Title: Seeking the Devil's Eye - Threads of Malice 2
Series: Children of Nall Multi Timeline Series #2, Threads of Malice #2
Published by: TamboWrites
Release Date: May 26, 2020
Contributors: Tambo Jones (author), Michelle Maakestad (illustrator)
Genre: Grimdark Fantasy
Pages: 122
ISBN13: 978-1951023119
ASIN: B081C9HJ1P

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Dubric was summoned to The Reach to find an artist taken by the dark, but found the ghosts of twenty-three murdered young men instead, all violently tortured before they were killed. Despite the best efforts of Dubric and his team, Braoin Duncannon, the young artist they had been called to find, was murdered by a madman’s needle through his skull. Most of Dubric’s clues are lost to the river after the bodies are dumped—if the bodies are ever found at all—and local officials remain more concerned with blame than providing assistance. Despite numerous ghosts and limited clues, Dubric has to press on, has to find the thread leading him to Braoin’s killer, because the long-dead Demon of The Reach has returned to take Otlee into the dark.

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CHAPTER 1
After the arrival of the latest ghost, Dubric was barely conscious, and Otlee struggled to get him on his feet against the force of the storm. The white streak coming from Dubric’s temple looked like thread or very thin yarn, its strands twirling together and disappearing into the storm. Dubric had stopped screaming, but each brightening of the strand wracked him with tremors.
“Let me die,” he said, spitting water and blood.
“I can’t do that, sir.” Slipping in the mud, Otlee helped Dubric to his horse. “You have to ride, sir. You have to help me.”
Dubric arched back, caught in another brightening strand, but he reached for the saddle as it faded away. “Ride, yes. To Lars.” He fumbled one foot into the stirrup, then started to hoist himself up. “No one will harm him. No one would dare.”
“Yes, sir. To Lars.” Otlee pushed up on Dubric’s backside and released a relieved sigh when the old man fell onto the saddle and moaned.
“Stay there, sir.” Otlee thought, running to his horse while acorn-sized hail pinged all around.
Lightning struck nearby, and Otlee’s horse reared but did not run. The reins hung in the air, held tautly but tied to nothing, and Otlee swallowed.
Afraid to breathe and terrified to move, he stared at the reins. Rain and wind blew against them, and he squinted at a shadow of a shape deflecting drips and hail. A figure, small and hunched, not there at all, yet somehow real, crouched in the mud.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Otlee said, swallowing his fear. “And you’re not going to hurt me, either. Right?”
The shape stood, limping a step toward Otlee, then another. The horse followed. “Thanks,” Otlee said as he yanked a coil of rope from his saddle.
Hearing no reply over the madness of the storm, Otlee ran to Dubric. Unconscious and bleeding from his nose, Dubric hung limply across his charger’s back. Otlee tied him to the saddle and hoped that he wouldn’t slide off.
He had nearly finished—only two knots left—when something cold and frantic scrambled up and over him. “What the heck?” Otlee looked up to see the ghost pointing.
Otlee turned, slowly, his heart-stopping. A man, naked and black with glowing red eyes, sauntered toward him from the pasture north of the road. His form solidified and faded, matching the rhythm of Dubric’s white glow and brightening as lightning streaked across the sky.
“Two in one night,” the thing said, its voice rumbling and low like distant thunder. “And such lovely boys they are, stinking of pious Byr. So tasty, so fine.” It licked its rotting lips and laughed, threads spewing from behind yellow teeth to spin and twirl like tentacles. They reached for Otlee, black writhing horrors with gleaming red-worm tips, each with tiny eyes and claws. The tentacles thickened and twirled, coming to eat him up.