Page 112 of Heart of Dawn
“You cannot win!” Dawn screamed, changing into Mama again. “Die! Die! Die! I am great! I am powerful! I will be full and bright and end all things! I grow! I?—”
I laid my bloody palm on the whip. It sizzled and withered, the part around my neck melting into black goo. The rest of it sprang back to Dawn like a broken rubber band.
“Cherry fae! Your blood may sting yet your blood will never prevail. The chosen wolf will die! You will all die!”
I moved without thinking, Cate almost out of the hole.
“Please state your password.”
“Hayes, Henry!”
The lab door slid open. I hurried inside with the replica’s hand in mine. Cate followed, getting inside as the door closed. She hissed, making for a rugby tackle.
Curses! Why wasn’t she breaking free from Dawn’s hold already?
The replica knocked her off course. But she didn’t go down, spinning on him, raking her nails down his face. Blood poured from his wounds.
“No!” I shoved him aside, lifting my arms. Cate bit down on right my arm. I felt her teeth break the skin.
“Stars!” I wailed.
She shook her head like a rabid dog, tearing a big chunk from me. I went down onto my backside, the pain unbelievable, blurring my vision. I gagged at the sight of exposed sinew and bone, blood leaking all over the lab floor.
“Crap…” My eyes watered, shedding tears of agony.
Cate collapsed onto all fours, choking on my flesh. She spat it out, heaving, my blood doing its thing in her system.
And Dawn called me silly?
The usual scene played on, black ooze pouring out of Cate while the replica opened a hatch close to my foot, a blaze of pink light radiating from it. He pointed into the opening, the boom of a thousand crashing gongs filling the lab.
“Heart?” I asked, trying not to pass out.
He nodded.
I moved to look, the light too bright for me to see much. Squinting, I just about made out the shape of a beating heart deep in the luminous pink.
“I will win!” Dawn roared, the window exploding in a spray of glass.
The replica jumped into the hole.
My heart lurched, my instincts crying out to stop him. Even though he couldn’t speak, the replica was still a perfect copy. It still amounted to my mate giving his life to save the world.
I whimpered as he burst open, his blood spraying.
“Miko…”
Everything seemed to quiet down. Aside from the gongs falling silent, nothing really happened.
Until Dawn killed the silence.
“No! You cannot! You cannot!”
The gongs crashed, the force of them rattling my bones.
“My heart!” Dawn wailed, the volume making my ears throb. “MY HEART!”
Pink smoke spewed from the hole, as hot as steam. I barely avoided my face melting off, dodging it at the last second.
