Through the Door (The Thin Veil) - By Jodi McIsaac Page 0,60
at least a dozen Merrow before a spear sank into his side beneath his raised arm. Murdoch roared with rage and threw his entire handful of short daggers at once, each of them finding a target in a Merrow throat before dislodging themselves and soaring through the air, dripping with purple blood, back to their owner.
Riona looked at Cedar. “Stay here!” she commanded. Without another word, she turned and made a running leap off the edge of the cliff. Cedar screamed and scrambled to her feet. Riona was falling, her arms outstretched, but then she twisted in mid-air and in a burst of feathers transformed into a hawk, screeching as she dove to join the melee below. Darting at the eyes of the Merrow, she danced through the air, avoiding the spears, tridents, and deadly bursts of sound being flung at her. Anya had emerged from the cloud that was Molly and was advancing toward the water’s edge, while Murdoch continued his assault on those brave enough to stick their necks out of the water. Anya raised her arms once more and the water started to push back, exposing dry land underneath. Rohan was dragging Oscar’s limp body behind a large rock close to the cliff’s base, and Felix was running toward him with a speed that did not belong to a man of his apparent age. Cedar looked around for Finn but couldn’t see him. Then she looked back at the ocean and saw that Nuala was fighting the turbulent waters, moving herself and Eden slowly toward the rocks beneath the hut.
“No!” Cedar screamed. “She’s getting away!” She ran over to where she had seen the others climb down a thick rope, but all that was left was a thin golden thread. She put her hands around it, but it was no thicker than a strand of sewing thread. How did they do it? she asked herself. She grabbed the thread again. “Help me!” she yelled at it. “I need to get down!” Still it remained limp in her hand. Tossing it aside, she slid onto her stomach and without another thought lowered herself over the edge, searching for a toehold. She tried to remember what she had learned during her weekends of rock climbing while at university, but this was a far cry from those excursions, with their safety harnesses and anchors and belayers. The rock face was almost perfectly vertical, and Cedar knew one false step would send her plummeting to the rocks below. But she merely tightened her grip and searched for the next hold.
Suddenly, she heard a cry coming from one of the Merrow, louder than any of their screams thus far.
“Human!”
Cedar froze. She knew she was completely exposed. There was no possibility of hiding or climbing back up to the top. Then she cried out in pain as something hard hit the small of her back. A trident clanged off the wall just inches from her head. Barely clinging to the rock, she turned her head and almost released her hold in terror.
Beside and above her loomed a creature more terrible than anything she had ever seen. Its body, as large as the cliff she clung to, was covered in green scales and large, round, pulsating suckers. Claws as long as her arm extended from each of its dozen fingers. Instead of a mouth, the creature had a swarming mass of tentacles, as if it were in the process of swallowing a giant octopus. Two golden eyes protruded grotesquely from atop its head, and a pair of dragon wings unfurled from between its shoulder blades. A harpoon struck it in the neck but the weapon just glanced off, as if it had hit the rock wall. The creature turned its eyes on Cedar, and she screamed, her fingers losing their grip on the rocks. A tentacle shot out and wrapped around her, but instead of devouring her or thrashing her against the rock as she had expected, the beast lowered her to the ground. It set her in a crevice in the rock wall and rolled a large boulder in front of her. Then it turned and, with a deafening roar, moved its massive body toward the screeching Merrow.
Cedar stared after it in horror, shocked to still be alive. Then she remembered why she had been trying to climb down the cliff in the first place. Eden. She hoisted herself up and over the boulder that was blocking her way and ran as fast