His hand curved around a shoulder too small even to fill his palm. It was easy to gather the small body close, and the plants parted to admit him, possessed of a dim cunning. The great many-eyed creature that loomed over the Brucolac as he collected his son tore the last of vines from its face, their fleshy leaves and spines and flowers falling upon him like some hellish rain.

It reared back, neck stretching, serpentlike now, the darkness all about him growing thick, the only light now the red radiance of its hundreds of eyes. All around the Brucolac shadows had frothed over the altar, drowning it under their darkness like a stone under rising tide, and as infant voices were snuffed out en masse, a great silence rose like a cresting wave.

It struck down for him, open-mouthed.