Page 2 of Beast of Blood and Ash
1
REIKA
My lungs ignited,each bitter mouthful of air a rasp of volcanic glass down my throat. Blood. Cold. The acrid reek of my own fear. That’s all I tasted. The world above the mountain’s ridgeline: pure shadow and silhouette, jagged black slopes tearing at a bruised, starless sky. The wind was a fistful of needles through my clothes, carving into the raw flesh of my arms and my shins.
I had to run. Because when I stopped, when the pain bloomed hot and ugly, a pulsing knot beneath my skin, the guttural voices behind me swelled.
Closer and closer and closer.
Wings beat high above me. Claws scraped stone. Alien. Wrong. The sound vibrated somewhere deep below my ribs, a place only nightmares and old, cold panic could touch. They weren’t trying to be quiet.
The monsters who ruled this world didn’t have to be quiet when they hunted.
A shard of rock bit my ankle. My blood seeped through the torn fabric of my pant leg. I had to ignore it. I pumped my arms, my body a traitor, screaming weakness back at me even as I willed it forward.
I tripped. I caught myself. Hands scraped raw, stinging, the smell of copper, metallic and sharp as a freshly whetted blade, filled my nostrils.
Keep going. Don’t look back. Don’t fall.
But falling was all I’d done since the crash. Down. Down. Down. From sky to rock. To cages. To the suffocating darkness behind my own eyes.
A gash across my knee shrieked with each stride. Behind me, the rhythm of pursuit stuttered and one broke off, circling.
Herding.
Sideways, into even rougher terrain. I couldn’t fight themandthe mountain.
A flicker ahead, a wedge of deeper black. A narrow cut in the rock. Shelter? Or a trap? I veered anyway. Feet skidded, palms dragged across rough, unforgiving stone. Wind snatched my breath. This place was hell.
I wish I had died in the crash. At least then it would be over.
The voices grew. That guttural Ignarath lilt, sharp edged with laughter that wasn’t human. Too deep. Too sure. One word found me, slithered like a snake through memory.Little prey.A name their kind used when they wanted me to flinch.
No. Not again. Not. Ever.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I dove, scraping sideways into the crevice, knees first, shoulder striking stone hard. Stars exploded across my vision. The world shrank to a pinprick. A prayer. A desperate, burning hope. If I could just make myself small enough. Quiet enough?—
An arm that was all scale and bone and hardened calluses snaked around my chest. Massive. Immovable. A cage of flesh and strength.
A hand clamped over my mouth. Air ceased. The reek of Drakarn heat, of copper and something old and burnt, suffocated me. I thrashed and got nowhere.
He was a wall. A mountain. A fate carved in scales and ash. My scream died in his palm. My life shrank. Became the thunder of my own pulse, the grit and taste of dirt on my tongue.
I kicked. Bit. Fought the sob tearing at my throat. My vision flooded with scaled red, fierce, impossible in the utter dark. A glimpse of eyes. Burning gold. He leaned in. His breath a furnace blast against my cheek, stinking of ash, of raw hunger and old, cold metal. His fingers flexed. Once. Just enough.
Blackness surged and swallowed me.
I landed back in my body with a jolt so violent the world splintered around me.
A scream tore itself from my throat. Too loud. Far too loud in the stifling dark. My back slammed against stone. Legs tangled in rough, coarse sheets. Sweat, glue sticky and chilling, clung to every inch of my skin.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
The slab of stone that passed for a bed here felt like a coffin. The blanket, a noose cinching around my knees. Air thickened with sulfur, with the remembered stench of panic.
My heart thrashed, trying to claw its way out through my teeth. Mouth gaping, lungs seizing, refusing to drag in air. I groped for the wall. Stone. Just stone. Not scales. My hand scraped over the uneven surface, knuckles throbbing as if they’d been flayed. No crevice. No mountain wind cutting through me. Not the mountains. Not their hands.
Then there was movement beside me. A soft thump. Bare feet on stone. The crumple of a blanket yanked aside. I twisted, vision blurring, a nauseating swirl of shadow and a soft glare of light. The heat crystal on the far wall burned like a distant, dying fire, its faint glow lining sharp cheekbones; hair shorn close, a human face. Not a Drakarn.
