Read Online Through Glass: Episode Four by Rebecca Ethington - Free Book Online Page B

the noise kept coming, the talons of what my fear
could only process as hundreds of Tar, circling above us like birds
of prey.
    I reached out and grabbed Travis’s arm
on instinct, only to be met with a wall of tense muscle, his hand
reaching over to wrap around my wrist.
    His hand was a vice around mine as he
pulled me into the darkness of the storage room, the sound of the
talons turning into white noise as he closed the door behind us,
trapping us in the ebony darkness of the musty space.
    I didn’t dare ask the question because
I already knew. If they were Tar, the light would turn them to ash
before they even reached us. And if not, if they were Abran’s
men…
    Then there wasn’t much we could do
anyway.
    Except to fight.
    The light that I had hoped would be
our salvation dimmed to a thin glowing line, the only light that
could escape through the doorframe as Travis closed the door with a
soft click. A click that was barely audible over the torrent of
sound that stampeded through the upstairs. The noise grew and
ebbed, clicks and thumps moving in a circular wave that moved
closer and closer to the center of the house.
    Closer to the stairs that would take
them down to us.
    My heart thundered as the sound grew,
drowning out my frantic breaths and the sound of my heart as it
moved into my ears. I reached up toward Travis, my hand shaking as
the sound increased, as it centered over the epicenter of the
house.
    Then it stopped.
    All we heard was silence.
    My breath caught at the absence of
noise, my heart thundering in my chest as I waited, my body still
and stiff against my brother’s.
    I didn’t dare move into the large,
dark space behind us. I didn’t dare remove my hand from my
brother’s back, from the deep, heaving breaths that moved his chest
and promised me he was alive.
    I waited, not daring to breathe, for
the sound to return, for something to happen. Anything. My muscles
tightened the more we waited, the fear that ran through my blood
making it hard to breathe. I knew they were coming, whether they
waited upstairs in the maze of a house that we had become trapped
in or not, they were coming.
    We were going to have to fight
them.
    My free hand reached up at the
thought, my stiff fingers stretching as I moved to remove the gun
out of its holster.
    Click.
    My head jerked up at the sound, my
fingers frozen in place as both Travis and I looked into the dark
slab of wood that separated us from the sound that was just beyond
it.
    Click.
    It came again and it was all I could
do not to jump as my heart jack hammered in my chest so fast that
it ached, the pressure of my fear radiating out and freezing me in
place.
    Travis stiffened under my touch, his
heaving breaths of fear all but leaving as he held the breath in,
fearing as much as I was that we would be found, that we would be
heard. My hand left Travis’s back as he began to lean forward, his
motions slow and controlled as he moved toward the thin beam of
light that escaped from the doorframe and trailed over us. I
watched as the dark mass of his head blocked out the ray, his back
arching as he tried to see what was waiting for us on the other
side, if a monster actually stood in the light.
    Click.
    The light went out with a shatter of
glass at the click of a talon. The sound echoed through the silence
before the high pitched shriek of the monsters echoed through the
derelict house. The sound was loud and abrasive as it rippled
through the cement walls of the cold storage room we hid in, heaved
through my spine and tightened through me in a wave of
panic.
    Something was in the room we had just
vacated. Something stood just on the other side of the door we hid
behind. Something that was intent to kill us. And what was more,
that something had stood in the light. A light it had
broken.
    I tried not to panic, not to think of
the army that had surrounded us, but the fear came
anyway.
    The Tar could not stand in the light,
but I had seen Abran’s men do so. I had