eyes.
My terror diminishes under his adamant certainty of myself. A self-assurance I’ve never felt before is distilled into my nerves. I steady my breathing in and out, in and out, never looking away from his shadowed face.
Leaves and branches can be heard cracking and being hurled into the air. I silence my breath. Asher leans over me. His head is angled down, his forehead touching my hair, concealing me into the cliff. Rock pushes painfully into my side, but I remain unmoving, unyielding to even the need to blink.
I can’t see anything past Asher, but I hear movement just behind him. I can hear the dry, dead leaves being flung through the air. My heart pounds beneath my calm and steady chest, frantic for my senses to return to me. Fight or flight is kicking in, but I remain immobile, choosing neither.
Asher’s muscles are tense, a strength laying poised, readying to be unleashed. He remains unmoving, one hand resting on the Crimson Sword while the other has slid around my waist between my hip and what I can only imagine to be another sharp angle of the cliff.
Below Asher’s legs, past Gabriel’s feet, I can see bits of sunlight. Another raking of leaves is hurled into the air, and, against the cliff wall, a clawed, gray and withered leg appears. The talons of the feet dig into the dry ground in front of Gabriel. The leg looks like rotting flesh, and I swallow hard before clenching my jaw at the panic that dips into my stomach.
Asher’s arm bumps into me as Gabriel motions a simple wave to the unseen creature. There’s an assessing silence and I picture the creature, the veil, tearing the flesh from my body with the taloned foot I see. A shrieking sound fills and echoes through the crevice I’m wedged into. My eyes flinch closed against the harsh noise that’s piercing and ringing through my ear drums.
I refuse to open them again. Refuse to watch my death unfold before me. Asher was right. There are worse things in these woods. Things I can’t even begin to imagine, but also things that I will think of so often and vividly that I’ll never rest peacefully again.
I tense as fingers graze my bare side and then relax as I feel Asher start to draw circles against my skin between my jeans and shirt. His fingers trace lightly there, a calming sensory input among the terror. I try to focus on the feel of each circle. Of each touch that drifts into each other. I lean my head against his chest and breathe him in. He smells of fresh dirt, and leaves, and … blood. I tilt my head back against the jagged rocks and slowly open my eyes to meet the few features I can see of the monster just a few feet in front of me.
Another shriek is cast into the air and again echoes through the cliffs and into my hiding spot. I tense again at the sound as my heart pounds loudly in my ears, but I don’t shudder away.
I can feel the breath of the monster seep into the cracks and fan my sweating face. Its breathing is heavy and impatient. I lock my jaw in place and wait for the animal’s decision. Will I live or will I face a terrifying death?
The gray taloned foot lifts, kicking leaves forcefully into the air as it steps past Gabriel. Past us. A few minutes pass and finally Asher lifts his head, letting fresh air into the small area, and, when he steps back from me, my lungs drown in the clean air, taking big breaths as my eyes adjust to the sunlight.
I push myself out of the crevice, scraping my elbow against the granite, and then look around for any sign of the veil. Gabriel’s complexion has gone pale, but he appears unharmed, unfazed really. Asher looks into the distance, into the direction the creature left. My feet falter as I stumble over a hole in the ground. I look down and find dirt pulled up from the ground in heaps. The creature’s footprint is wide and nearly the length of my arm.
“Are you bleeding?” Asher asks, looking at my arm.
I’m so dazed it takes a minute for my mind to find meaning in his words I look down at my black jeans and shirt, wondering if I cut myself on a rock, but everything seems fine. I turn my hands back and forth in