falls himself. Not dead. Empty. His eyes stand open, reflect the torchlight, but behind them there is nothing more. Only the afterimage of something that was just drained hollow.
Tessa's hand finds Tarin's thigh. Her fingers dig through the fabric, into the flesh, and the pain is the only reason he does not scream.
"Take them." Her lips barely move. Her breath hits his ear, hot, panicked. "Elin. Lora. Take them and run."
"We—"
"Now!"
She shoves him. Not gently. Her full strength is in that push, and Tarin staggers, catches himself, and then he has the twins in his arms. They are light. Too light. Like birds one could crush if one held too tight.
"Mama?" Lora's voice. She does not tremble. That is the worst. She sounds only... confused. "Where is Mama?"
Tarin turns around. Tessa is already standing, the dagger drawn from its sheath—when did she take it?—and her hands do not tremble. Her eyes neither. She just stares at the creature that was once Mistress Yu. His wife's normally familiar face is now a mask made of something he no longer recognizes. No fear. No rage. Only... determination. The kind one has when one has already lost and does not yet know it.
"Tarin." She speaks his name as if tasting it for the last time. "You are the leader. Be one now!"
"I cannot leave you—"
"You must." A smile. Quick. Crooked. "Our little sparks. They need light, not... this."
Something roars. Behind him. Before him. Everywhere. The tavern breathes with open mouths, and Tarin feels time stretch, tear like old linen. He sees Tessa's hand on the dagger. Sees her take a step toward the creature. Sees how the others—Vara, those who can still stand—draw their weapons, tremble, are ready to die.
"All who can run!" His voice sounds foreign. Deeper. As if someone else had spoken. "Follow me!"
He runs. Not because he is brave. Because he is a coward. Because he must hold the twins, because they are lighter than the look in Tessa's eyes, because he cannot watch what happens next.
The door. Five steps. Four. Three.
Something strikes his shoulder—a table, a creature, he does not know—and he stumbles, catches himself, presses the children tighter against him. Elin screams now. A high, piercing tone that hammers in his skull. He runs on.
Then he is outside. The night swallows him, cold, damp, full of ash. Behind him, something collapses. A table. A body. A promise.
He runs without turning back.
Still in the Tavern
Tessa hears the whinny of a horse outside. He has them, she thinks. He really has them. The thought is a spark in the darkness, and she holds it fast before it dies.
The creature before her— Mistress Yu—tilts her head. The movement is almost curious. Like a cat playing with its prey before breaking its neck.
"You smell... different," she whispers. Her tongue darts, cuts itself on her own teeth, and the black drips onto the floor. It hisses. "Not of fear. Of... determination?"
"Of mother," Tessa says. Her voice does not tremble. She had not expected it, but it does not tremble. "That is what mothers smell like. When their children are in danger."
She strikes. Not at the creature—the bench behind her. Heavy. Oak. She swings it with all the strength left to her, and the wood strikes the creature's side, throws it against the wall. Bones break. Not human. Too loud. Too dry.
The creature straightens. Her jaw hangs crooked, black fluid wells from the corner of her mouth, and she laughs. A sound like breaking glasses in a metal barrel.
"Good," she says. "That makes it... more interesting."
Tessa thrusts. The dagger in her hand is Tarin's favorite dagger, the one with the ivory hilt he inherited from his father. She hopes he will forgive her.
The creature is faster. Her claw—when did her hands become claws?—strikes Tessa's shoulder, throws her back, through the room, over a table. She lands on something soft. Jaro. His face is still warm, but his eyes... his eyes stare into nothing.
She tries to rise. Her legs do not obey. The pain comes only now, a wave threatening to drown her, but she bites her lip, tastes blood, and that keeps her awake.
The creature stands over her. The red eyes pulse in rhythm with a heartbeat she should not have.
"The children," whispers the creature, and her voice is almost gentle. Almost human. "They smell so... juicy. Like ripe fruit. Like—"
With her last breath, she speaks: "Dare not... touch my children!"