Reflections Of Angels

Picking Up The Scent

"She was up here." Travis pointed as he lead them between the bushes at the park towards the pond. "She had a little kid with her, she was bringing them to play in the park. Knowing Nyx, I think it's likely she walked here."

Alysha nodded, moving to avoid stray and awkwardly-hanging branches. Behind her, Selene followed, carefully tiptoeing over the uneven and filthy ground.
It was growing dark; but it wasn't dark yet. Just a sort of ghostly twilight, that clung to everything like mist.

Craning her neck, Alysha peered over the top of the bushes as they came to the end, to look up ahead of them into the park. Suddenly she stopped them with a sound. "Wait. Stop! Look up ahead!"

Alarmed, her two companions stopped. Stepping forward to the front, Alysha peered out between the bushes of the grown-over path, speaking in a low tone. "Look. Look there."

She was looking up ahead at the place where Nyx was. There, something was silhouetted against the pond; a distorted, emaciated, humanoid being. It dropped its corpse-like body to the ground on all fours, scrabbling and sniffing about in the dirt, searching for something.

"Draughr." The breath stilled in Alysha's throat. "Oh... Oh, this is not good."

Suddenly the creature straightened up- its movements jerky and unnatural, the flesh on its bones stringy and putrid; meaning this one had clearly been this way for some time now. The creature made an unnatural gurgling- stretching sound, like a cry of victory that it had found what it was looking for, and picking up pace to an incredible speed as it went, it blundered off away from them across the park.

"No, no, no, no!" Alysha blurted out, lunging out of the greenery. She desperately turned to the others who were looking on in shock. "After it! We have to go! It's looking for her too!"