Free Blood Dark by Lindsay J Pryor

thicker. Amidst the silence was a distant, subtle thrum.
    They locked gazes simultaneously, Kane giving Jask the nod that he sensed it too. They stepped alongside each other in the open doorway into the neighbouring room.
    It was stood in the shadows of the top far right-hand corner, by the only exit to the outer room. Masked by a dark cloak, seven-foot tall, what was visible of its vertical grasshopper-like legs beneath its covering spoke of a creature that knew how to leap. Its arms were held semi-aloft, its lengthy talons playing the air like a piano having already sensed their movement.
    ‘Vibrations,’ Kane mouthed to Jask. ‘It locates through vibrations.’
    Vybers were vicious bastards and far more hardcore than a nilkim, primarily because they were smart, strategic, and never worked alone.
    Kane switched his attention to the bottom left-hand corner of the room where he located the second vyber less than twenty feet away from them. In the other left hand corner, equidistant between the other two, was the third.
    Kane licked his incisor as he braced himself.
    The vybers were waiting for them to make a move. They liked to wait – in the shadows, in the dark, notorious for catching their prey by surprise.
    ‘Wood through the lung,’ Kane mouthed to Jask. He pointed above his right hip to indicate where, before cocking his head towards the discarded pool cues on the floor ahead.
    Jask gave a single nod of understanding.
    Their head movements had caught their predators’ attention, each of the vybers easing just a couple of inches in their direction.
    ‘Vigilant fuckers,’ Kane mouthed to Jask.
    He cocked his head again for Jask to follow.
    Three footsteps towards the pool table and the vybers were already crouching in perfect succession.
    Kane glanced back across at Jask. Jask had the same understanding that they were going to have to make this quick. Against three, they both knew they were going to have to have each other’s backs as much as their own.
    They turned back to back, both having picked their target – Kane the one by the door, Jask the one in the bottom left-hand corner. They’d both have an eye on the middle one. They needed to be swift, precise and brutal – things neither of them were averse to.
    They lunged forward simultaneously, Kane grabbing the broken cue nearest him, Jask snapping the other over his knee a split-second later.
    The vybers leapt and descended.
    But Kane was too precise. Already braced with the cue pulled back, as soon as the vyber’s cloak blew back revealing the part of its abdomen that he needed, Kane thrust. The cue penetrated with some effort, the vyber’s talons swinging at Kane, brushing just above the hairs on his head as Kane ducked. Adding more pressure, he forced the cue deeper through the tough, reptilian skin.
    He twisted the cue hard before he felt the blow to his back, the middle vyber attempting to pin him to the floor with the strength in its hind legs.
    Kane cursed in frustration as he just about retained his balance, only grateful that the other one had finally slumped to the floor. He swung his elbow back with all his strength, offsetting the vyber enough to make him topple.
    Jask was a blur in the distance, the other vyber pinned beneath him, his boot on its throat, the other on its groin as he staked it two and then three times above its hip.
    Kane lunged forward for the stake embedded in the first dead vyber, using all his strength to yank it out. But the middle vyber was back behind him a second later, its talons raking through his jacket, to the shirt beneath, skimming his skin.
    Kane spun to face it.
    He rammed the cue above its thigh as he simultaneously felt the vyber jolt forward.
    The cue penetrating through the vyber’s back stopped an inch short of Kane’s chest as Jask rammed it in the exact same time as Kane had ploughed his cue into its lung.
    Their eyes met past the creature’s shoulder as Kane twisted, and twisted hard, his teeth