Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

66

It could be anything.

It was common (witch) knowledge that not only were humans blissfully unaware of most species on earth, but even the magical community discovered more every day, in our realm and in others. Grandma's self-updating compendium on magical beasts always came back with new pages whenever she returned from Coven missions, and the ones she had shown me included fantastical beasts, including great carnivorous ones that towered over her small silhouette sketched on the page. The drawings had been my favorite part, ink-etched recreations of her most perilous or poignant moments in a world I was forbidden to enter, snapshots of a fantasy land I hadn't yet learned to fear.

Maybe the thing stalking up the slopes right now had been in her book all those years ago. Maybe I had seen its form before, scratched onto the page by her autonomous quill that could bring the most ferocious creatures to life, scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch. Maybe on one of those secret nights Grandma let me sneak peeks into the book, pretending she didn't know I'd crept into the attic again, I'd seen an etching of my gruesome end, the face and form of this beast that would seal my fate.

The storm had stopped. Now the whisper of the rains were gone. In its place was a swelling presence that filled the empty space all around us, something not quite living but voraciously hungry, driven to consume solely for the sake of consumption. It crept into my ears, my nose, even into my eyes when my lids fluttered, despite seeing nothing. I kept my mouth clamped shut to keep the presence from seeping in, but it was no use. The shriveling taste sat heavy on my tongue, carving its home into it. Even as Lust swiftly carried me away and the sensation calmed — not faded, not deadened, only calmed — I knew we were far from safe.

The air crawled. Buzzed. Hummed.

Whatever was coming towards us was dangerous. When the three of us slipped out of the cave, Mammon seemingly leading the way while Lust followed with me in his arms, I had the distinct feeling that the presence had yet to notice us, even if we had all noticed it. The staggering, skin-prickling awareness that a predator had prowled far too close, but that we were still safe from its attentions, washed over me with its filmy relief... temporarily. There was no telling if it would stay that way. Goosebumps swallowed up the back of my neck and arms, a spine-chilling warning that if we didn't get far, far away, soon, that almost darkly putrid sensation would finally find us. Would finally come after us.

Its aura was nothing like I'd ever experienced, macabre and ravening, a shadow starved of light and prey and snatching up anything stupid enough to come too close. Its intensity was matched only by the Princes' — but where Lust's was overwhelming and hypnotically seductive, luring me in by breaking down all my inhibitions, and where Mammon's was simply insatiable, spawning fear and awe at the sheer madness that emanated from his whole soul and spirit, this... this was different. The Princes' auras grabbed hold of the very core of me, whipping my emotions up in a maelstrom of power and taking control. But this presence did none of that. It didn't have to. It was pure, absolute ravaging. Inhuman, not even living — nothing but the dark weight of something driven to gorge, and gorge deeply.

My response was visceral, coming from a deep, primal, maybe even ancestral memory locked in my genes. Pure fear. No, terror. Because even a monster could be reasoned with, or tricked and tamed. A sliver of a chance existed so long as life and awareness wwere there.

But there was nothing here. Not a speck of touchable sentience. Just...

Devouring.

Lust tightened his hold when another shudder racked me, elbows jerking, shoulders twitching. That he didn't say a word as he rushed along was telling: even someone as confident and careless as Lust knew that we had to be silent at all costs. If he had tried to speak aloud and comfort me, I would have shut him up myself by any means necessary.