Page 47 of Blood So Brutal

“Good. And this type of sickness, it doesn’t have a cure. Your family is going to become dangerous, and if you don’t leave them now, they might hurt you.”

Abigail sniffled but kept her eyes on Wolf. Brave, brave girl. My heart twisted in my chest at someone so young having togo through this. I never thought about the hungry ones like this—as real people with families and loved ones, as monsters who eventually turn on their own children.

“They won’t hurt me,” she said. “Mother would never do something like that.”

Mothercrept a little too close to my leg and I had to kick her shoulder to keep her back. Her eyes were already sunken voids in her skull. Any remaining pieces of her soul were quickly dwindling as she morphed into one of them.

We learned in Moira that vampyres turned into hungry ones after losing control of their blood lust, but this was particularly strange. Why would three family members all lose control at the same time?

“Abigail,” Wolf continued, “you need to come with us if you want to stay alive.”

The three hungry ones grew impatient. They could clearly smell the blood pumping in our veins, and although they might have been holding onto the smallest amount of restraint, they were quickly losing it.

“We need to go.” The horse beneath me took a step away from the monsters as if it, too, knew we were running out of time. “Now.”

“Agreed,” Jessiah added. “Let’s take the girl and go.”

“No,” the girl cried. “I can’t leave them. I can’t leave them!”

“I’m sorry,” Wolf said, stepping closer to her like he was willing to kidnap her to keep her alive. “But you have to.”

Instead of staying put and letting Wolf pick her up, she darted past him, catapulting herself and wrapping her arms around her mother’s waist.

Fuck.

The hungry ones were losing control. She may have survived this long, but she had about five seconds before they ripped her flesh from her bones.

“Abigail!” Wolf yelled.

The mother stilled, void eyes turning to her daughter. The other two stopped moving as well. One sniffed the air.

Jessiah and Wolf were unmoving. There was little we could do as we watched the horror play out in front of us.

My power reacted before I could even comprehend the situation. One second, the mother was looking at her daughter with an open jaw and teeth lowering to Abigail’s flesh.

The next second, my magic catapulted around them.

The three hungry ones froze. Not metaphorically, either, but actuallyfroze, like their corpses were now statues.

“Huntyr,” Jessiah called out from his horse, “are you doing this right now?”

“I have no idea,” I answered honestly.

“Nobody move,” Wolf said. “Huntyr, don’t you dare fucking stop whatever you’re doing right now.”

So I didn’t. I still had no idea what was actually happening. I mean, was I controlling this? Did mymagicmake the hungry ones stop?

It didn’t matter. What mattered was getting Abigail out of there alive.

Wolf crept forward, into the danger of the frozen hungry ones, and grabbed Abigail’s hand, pulling her to him. He guided her to Jessiah’s horse and lifted her onto the saddle in front of him. She wasn’t objecting anymore. She was smart enough to understand that her mother had been seconds from tearing into her flesh.

Once Wolf was settled back onto the horse behind me, he said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here before we have to kill them in front of her.”

So we did. I didn’t lessen the flow of power leaving my body as our two horses ran away from the hungry ones, from the girl’s parents, from the atrocity she almost witnessed.

It wasn’t until I was sure we were far, far away from them that I pulled my magic back to myself, taking a deep breath as my body adjusted to the expended energy.

Jessiah rode in front, but he glanced over his shoulder every few seconds, almost waiting to see if I would admit what just happened.

---