Chapter Eleven: Vitality’s Murmur, Cleansing the Defiled!
1082 Words
Palms—incandescent!
Contact with Diego’s cyanotic brow—
*HMMMMMMMM—!!!*
The shadowkin’s psychic shriek detonated—scalpel-sharp needles of venomous ice lancing Leo’s synapses! Gelid! Viscous! Ravenous! A tsunami of predatory malice crashing against his consciousness!
“Ungh!” Leo staggered—vision graying! Cerebral agony eclipsed Locke’s sigil-corrosion—primal! Feral! Starved jackals tearing psychic sinew!
“Leo!” Martha’s shriek—raw terror.
“HOLD!” Leo’s snarl cracked air. Incisors ground—enamel fracturing, copper-flood flooding his palate! He anchored himself—mind a diamond lens!
Retreat? Diego dies.
Memory: Robert Locke’s sigil-battle. That life-incinerating conflagration. But here—a child! Precision! Restraint?! Screw restraint! Subjugate this filth!
Focus!
*Hummm… Hummm… Hummm…*
A tenuous warmth—frail yet adamantine—welled from his depleted core. Coursed down arms. Pooled in palms.
No argent cataclysm. A nimbus—lunar, lambent—haloing his hands. Enveloping Diego’s wintry brow.
*SKREEEEEEE—!!!*
A shriek—razored glass on bone—tore through Leo’s psyche! The shadowkin’s death-throe!
Leo’s palms—encased in glacial serpents! Fangs of frost! Gnawing! Numbing! Siphoning!
“Christ!” Leo’s tendons corded—sweat-drenched linen fused to spine! He marshaled will—pressed the luminous tide deeper!
Soul-war!
Silent. Brutal.
Leo slogged through tar-pits—each step Herculean! The entity’s cryogenic grasp—dragging him toward stygian depths!
*“BEGONE—!!!”* Leo’s soul-roar detonated! Fury! Defiance! Sanctuary-forge ignited!
*Hummm… Hummm… Hummm…*
The nimbus flared—a guttering candle defiant!
Then—
Diego’s thorax—that throbbing indigo vessel—convulsed!
*Pfft—!*
A jet of pitch—viscous, animate—erupted from the boy’s lips! A necrotic asp! Reeking of sulphur and gangrene—striking at Leo’s face!
“BEWARE!” Martha’s cry!
Leo—pinned by psychic frost—paralyzed!
*HWWWOOOOOONG—!!!*
The nimbus—instinctual—surged! A shockwave of searing purity!
*SSSSSSS—!!!*
Branding iron on glacial slush!
The ebon vapor—
Vaporized!
Scorched ectoplasmic residue—a final micro-scream—dissolved.
*Effect!*
Leo’s spirit soared! Exhaustion near-terminal—but hope!
“AGAIN!” He channeled focus! No bludgeoning force—a surgeon’s scalpel! Guiding the amber radiance—a subterranean aquifer—over Diego’s ravaged form!
Across hollow orbits. Cracked lips. Bulbous, indigo serpents beneath parchment skin.
*Hummm… Hummm… Hummm…*
Audible now! Droning bees? Celestial chorales? Martha clasped her mouth—awe-stricken!
*Ssssszzzzzz…*
Subcutaneous sizzling—water droplets on searing iron!
Visible!
Those grotesque vessels—sun-struck hoarfrost! Softening! Receding! Hue—lightening!
“Sacred heart!” Martha wept—salt-rivers carving canyons down withered cheeks. Diego’s necrotic collar—the obsidian bruise—fading!
“Nnngh…” Diego’s death-rattle softened! Eyelids—micro-tremors!
*SUCCESS!*
Leo’s core blazed! But vigilance held—the entity’s nucleus festered deep in Diego’s plexus!
*“EMERGE!”* Leo commanded! Radiance concentrated—a photonic lance—piercing the boy’s sternum!
*Zzzzt! Krrkkk!*
Psychic static—micro-arc welds!
Diego arched—a silent scream contorting his features!
“DIEGO!” Martha lunged!
“STILL!” Leo’s bark froze her! Agony spiked—consciousness fraying! The shadowkin’s final gambit—devour the host-soul!
*“ANNIHILATE—!!!”*
Leo detonated his soul’s last ember!
*FWOOM—!!!*
The nimbus—transmuted! Solar fury sheathed in mercy!
Dawn’s first ray shredding perpetual night!
*SSSSSZZZZTTT—!!!*
Cascade of ectoplasmic evaporation!
*Pop! Pop! Pop!*
Diego’s chest—subcutaneous boils ruptured! Jets of condensed umbra—screeching (Leo alone heard)—metamorphosed into acrid vapor! Purged! Nullified!
Silence.
The hum—ceased.
Leo’s luminescence—extinguished.
*THUD.*
Leo collapsed—spine against frigid plaster. Lungs gulped air—a marathoner post-finish. Drenched. Corpselike pallor. Cerebral ice-picks. Viscera—voided.
Utter depletion.
But—
*Triumph!*
He lifted leaden eyelids—
Miracle substantiated.
Diego’s thorax—indigo serpents vanished! Skin: alabaster, not necrotic. Faint ecchymosis lingered—residual storm-clouds.
Lips: carmine, not cyanotic.
Crucially—
Respiration.
Steady. Shallow. Vital.
“Nnn… Grandma…?” Diego’s lashes fluttered—slits revealing confusion, weakness… life.
“DIEGO! ANGEL!” Martha engulfed him—wracking sobs! “PRAISE GOD! PRAISE LEO!”
“Th… thirsty…” A kitten-whisper.
“WATER!” Martha scrambled—spilling liquid grace from a chipped pitcher.
Leo watched—a specter against the wall. Lips twitched—a phantasm of a smile. Fingers—too spent to lift.
Worth it.
Utterly.
*HMMMMMMMM—!!!*
A vibration—faint. Familiar.
Slithering into his ravaged mind.
Gelid. Adhesive.
And—
*Voyeuristic.*
Congeneric to the shadowkin—but… refined. Potent.
Leo’s heart seized! Pupils dilated!
Christ!
Residual?
He scanned—feral intensity—windows, stairwell, tenement shadows!
Vacant.
Only Martha’s ministrations. Diego’s swallows.
Yet—
That frigid scrutiny—fleeting—a serpent’s tongue on his nape!
Not delusion.
Never.
Comrades? Or… something worse… drawn by the energy discharge?
Permafrost dread drowned his fleeting triumph.
He strained to rise—muscles liquid futility.
Goddamn!
Wolfpack after the bear?!
(Locke Manor: Surveillance Sanctum)
Video walls—mosaic of vigilance.
Rosa Casta—cryonic sentinel—absorbed the feeds. Arctic irises—unblinking.
Anomaly:
Western perimeter cam—woodland fringe.
Screen—glitched! Digital necrosis—two seconds—then clarity.
Forest: vacant.
Rosa’s focus—laser-locked. Fingers danced on her tablet—retrieving corrupted frames.
Magnify.
Decelerate.
Final pre-glitch frame:
A blurred specter—dun hoodie—scaling palisade. Dissolving into arboreal gloom.
Vector: East.
Oakwood Street. Slums.
Rosa’s eyes—narrowed. Surgical steel glinted.
Encrypted comms lifted. Voice—lifeless modulation:
“Target acquired: Leo Yang.”
“Coordinates: Oakwood Street #117 vicinity.”
“Directive:”
“Shadow Unit.”
“Engage.”
“Extract.”
“Alive.”
Transmission ended.
Silence.
The control room’s chilled air—
Now suffused with…
The ozone tang of…
Imminent…
Hemorrhage.
- Writer
