Chapter 62
However, it didn’t take the opportunity to stab him or rip his throat out, which was what he’d been quietly dreading ever since he’d realized it wasn’t human. Instead, it knelt beside him on the floor and pulled him semi-upright, across its thighs and against its chest, with one of those thin arms holding him in place. By the time the coughing episode was over he was done in. He rested there for a bit, gasping like a fish freshly caught, while it made humming noises above him. It smelled odd. Like sand and the cacti they grew in the hot greenhouses at Kew.