Delia called from above.
“Doors, Dray — all bolted save one—” And then I heard a beginning scream from Delia of the Blue Mountains abruptly chopped off.
I went up those stairs like a devil.
A horrid screeching spitting, a diabolical hissing, echoed down the stone staircase. Frantic, I roared up the stone treads and came out onto a landing with the bolted doors and one door open. In the doorway crouched the black form of a neemu, its wicked eyes smoldering gold, its sleek black fur electric in the gloom, its mouth gaping, and the white fangs bared. On one knee the slender form of Delia waited, the dagger held before her — and I saw the fresh blood on that dagger, the blood-matted fur on the neemu’s throat, the claw marks ripped down the crimson robe, and the torn tufts of the furred cape
