All the Devils are Here (The Wild Hunt #3)

Chapter I

i

hurts it hurts, teeth digging in, but the worst part is the sound of it, even as the world fades in and out, jagged pain shooting through my trapped legs and back and one arm.

He drinks hungrily, gorging on me, and a sound escapes me, something pained and desperate because I think I made the wrong choice now that I’m dying—dying faster—and I just want this all to end.

Each blink is slower. Eyes heavy. The sounds stop, all of them except for my own heartbeat, and it’s thudding slowly, enough time between each beat for me to suck in a too-wet breath.

His fingers touch my face. Dark eyes fill my vision, a red smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. My blood. I blink and his skin touches my lips, bumping against them clumsily.

Maybe that’s me.

Drink. The word rattles strangely around my skull because my head is full of cotton wool, so full and light that it might float away if I let it. Drink. I can hardly catch my breath. Fear ebbs away with each drumbeat of my heart. It’s coming.

DRINK.

Did he speak? It sounds the way it sometimes does when I’m walking that tightrope between sleep and wakefulness—a sound I can’t be sure truly exists outside my own skull.

Seems urgent, though. I part my lips on my next breath.

Blood fills my mouth, salty and warm, and that should be disgusting, shouldn’t it?

I drink. The taste is nothing compared to the feeling, which is being clawed back from the brink and everything hurts again and my heart begins to flutter in time with my panic, but there’s a hand moving gently through my hair, keeping me in place as I drink until my stomach hurts.

I make a faint, pathetic sound when he moves his wrist away. The world around me swims in and out, and the pain might be ebbing again, but something has its claws in my belly, and I have the distinct feeling that things are about to get worse.

“Hush now,” he says. We’ve moved, but I don’t know when. I don’t remember. My head is in his lap. He’s sitting on the ground, fingers softly carding through my hair. “Rest. I will take you home.”

Home? I part my lips but can’t form the words.

“Our home.”

I close my eyes—or they close of their own accord at this point—and drift away to the sound of his deep voice crooning a gentle lullaby.