The bundle in the girl’s arms moved, then was still again.
‘We can’t leave this place, ever,’ the girl said, her voice as empty as doom, her eyes as dead and vacant as stone.
‘What are you talking about?’ Mraan said, sensing something underneath the girl’s demeanour like unfocused danger.
She turned to look at him, and the sight of her eyes, which affected one like standing directly in the line of fire of a drawn bow, caused him to step back in fear. In the same instant, the thing in her arms suddenly sprang into life. All he saw of it was a blur of snapping teeth and ripping claws which seemed to burst out of the girl’s chest. He was several blocks away, lungs burning, legs quivering from shock and exhaustion, before he realized that there was no pursuit.
‘Dead!’ he thought in horror. ‘The girl was dead, yet still animate.’ And he found that he was able to put a name to the unspeakable thing that she’d become.
A demon from the Netherworld! During the full light of day!
He shuddered, trying to imagine the fate he had narrowly escaped and finding that he could not. Once more, he resumed his quest for the Library.