B2BCyCon Walk with the Monsters Blog Hop

Welcome to the Blood Spring and the Walk with the Monsters Blog Hop!

Join us on the dark road as we explore the shadowy domain of horror. Come discover strange haunts and creepy corners where things really do go bump in the night.

Come, step on the path, the bloodthirsty creatures await…

Courser

Aeryi huddled against the brick wall, pressed into a black corner of a backstreet alley. Danger stalked the hours after the twelfth bell chimed. Creatures emerged from shadowed alleys to hunt, beasts both otherworldly and mortal. She shivered, the echo of her dead father’s voice ringing in her head.

“Never be a victim, child. Never.”

Aeryi smiled, a cold lifeless salute, and leapt from her hiding place. She slashed her knife with skillful ease. Her prey, a poor drunkard, fell on the cobblestones his calf half-severed and bleeding.

“Come and feed,” she whispered, and the alley swirled with a dark pulse.

She watched as the air solidified, as pale hunched over creatures cloaked in smoke and incorporeal substance shuffled from the dark night. She stared as the unnatural things gravitated to the groaning man, who wriggled on the stones, still unaware of his fate. Her father’s voice again whispered in her ear.

“Sometimes a devil’s bargain is all you have.”

Some part of her wanted to look away, but she kept her gaze straight ahead on the unfolding scene. The beings swarmed the poor unfortunate soul with gnashing teeth and slicing claws, in screams and pleas of mercy. They devoured flesh and bone, drank of bile and blood, until not a scrap of body remained, and their meal was done.

One turned to Aeryi then, a ragged toothed smile peeking from an eternal black empty and its red eyes swirling in unknown emotion. “Good hound.” A semblance rasp of a voice addressed her. “Find us good meat.”

It raised its facsimile of a limb and patted her head with blood stained claws. Only experience and practice prevented Aeryi from shuddering. “Now find more. Still hungry.”

“Yes, master. As you command.” She gave a slight bow. “Another kill tonight. I’ll find you someone.”

Another smile and the thing and its fellows melted back into the shadows. Aeryi headed into the street to find another victim for the beasts that controlled her. The ever present murmur of her father’s voice followed her as she stalked the streets, the words he spoke the day he bound her body and soul to the creatures.

“One day you’ll understand. One day you’ll thank me. Better to be predator than prey.”

Whispers caught her attention. A man and a woman framed in a doorway.

Fresh meat.

As she crept along the shadows, knife ready to strike, she thought about her father, about his words. He was right about one thing.

Always better to be predator than prey.

Her father learned that last winter at the point of her knife. And tonight so would the couple kissing in the shadows.

Her masters needed to feed. She wouldn’t end as their prey.

Her father’s screams were his best lesson.

 

 © A. F. Stewart 2017 All Rights Reserved

If you like what you see, feel free to check out the rest of my website, click one of the follow buttons or signup for my newsletter (I don’t bite, I promise).

And here’s where you go for the next stop on the Walk with Monsters Blog Hop:  Angela Yuriko Smith. Many things await you there, haunted houses, vampires and more…

For the entire Blog Hop list you can check out the B2BCyCon Blog Hop Page (scroll until you find the horror listing)  or the B2BCyCon Horror Page.

 

 

The Stalk the Monsters Scavenger Hunt is Now Closed!

 

Stalk the Monsters Scavenger Hunt

As part of the B2BCyCon blog hop of horror, come join the Stalk the Monsters Scavenger hunt!

Somewhere on this site you will find a piece of the puzzle that will allow you to enter to win a grand prize pack of books and other goodies. Once you collect them all, (or as many as you can find), pop over to the contest page and enter!

What you need to find on this website:  A picture of a ship and a sea monster.

What you need to put on the entry form: The book title you find on the picture

Hint: It’s the cover of an upcoming book

 

The grand prize winner will be randomly selected from the entries.

And when you’ve found all the items listed in hunt (or as many as you can find) here’s the last stop to be entered in the contest:  Horror at the B2BCyCon