The thing kept laughing.
Sera watched its chest rise and fall in shallow bursts. The sound pushed past broken teeth and the torn edges of its throat.
It did not blink because it had no eyes, but its head tilted in small, jerky movements that tried to track her presence. The skin over its face had healed wrong and sealed the sockets shut.
Something moved under the skin of its torso in slow waves.
Her creature stared through her eyes, alert and hungry. It does not see. It smells. It feels. It listens. And yet… it still thinks it is high on the food chain.
The barn air was thick with heat and old straw and the sour stink of dried blood. Dust floated through the shafts of light that cut in from the gaps in the roof. Somewhere to her left, a rope creaked as it took the weight of something in the loft above.
Outside, she could hear the faint scrape of boots as the homestead men shifted their stance.
