The Last Heiress
There was movement, something large and terrible descending through the hole in our roof, and my mother's hand tore away from mine as she was lifted up and away from me.
I fell backward down the stairs, my body tumbling end over end, connecting with wood and stone in a chaos of pain. When I finally stopped moving, I was sprawled on the ground floor, gasping for breath, every part of me screaming in agony.
Above me, I could hear my mother screaming. I could hear my stepfather's voice, shouting something that might have been a curse or a prayer. And beneath it all, I could hear the sound of the creatures—not their voices, but something worse. A kind of psychic pressure, as if their very presen