Evan stared down in confusion and agony as blood spurted from his body. There was so much of it, spitting out of his stomach in streams. The spider demon wrenched its spiked leg back out of him and Evan fell to his knees, trying desperately to clamp his hands over the hole.
As his hands turned crimson, he saw black mist trailing along the ground. Stranger still, the mist appeared to emanate from his body.
Evan staggered to his feet, looking around stupidly, as if expecting to see the hospital he desperately needed. He tried to walk, but fell flat on his face, blood pooling around him as he lost consciousness.
*
Perhaps the severe heat woke him. Perhaps his body wanted to be conscious in its final moments before death. All Evan knew was that he was flying through a tunnel which leaked lava. He realised a second later, he wasn't flying but trapped in the demon's grotesque embrace.
He'd no idea how much time had passed since he blacked out. Minutes? Hours? Evan had hoped this was all one elaborate nightmare and he'd be back at the children's home when he woke up.
His stomach felt bizarrely hollow. He looked down to see his white school shirt splashed liberally with red. Is blood supposed to be that dark?
Fragments of memory flashed back, images of the demon taking him into the yawning maw of a floating volcano. He must've been flitting in and out of consciousness for a while. The odour of sulphur and ash was overpowering. He tried furiously to escape the monster's grasp, but he couldn't move his body an inch.
Amidst the panic that consumed him, Evan vaguely realised they'd left the tunnels behind and emerged into a gargantuan cavern. The cave was splattered with blue pools of magma and draped in crimson cobwebs. Like lattices of red silk, the cobwebs threaded every inch of the walls. With rising horror, Evan saw shadowed shapes encased in these webs.
"My Queen," Evan's captor boomed. "My Queen, I have returned to you."
Evan was beginning to piece things together. The cavern, the webs; he must be in the lair of whoever this Queen was. But his most vivid nightmares couldn't have prepared him for the creature that appeared.
He heard the ear-splitting chittering first, then the hideous scuttle of multiple legs. She emerged from the top of the cavern, descending from the gloom on a line of thick red web.
Evan screamed as the abomination landedfeet away.
YOU ARE READING
A Darker Shade of Sorcery (Sample of now published novel.)
FantasíaThe lonely and grieving Evan Umbra is the newest Venator to enter Veneseron, the school for demon hunters. A Venator is a wizard, a spy and a demon hunter rolled into one. They're taught how to wield their sorcery and enchanted weaponry by orcs, elf...
