CHAPTER 6THAT WHICH DISPELS SHADOWS
Even as they turned, the opal radiance faded as the moon soared farther up the sky. And in the same moment, the hideous, jelly-like things stirred to wakefulness. Cold eyes blinked open, and it was horrible to see the bird-like rapacity that burned in those quasi-human faces.
Uttering shrill, raucous cries, the bat-things launched themselves from their perches, hurtling toward the man-creatures that had dared invade their nesting-place.
The men shouted and swung steel blades. These clove through the lucent bodies of the Shadow Bats without seeming to cause them hurt or harm. But, as the steel blades flashed in the waning moonlight, it could be seen that they flinched away from the flicker of luminance, veering off.
Then it was that Carthalla gasped a
