Chapter 11 #2
My lashes flutter at the sight of him, catching on the warmth of my tears.
The greens of his eyes gleam like faint lights in the dusty blend of torches and darkness. His lashes are low over those piercing, cold eyes—and his stare is spearing into me.
Click, click, click.
Still, in all her stupid panic, Ramona tugs the trigger over and over, as if the rifle will somehow magically reload itself under the assault.
The ice fae wears some speckled dots of white on his face, peppered along the sharpness of his cheekbone—and I find the source, fast. On the arm of his leathers, a hole is carved.
A bullet hole.
He was struck by the gunfire.
And it bleeds—but not like it should.
His blood isn’t red.
With a swerved, wet look around the other fae—the ones on foot, the ones who bleed from their necks, their arms—I see a different sort of blood.
Black like tar. It sludges just like it, too. Slow. Thick.
But not his.
The cold fae with sharp green eyes, frosted blades of grass, bleeds white.
It’s thinner.
The blood seeps out of the wound on his arm—the one he seems to be ignoring, no hand pressing against it, no attempt to stop the flow—and it spills like milk.
The other fae, the foot warriors, bleed thicker and darker, tar and ink.
But each one of them who was hit with a bullet is looking right at us.
A guttural sound tugs out of me.
Bee’s hand presses firmer against my face, the pressure aching my teeth.
Toes curl in my boots, and I am rigid against her. I am steel against the moment that is coming, the moment that we are all slaughtered for Ramona’s fucking idiocy.
The horror that has my insides flopping and sling-shotting as a struck warrior turns his chin to his leather-shielded shoulder. Bright rubies for eyes, crimson like his hair, drop to his bleeding forearm, where a stream of black tar falls down to his hand.
Then he lifts his gaze. And it is a sword.
Ramona flinches under the severity of his stare, and she’s right to, because in that same moment, he pulls out of formation and strides for her.
My heart is beating against my eardrums, dizzying me. I sink further into Bee’s rigid hold.
The warrior’s pace picks up.
He storms by us, and we flinch in sync, like we’re litter caught against the door of the van.
My wide eyes follow him, all the way to Ramona—where he stops, abrupt, and towers over her.
I blink.
That’s all it takes.
A mere blink is all the time it takes for him to swipe out with his sharp black nails and tear out Ramona’s throat.
It slaps on the sidewalk.
My scream hitches.
The cry rises up my strangled throat and garbles against Bee’s clammy hand.
Bee recoils, as if cringing from the looming fae whose hand is slick with fresh blood. The shift brings me with her, until we’re both sinking into the edge of the van, praying it swallows us whole.
The fae stands over Ramona’s crumpled body.
Blood is pouring out of her open neck, torn, a gap so deep that—even through the mist of tears in my wild eyes—I can see the muscle, the strips of flesh barely hanging on, and the ridges of her fucking spine.
Flames turn on us; the fae’s crimson gaze.
Stunned, I stare up at him, into the blotches of fire for eyes.
The heels of my boots dig harder into the road.
I shove, and shove, and shove—and I would be pushing us further against the van if it wasn’t for Bee, retreating with me.
She scoots over the road, manoeuvring us to the nose of the van.
The shotgun trembles in my grip—the light bobbing with my panicked breaths.
But I keep my finger off the trigger.
The warrior’s hand drips crimson. Fresh blood falling from his fingers, his sharp black nails that have me recoiling further into Bee’s chest.
Her forehead presses down on the crown of my skull. Cringed.
Braced.
I can’t look away from him.
Tears spill down my cheeks. Warmth spreads at the crotch of my sweatpants, and I know I’ve wet myself.
Distantly, there’s a chuckle from the other side of the van, on the road; a warrior finding humour in my terror.
Then—
A throaty sound comes from the other warriors.
I think…
I think it’s words.
Grated words sheathed in barbed wire and needles, a language, one like nothing I have ever heard, one that sounds like a savage weapon.
Like the stare of that fae latched onto us.
Tremors wrack me.
Whatever those words are, I don’t know. And they end as abruptly as they came.
But there was meaning in whatever was said.
Those barbed words end, and the fire-eyed warrior clenches his hands into fists, fists that I don’t doubt could punch a hole through my chest and come clean out the other side.
His upper lip curls, revealing sharper teeth.
That coarse sound grates through the shadows again, the barbed language of the fae. It returns firmer, harsher, louder.
Like an order.
A command.
Bee’s breath stills at my shoulder—as if she holds it—then her chin lifts a touch, and I feel the flutter of her lashes on my cheek.
The warrior tugs back a step.
A shudder rinses through him, like he’s going against every urge pulsing through his body, every instinct that’s threaded into his very being.
The backstep brings him out of the wisps of Emily’s fractured torchlight and into mine.
It’s only now that I see another wound. Not his arm… but a perfect hole in his chest, oozing that thick black sludge just like the other one.
But I stare at it, numb, and feel the detachment of my mind from my body, like I’m suddenly drifting.
It doesn’t make sense.
It’s impossible.
That bullet wound should have him on the ground, he should be dead. It’s right in his fucking chest, edged to the left, a perfect accidental shot to the heart.
Yet here he is, towering over us, eyes blazing, and he doesn’t so much as fucking stagger as he turns and marches back to the waiting, watching warriors.
I lose sight of him.
Stuck to the nose of the van, he’s out of my line of sight—and Bee doesn’t let up. Her hold is a cage trapping me… or protecting me.
I don’t fight it.
I just tremble, a leaf in a violent storm, barely holding onto a frail branch.
I don’t move.
I hide.
I hide from the glaring truth, that these… these fae… these warriors are invading us in secrecy, in the shrouded shadows of a blackout, in complete silence—
And I don’t think we’ll survive what’s to come.