Her skin crawled with the desire to turn, to defend herself from the danger at her back.
Focus.
The hinge pin slid free. Jamming the blade into the narrow gap in the frame, she levered it against the door, slamming her weight against the hilt, praying it wouldn’t break. The door shifted, a black space appearing, taunting her with the safety beyond. Shoving in one shoulder, she pushed, her feet struggling for traction.
Then she was inside.
Killian’s voice came through the door, muffled but clear. “Gods-damn it, woman! You are causing me to question my commitment to chivalry!”
Fumbling in the darkness, Lydia unfastened both bolt and lock. “Behind you,” she cried, then took a few running steps and threw her weight against the door. The heavy wood tipped, falling with wicked speed.
Killian danced out of the way. The deimos did not.
The door hit the creature’s head with a sickening crunch, driving it to the ground where it lay motionless.
What relief Lydia felt was short-lived as a second deimos appeared. It took one look at them and screamed, the sound piercing deep into Lydia’s skull.
“Run!” Killian scooped her up and they stumbled into the home, tripping blindly down the midnight hall until his fumbling hands found a door. Pulling her inside, he pressed a gloved finger that tasted like sweat and blood to her lips. Silence.
The house shuddered and wood splintered.
Clip-clop. The creature’s hooves reverberated against the wooden floor as it walked down the hall, the claws on its wingtips scratching the plaster.
Then Killian shoved her hard.
The wall erupted in a spray of plaster and snapping teeth, the stench of the creature rolling over her as Lydia crawled, trying to get away. Her forehead smacked a chair, and she shoved it aside, clambering under a table, flinching as the tassels on the tablecloth brushed her face.
“Get upstairs,” Killian shouted. “I’ll lure it onto the street.”
The floor shook beneath her, wood splintering. The deimos hissed, its wings rustling like a tarp, knocking against shelves and sending glass smashing against the floor. A decanter rolled across the floor and collided with her leg. Lydia snatched it up, the heavy crystal cold against her sweating palms. Shards of wood rained down around her hiding spot as Killian hurled pieces of furniture at the creature to little effect. In the darkness he was fighting blind, but the deimos suffered no such limitation.
She needed to even the odds.
Decanter in hand, Lydia grabbed hold of the tablecloth, pulling down the yards of fabric. Prying loose the decanter’s plug, she sloshed the contents over the cloth, then crawled from under the table.
The deimos and Killian were on the far side of the room, but the blackness made it hard to judge the distance. Something fleshy smacked against her heels, but she kept inching forward. Then before she could lose her nerve, Lydia snapped the tablecloth out high and rushed forward blindly, pulling it down over what she hoped was the animal’s head.
The deimos screamed, its hooves scrabbling against the floor as it stumbled back.
“This way!” she shouted. “It’s tangled in the cloth.”
Boots pounded and Killian half-collided with her, knocking them both against the wall.
“We have to get out!”
Holding on to the fabric of his coat, she dragged him with her, fingers brushing plaster as she searched for the door, finding the opening smashed in the wall instead. The deimos careened around the room, senses blinded by cloth and liquor. Any second it could get free. Upstairs would be no safer—they needed to find somewhere the animal couldn’t break inside.
“There is an open sewer grate just up the street,” Killian whispered. “It’s too small for them to follow us down there.”
The deimos that had been hit by the falling door was gone, and they eased across the wreckage of wood before peering around the corner of the courtyard at the street. Two were feasting on the corpse of the soldier, but another stood watching them. Its wing was dragging, obviously the one she’d struck with the door. At the sight of them, its nostrils flared, and it turned to snort at the other two.
One flapped its wings and took to the air, but the other trotted up the street, stopping next to a black opening in the cobbles, and Lydia could just barely make out a grate resting on the ground nearby.
“You bastards have been watching me.” Killian shook his head, eyes tracking the direction the other deimos was flying. “They know my ways into the sewer. Which grates I’ve pried open.”