City of Hawks by Gary Gygax Read Free Book Online

fiery-eyed creature floated slowly down to where light glimmered from the cracks in the shutters covering a window.
    “There, there, little one,” the servant girl crooned as she picked up and held the infant that had so suddenly appeared in her mistress’ bedchamber. “I am here to protect you. It’s all right now.”
    A splintering crash brought another wail from the baby. The shutters of the high window broke inward as if struck by a giant hammer. The servant girl’s eyes grew round with terror, for in the gaping space where the shutters had been a moment before she saw a terrible visage, a thing barely discernible, with shadowy fangs and burning orbs that fixed her evilly. Without thinking, the thin girl dropped the infant on the bed so that it lay next to her unconscious mistress. Then the girl stood so that she was between the tiny baby and the awful thing at the window.
    A fiendish laugh issued from the near-invisible monster that hovered there, a sound both mocking and anticipatory. It was followed by a hissing sound, a billowing, and then the thing was inside the chamber, slowly taking shape-bloated, reddish-black, ugly, with a mouth larger than the span of the thin girl’s shoulders. As the monstrosity formed, the girl shrank back but did not panic. Instead, she reached inside the neck of her smock and drew forth a silver object that hung from a leather thong. Without hesitation, she tugged, and a portion of the object came free. From the cylinder she had extracted, she shook out a spray of liquid. The stuff splattered over the creature with the huge mouth and the burning eyes, and wherever it touched the thing, flesh steamed and hissed and became insubstantial once again.
    The thing voiced a nearly inaudible scream when the tiny shower hit it. Its evil eyes shut tight, and its great maw snapped open and shut convulsively as it shrieked its pain and agony. There was but a small amount of the liquid, though, just the single splattering. The monster recovered and reshaped itself once more. Now its eyes were more wicked than before, and it relished the way this confrontation would end.
    Then, through the intervening space, the silver cylinder flew. The monster saw it and tried to avoid the missile. But, not fully corporeal yet, it was too slow. The silver tube struck the thing squarely in its leering face, and the malign visage contorted in agony at that blow. When it opened its eyes again, only the right one glowed with the evil fire of the nether planes; the left was a blank, black space.
    The liquid and the cylinder were gone now. The thin girl stood unmoving. She had no more defenses against the creature. Strong, sinuous arms with taloned fingers reached out. Before she could move to avoid their grasp, or even utter a scream of fear, those fingers were upon her and tearing. A gout of red spurted forth, and the thin girl’s head sailed across the room while her lifeless body toppled to the floor in gory testimony to the rage of the. thing that she had dared to oppose. With fury and disdain, the creature picked up the body and flung it into a dark corner. Then, moving its talons greedily, the monstrous thing turned to where Meleena lay unconscious with the now-silent babe next to her. Despite the pain that continued to assail it, the creature gave voice to glee as its single remaining eye saw the pair. Its long arms stretched forth, ignoring the woman… intent on the child.
    “Yeeeraagh!” The cry came from the thing, and it was very substantial this time, for the monster was fully formed now. The rusty-black body was being buffeted, the leathery folds of its gross, misshapen body were torn and rent, its bulk spun and wrenched by unknown forces it could not control or combat. The one-eyed thing tried to react, did its best to fight off the attack and reach the baby, for its ultimate duty was to rend the infant into shreds.
    But a spinning circle of bodies kept the thing from its goal. Shapes that moved in