Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1) by Kathryn Kingsley (great novels to read txt) 📕

There were too many moons. And too many stars. He went wide eyed. “Oh. Shit.”

“That’s better. I—” The guardian stopped. Jakob stopped.

Everything stopped.

A chill ran up his spine as he took a step away from the woods. A noise came from it that he could recognize.

The howl of a wolf broke the night air.

But that wasn’t enough to give him the goosebumps that spread over him. It sounded somehow larger and worse than a wolf. How a howl could sound worse, he wasn’t sure. But he knew that whatever that sound belonged to, it wasn’t the standard scruffy kind of wolf he had seen when he had traveled from one citadel or sanctuary town to another.

And when two pinpricks of green light appeared in the shadows, like two candles burning in the darkness, he knew he was right. The thing sprang forward, and it was larger than his shack. Jakob screamed and fell over, landing hard on his ass.

The guardian grunted and fired his bow at it. The arrow landed with a thunk into dead flesh.

Flesh that didn’t seem to care.

A huge and exposed skull of some enormous canine-esque creature shone in the light of the impossible moons that hung in the sky. The creature was at least twelve feet tall at the shoulder. It prowled forward, growling low.

What kind of new drengil was this? Had the plague reached some cache of sleeping demons?

The guardian wisely turned and ran, shouting for reinforcements and hollering for people to get away and escape.

Jakob hadn’t even realized he had fallen over until he tried to run away and was unable to do much more than scramble in the dirt. He heard the sounds of people screaming and fleeing, and wished he were among them.

Instead, he found himself staring up at the massive, rotted creature…who was looking right back down at him.

The skulled face lowered toward his, dwarfing him. The creature didn’t smell like a drengil. Even decayed as it was, the wolf didn’t smell like rotten flesh, despite its form looking decayed. It smelled like the woods. Like rainfall on leaves.

The creature turned its head to one side, the green light peering at him from inside the empty sockets where an eye should be. It didn’t flicker or blink.

Jakob tried to scramble back farther, but a massive paw landed on his chest, pinning him to the ground. Claws that were sharp and black as pitch were pressed against him, but thankfully not in him. Not yet.

The message was clear—stay put.

He was too terrified to argue about it. He lay there obediently on the dirt, staring up at the thing, and wondered if its huge, white fangs were about to tear into his flesh.

Worse still, it seemed it wasn’t alone.

“What have you caught, wolf?”

A female voice. Amused and sultry. He didn’t glance away from the creature above him.

“It seems I have caught a mortal…” the giant wolf replied.

Jakob’s astonishment at the fact that it could speak was washed away by his continued terror. The voice was low, raspy, like bone sliding on rock. The creature, despite having a lower jaw, didn’t move it when he spoke.

The creature’s head whipped up and away from him then. The wolf raised itself up but did not lift his claw from Jakob’s chest. “And there are many more.”

The woman approached. Jakob let out a terrified whimper. The woman was…he didn’t even know what to think. First, she was naked, wearing only chains and scraps of fabric. Two, she was covered in strange marks, lines of green that wandered over her skin. Third, she had a wooden mask that covered her forehead and temples, from which sprouted horns that…looked like they belonged to her.

And she had a tail.

And she was looking down at him with green eyes that belonged to a cat, slitted and strange. She raised an eyebrow at him. “He does not smell of Earth.”

“No. He smells of somewhere cold. Somewhere that reeks of death,” the creature over him whispered. Well, whispered loudly. “Get the others. Round up the mortals. I fear something terrible has happened to our world, Kamira.”

The woman—Kamira—grimaced. “Do we kill them?”

The monster looked down at him as if thinking it over. “No. Leave them unharmed.”

Kamira reached out and yanked the arrow out of the creature’s shoulder. The monster didn’t even flinch. She turned it over in her hand before she tossed it over her shoulder as though it were utterly unimportant. “And if they fight?”

“Break as few as you must to keep the others in line. But I think there are only a few fighters in their midst.” The creature lifted its head as if it were sniffing the air. “I sense fear.” He paused. “But be wary…”

“I know,” Kamira bared her teeth in an unfriendly expression, “I smell it, too.”

“Smell what?” Jakob was astonished that he could even speak. And of all things, that was what he chose to say? By the grave of the Allfather, I’m a fucking fool.

The creature turned back down to him, seemingly surprised as well. It lowered that huge, ghastly skull of a head closer to him. When it spoke, the single word sent a chill rolling through Jakob so hard that he shivered.

“Poison.”

The night air suddenly turned into a sea of frightened screams and animal sounds of every kind. Growls, barks, roars, screeches—these creatures came in every size and shape. Several ran past him and the giant wolf. One looked like a crossbreed between a man and a bat. Another, a tiger. Another, a snake. They were all ghastly and terrible.

Jakob almost missed the drengil. They were at least predictable.

“Stay close.”

Jakob blinked. What had the creature just said to him? It took him a second to process. Stay close? “Pardon me?”

“If you run, I’ll chase you.” The raspy monster lifted his claw from Jakob’s chest. “Stay at my side, and I will not need to.”

“Wh—why?”

The creature sighed. “Do you want to be hunted and rounded up?”

“No?”

“Then