Void Domain, Book 06 полностью

Then again, it was the dead of night. Most people were probably in deep sleep.

Irene stooped down to be a little closer to the mass of tentacles. “Lucy? Can you hear me?”

Something that might have been a response in tentacle-people language emerged from the mass. An effort was made, but whatever it was, Irene found it entirely unintelligible.

“You’re going to have to form a mouth if you want to talk to me. And everything else you use for speech.”

Irene immediately regretted saying anything at all.

Watching as the pile of wet spaghetti noodles twisted around to form a set of disembodied lips was one of the more disturbing things that Irene had witnessed in her recent memory. Possibly ever.

“This place feels gross.”

“I don’t feel anything,” Irene said. Though, now that it was mentioned, Catherine had been complaining about something similar before she had left.

But she wasn’t, Irene glanced down at the mass, like this.

“Do you think you can pull yourself together?”

Rather than give any verbal response, Lucy’s tentacles trembled. She was trying, that much was clear. Slowly, ever so slowly, her body started to gain some definition.

“Huh.”

Irene jumped again. She shouldn’t have, she knew that Jordan was right at her side. He was just so quiet and easy to forget about.

At least he was a distraction from Lucy. When she had demonstrated her true form in class, she had only done an arm. Even that had been quickly and easily decentralized into the strands of tentacles and put back together. As Lucy was now, it looked almost painful.

Irene was thankful that her uniform was covering up most of her body.

“You don’t seem very surprised. I expected more shock.”

Putting on a frown, the only thing that Irene could think of in response was that the contract was incredibly inconvenient. Jordan knew about demons anyway. There should be an exception for people like him, if nothing else.

“Neither do you,” Irene said with a shake of her head.

“Oh, I was plenty surprised when she fell face first into the ground and exploded into ribbons.”

“I’m sure.”

To avoid any continuation of the topic, Irene reached down and helped the mostly solid Lucy to her feet. She made sure to only touch Lucy on her clothes; the demon was covered in some slimy mucus.

She wobbled a fair amount, but managed to keep from falling on her face again. There was a bit of wet gurgling noises coming from–Irene wanted to say from Lucy’s throat, but that wasn’t entirely accurate. It was just coming from Lucy in general.

“Why is this place so gross?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Irene said. “I don’t feel anything.” Except a constant butterflies-in-stomach feeling, she thought. She was fairly certain that the feeling wasn’t related. Glancing over at Jordan, Irene asked, “do you feel anything?”

He shrugged. “Not particularly. Maybe a little unsettling sensation, but that could have just been from watching Lucy put herself together.”

“Something is here. But not? It’s,” Lucy paused, scrunching up her face in concentration.

Given her lack of bone structure or human muscles, the look sent chills up Irene’s spine. She was clearly mimicking what she had seen other people do in similar situations, but wasn’t quite succeeding. There was just something uncanny about it. If asked, Irene wouldn’t be able to point out any one thing in particular that was wrong with it. It just looked off.

“I don’t know the words,” Lucy eventually said, sagging in defeat.

On instinct, Irene reached forward to help steady the demon. When Lucy sagged, she sagged.

A stray thought couldn’t help but slip in. She’d be great at limbo.

“Maybe if you saw the room?” Jordan asked with a shrug. “Couldn’t hurt, could it?”

Irene wasn’t so sure about that. They might have to go get a mop if Lucy fell again, or worse, passed out. Just to sweep her down the staircase.

But Lucy had already taken one wobbly step forward. That was followed by a second and a third, each more steady than the last. Irene wanted to say that her eyes were unfocused as she moved, but that wasn’t all that different from the other times she had seen the security guard around school.

Considering for a moment that her eyes were strands of tentacles too… Irene shook her head before she could think about it too hard. Demon physiology was not covered in their course work and probably for good reason.

Moving up next to her, Irene stopped Lucy from stepping over the barrier of the shackles. If there was an invisible creature trapped inside, she didn’t really want Lucy to be trapped inside as well. Even if nothing attacked her, Irene would have to break the shackles to let her out, potentially letting out whatever had gotten trapped.

Irene gasped as she looked into the room from Lucy’s side.

There were definitely new footprints in the sand. She had spent long enough staring at it that she was sure of it.