Chapter 27 #3
I need to find Corwin. I need to get out of this nightmare before it swallows me whole. Before the reason we started this is forgotten beneath the blood and violence I’m witnessing.
Boot steps pound somewhere ahead, and I press myself against a doorway as Authority soldiers round the corner. One spots me. His mouth opens to tell the others.
Terror floods through me, and lightning answers. Thunder splits the world in half, in a deafening sound that causes the soldiers to cry out, blood streaming from their eyes and ears.
I run while they’re still blind.
My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat, my wrists, behind my eyes. The power inside me wants me. It claws at my ribs, demanding to be released, to tear through everything in its path.
An officer’s voice reaches me from a side street, calling for his men to stand firm. The sound makes my jaw clench.
How many people will die under their swords?
I reach inward, and the mist stalker pours into existence like liquid smoke, all predatory grace and barely contained violence. Its ears twitch forward, and its head lifts, as it scents the blood on the air. Its lips pull back from silver teeth in a feral smile.
The world fractures as our minds touch. And I’m there, inside its head. I can smell the officer’s fear. His pulse throbs in my .. its … heightened hearing, as it circles behind him, silent as death, waiting for the moment he turns away.
The kill comes swift and brutal. Claws punch through skin and muscle. Blood sprays hot across my tongue, even though I’m fifty feet away. The man’s final breath rattles in my throat as we drag him into the closest alley.
I snap back to myself, gagging. My knees hit the ground. The phantom taste of his death fills my mouth—metallic and warm, thick like blood.
The mist stalker melts back into the shadows, ears pricked. As we move through the streets, it finds more prey. A captain shouting from a doorway. A soldier trying to form ranks in a courtyard. Another captain seen through a window, threatening the occupants of the house.
This time I don’t resist the connection. I sink into it willingly.
The world shifts. Now, we are silver death flowing through the darkening streets.
The captain’s scent fills our nostrils—leather, steel, and the sharp musk of fear.
We circle behind him, muscles coiled like springs.
He turns just as we leap. His eyes go wide.
Our claws rip out his windpipe before he can scream.
The next soldier sees us coming. He stumbles backward, fumbling for his sword. Too slow. We slam into his chest, jaws clamping down. Cartilage cracks between our teeth. His hands beat weakly at our flanks as we shake him like a toy.
The third tries to run. We hunt him through the courtyard, silent as mist, patient as death. When we finally bring him down, his terror tastes sweeter than Mountain Spirit.
By the fifth kill, my hands have stopped shaking. By the seventh, I’m looking forward to them.
The city burns around us. People scream in the distance. Authority forces scatter wherever we hunt. And somewhere in the space between the tenth and twentieth death, I realize I’ve stopped feeling sick about it.
The beast pads beside me, silver mist clinging to its muzzle, as we move deeper into the city, trailing death like perfume.
The narrow streets open into a wide plaza, and I slow. I recognize this place. Our heads move as one, and lock onto the Lirien Spire, where it’s rising in front of us, its white stone stained with soot and smoke.
And then I see him.
Sereven.
The architect of every nightmare. The man who filled me with stolen power when I was too young to understand what was happening. The monster who destroyed Sacha’s life, and spent decades hunting anything that threatened his vision of order.
He’s standing in the center of the plaza, barking orders at soldiers who scramble to obey. When he turns toward me, my hand lifts to cover my mouth and muffle the scream that wants to break free.
Blue crystal fragments jut from his skin like broken glass, embedded deep into his cheeks and forehead. The shards pulse, turning his face into something from a nightmare.
What happened to him? When?
The crystals look like they’ve grown into his flesh, become a part of him.
Memory rushes through me. The explosion at Thornspire. The violent energy when our powers met the crystal.
Did pieces of it … Did they somehow end up in his skin?
Bile rises up in my throat. I back away slowly, eyes glued to him. His movements are wrong, jerky and unnatural. When he gestures, the shards cast the light and throw it back in jagged patterns that hurt to look at.
His soldiers scatter to follow his commands, but he remains where he is, scanning the plaza. And then his eyes find mine, and his expression shifts from rage to something that looks scarily like hunger.
He smiles.
The expression looks wrong on his crystal-scarred face, like broken glass trying to curve. He takes a step toward me, then another. The mist stalker growls, but I can’t speak. My chest is so tight I can barely breathe.
This is the man who destroyed my childhood. Who turned me into a vessel for his vision.
This is the man who betrayed his own blood. He murdered his mother, gave his father to the Authority, and betrayed his brother.
My hands are shaking. Sparks jump from my skin, sizzling the air, responding to the rage and terror warring inside me. Every instinct screams at me to run, to get as far away from him as possible.
But I don’t. I stay where I am, and hold his gaze as he comes closer.
I’ve spent months learning what I am, what he tried to make me. I’ve felt the power he stole flowing through my veins. I’ve tasted death through my familiar’s jaws. I’ve watched lightning tear from my skin.
He tried to create a vessel to serve his vision of order.
Instead, he has made a storm that intends to destroy everything he’s built.