Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47052 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 235(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47052 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 235(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
“Nope. One thermos of tea and a muffin.”
“Well, that’ll certainly keep us till the next Halloween full moon.”
She blinked up at him. “Us?”
Skittering sounded from the corners of the kitchen. “We’re not alone.” He freed his sword and scented the air, detecting something unexpected: scales.
Red eyes appeared in the shadows, what must be a legion of small, befanged creatures with scaly green skin. “Are those . . .” He frowned, recalling where he’d seen such creatures before. “. . . gremlins?” He turned to Poppy and read her expression: zero surprise. “You knew they’d be here?”
“Just ignore them.” She headed toward the kitchen doors. A dozen more of them blocked her way.
“Stay behind me.” Sword raised, he hastened in front of her, cursing his inability to trace her away. “How is this possible? They don’t exist in the Lore.” They didn’t exist at all, except in the minds of humans.
“I said to ignore them.” She sidled around to face him. “They can’t hurt you. They’re just illusions.”
Her irises had turned purple like sunstruck lavender. “Your eyes are alight.” His narrowed. A witch’s eyes could glow from emotion, but also from power. “Are you making these?”
“It’s involuntary, okay?”
Her ability reminded him of Sabine, the Sorceri Queen of Illusions. Sabine was considered the queen because she could conjure sights and sounds better than anyone else alive. But others could also dabble with the same talent. “How do you know these are just illusions?” The gremlins climbed the countertops, positioning themselves to strike. “I can scent them.”
Poppy marched up to the mass of slavering creatures. “Look.” She reached toward a larger one. “It can’t hurt me.”
The thing gave a snarl, baring its mouth full of fangs. Then it leapt for her face.
THREE
Poppy had trained herself not to react. “It’s just an illu—”
Rök vaulted in front of her, wielding his long sword. Slash. He severed a very real gremlin in two!
No time for shock; the remaining creatures attacked, springing off the countertops.
Rök cut through a swath of them. “Illusion, huh? They wet my blade readily enough.” Green blood coated it.
She snagged a pouch from her bag. It disintegrated into her palm as battle magic churned through her—like a hit of Hecate’s divinity. Purple light shone from her hands. When more gremlins leapt for her, she released beams from her palms. The creatures burst, reptilian body parts painting the walls. “This has never happened!”
“What the hell is going on here?” Rök sent fang-filled heads tumbling.
She picked off any that got past the reach of his blade. “I think someone cursed me, turning any conjuring potential I might have against me, forcing me to fuel the illusions. Maybe it was a rogue warlock. Or a rival merc hired a traitorous witch. If we’d met sooner, I might have suspected you!”
He scowled. “When did it start?” Slash went his sword.
Blast went her beams. “Decades ago. I’d spot something amiss out of the corner of my eye, but only on Halloween night.” As he defended to his left, more attacked on his right. She exploded them to the ceiling. “I thought I was imagining it. Then they got worse each year. But they’ve never embodied before!”
“Then what gives?”
As she fought beside Rök, she played out different explanations, settling on the most likely: “Maybe this place is intensifying the curse.” A wizard’s stronghold imbued with magic? She could see it.
If the castle wouldn’t open until dawn and it was turning her illusions into physical manifestations, then she was in trouble. She had every reason to expect many more, and they would only get deadlier.
“Kind of random, no?” Rök moved with the ease of a practiced warrior, all his generous muscles working together to slaughter his enemy. “Gremlins?”
A pair vaulted from a pot rack, heading for a dismount—on her head. She blasted them into oblivion, then admitted, “Not just gremlins.”
“What else?” He skewered three like a scaly kabob.
She reluctantly said, “Anything that haunts mortals on Halloween. Horror villains and monsters.” She knew Rök was well versed in them. “They change over time. I call them my visitors.” Whenever human nightmares updated, so too would the visitors. “Over the last few years, I’ve seen a doll with a knife. A killer clown. Sometimes aliens and . . .” She hesitated, not wanting to cop to the most problematic one.
Rök flung the gremlin kabob from his blade. “And?”
“The . . . Headless Horseman. Or, at least, the humans’ latest version of it.” The last time she’d encountered the methodical swordsman and his red-eyed steed, she’d thanked Hecate he wasn’t real. Would he be tonight?
“You mean the version that hunts heads and can’t be killed? Fantastic.”
“I can’t control this! You think I haven’t tried to? They’ve haunted me!” She would wake to a maniac with a glove of razors looming over her bed. The machete-wielding camp slasher had first greeted her in the bathroom—the last shower she’d ever take after sunset on Halloween.