Ruby Shadows Read Online Free

quilts and too-soft pillows had somehow sunk down through
the solid oak flooring. It was like a sink hole had opened just beneath it
which probably explained the wood creaking just before it
happened.
    Just then I felt the bed shifting under me again. I screamed
and grabbed desperately for the lip of the ho le I was in. Then the bed disappeared
entirely, sucked away down into the ever deepening hole. I was left
hanging there by my hands with my feet swinging down into the
darkness.
    Oh my God, I have to
get out of here! Have to get away from this room before the hole
gets bigger or something else happens.
    What that something
else might be, I didn’t want to imagine. I felt sick with fear but
I forced myself to get going.
    I
gripped the broken boards, ignoring the pain as splinters dug into my fingertips
and tried to dig into the dirt wall with the tips of my toes. It
was surprisingly hard, though, and wouldn’t give much. So much for
that.
    Next I tried
heaving myself up with my hands but it wasn’t easy. I did my fair
share of cardio at the gym but I never hit the weights the way I
knew I should. Now I might pay for my poor upper body strength with
my life.
    “ Come…on…Gwendolyn,” I grunted to myself as I heaved upwards.
“Get…your ass…moving.” Nothing like a little positive self-talk to
motivate you, right?
    I
was doing pretty well and had managed to haul myself up until I had
my elbows on the lip of the crumbling hole. I was about to swing
one leg up and out and get the hell away from the sink hole that
had suddenly and magically appeared under Gram’ s bed when that something else I’d
been trying not to think about or imagine happened.
    Something grabbed my
ankle.
    Something long and slimy—it felt like a tentacle…no, a
tentacle would be cold and clammy but this was horribly hot. It was
a tongue, I suddenly realized. And
I could just imagine the mouth a tongue like that would come out
of—it would be vast and black and full of sharp yellow
teeth.
    I screamed
breathlessly for Grams as I scrambled to get away. Still she didn’t
come, but whatever was holding me eased its grip just a little
bit—as though maybe it had been scared by my shout.
    I
pulled harder, feeling the hot, slimy thing slip slowly away from
my ankle. I was going to make it—I had to make it out of the pit. Grimly, I pulled upward, my heart
pounding, my head spinning. I was so scared I felt lightheaded—like
I might faint at any moment. But if I did that, I might as well be
signing my own death warrant. I held on to conciseness as tightly
as I held on to the lip of the hole.
    In
the back of my panicked brain I was thinking that I ought to say a
spell or work a charm but the magic I do is so much more than
words. Most of it is wrapped up in ritual and incantation. It’s
kind of hard to work a protection spell which requires all kinds of
paraphernalia when you’re hanging on for dear life and trying not
to fall into the jaws of a waiting monster. I did mutter a prayer to the Goddess for protection
but I doubt she heard me. After all, I hadn’t exactly been working
the whitest magic lately.
    I was making
progress, feeling the thing slip away inch by inch as I clawed my
way out of the hole…
    And then, as though
it had just been toying with me, the slimy tongue-tentacle
tightened its grip and gave a mighty heave, like a fisherman
reeling in a big one.
    Oh
my God! I was
dragged backwards, my fingernails full of splinters as I clawed
desperately to get out of the hole. No…no, no, no! I was in full panic mode now, my heart pounding
out of my chest, my body locked into a flight-or-fight response. I
screamed for Grams again but of course she didn’t come. She was
probably still peacefully asleep and when she woke up, she’d come
into her room and see a massive hole going down and down and
nothing else because I’d already be digesting in the belly of the
beast. First it would eat my body…and then my soul.
    “ NO!”