Free 02 Unicorn Rider by Kevin Outlaw Page B

wall, scanning the sky for signs of circling wyverns. His heart was wedged in his mouth, and he expected at any moment for ugly, winged monsters to come hurtling out of the night towards him, with claws bared and teeth glistening. But there was no such attack, and it quickly became apparent that whatever was going on, it had nothing to do with the villainous creatures that he had fought with earlier that day.
    With his sword at the ready, he crept around the side of the house where the screaming was almost unbearably loud, and then he scurried across to crouch beside the shivering girl.
    As he had drawn closer to her, his sense of dread had become palpable, a choking fear that gripped his insides and filled his blood with ice. For a second, he even had the urge to go back inside and pretend he had never heard the girl’s cries; but then he remembered his duty, and touched her arm with trembling fingers. Her skin was deathly cold, and a shudder ran through his body as he thought of what she must have seen to make her continue screaming so awfully.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ he shouted.
    The girl looked up at him, and in that moment there was a powerful blast of cold air that whipped her hair away from her face. Then Nimbus was screaming too, scrambling away from her, all thoughts of being a hero forgotten and replaced instead with mind–numbing terror.
    The girl stared at him blindly with the hollows where her eyes should have been, seemingly oblivious to the wriggling maggots that were busy nibbling and gnawing away the last few scraps of decaying flesh from her skull.
    She made no attempt to grab or attack him. She just continued her own wordless wailing: a screech of despair outside the room where Glass shivered and shook.
     
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
     
    After another minute, the death–like girl fell silent, and the absence of her screaming was almost as terrible as the screaming itself. She took one last look at Nimbus, or at least he assumed she did, because it was difficult to tell if she was really looking at anything at all through those wriggling maggots; and then her hair caught in another whirlwind of freezing wind, wrapping around her completely. When the wind died down, there was nothing left of the girl except a wisp of smoke that broke apart and floated away.
    Nimbus got to his feet unsteadily, taking deep, calming breaths. The night loomed horribly, and his desire to go inside and sit by the fire was only slightly outweighed by his desire to know what the wailing girl had been trying to tell him.
    ‘The world’s gone crazy,’ he muttered. ‘Either that, or I have.’
    For a moment longer he stood in the motionless gloom, staring at the point in space where the girl had evaporated; and then he turned away from the crowding shadows.
    The night watched him silently as he returned to the welcoming glow of the house.
    ‘What’s going on?’ he asked his father, throwing the Wing Warrior sword on the kitchen table. ‘What was that thing?’
    ‘A banshee,’ his father said, taking a seat at the table, and motioning for Nimbus to do the same. ‘Did you look at it?’
    ‘I saw its face. Or, at least, I saw what should have been its face. It had no skin. No lips, no eyes. Nothing. It was just a screaming skull. And maggots.’
    ‘You heard it screaming?’
    ‘Of course.’
    Cloud turned pale, and he gripped the edge of the kitchen table as though he suddenly had no strength left to stand. ‘How do you feel?’ he asked, with an audible tremble in his voice.
    ‘How do you think I feel?’
    His father paused thoughtfully. He looked like he was deciding whether or not he should tell Nimbus something. ‘You’re lucky to be alive at all,’ he said, eventually. ‘I did try to tell you not to go out there. The banshee is motivated by its one mission, and any unlucky person who happens to get in the way of that mission usually ends up dead.’
    ‘What mission?’
    ‘Banshee’s are sad spirits, destined