As they closed in, to deliver … what was to be delivered … the quarry vanished. Shock, then despair. He and his kin would circle the spot where she’d lain. Heads lifted skyward, mournful howls issuing from their throats. Howling without surcease. Until Toc the Younger blinked awake, in the embrace of the Matron, the turgid air of the cave seeming to dance with the fading echoes of his howls. The creature would tighten her hold, then. Whimpering, prodding the back of his neck with a fanged snout, her breath like sugared milk.
