Page 131 of Awry
Kris watches her, pouting.
Chains flicks his gaze between me and the dire mage inhabiting the sixteen-year-old walking dead.
“Now, Zaya,” Kris says, “lying doesn’t become you.”
Presh stiffens, stumbling to a stop.Then she levels a look of disbelief on me.
Kris throws her head back and laughs.Malignant, stomach-roiling energy floods from her.
Then she drops to the pavement like a rag doll, head thunking hard.
Drained of essence, dead.
Presh cries out.The sound slices through my very being like an empathic knife.I almost stagger under an onslaught of grief that isn’t my own— even as that grief tangles with my own recent pain and loss, amplifying it twofold.
Chains stares down at Kris, utter disbelief etched across his face.Then he looks up at me, at the monsters standing with me.
His energy shifts.His essence is twisting, but he’s not … dying … he’s …
“No!”I cry, not even certain what I’m trying to stop.And it’s just me, my voice.Because the universe has abandoned me to my fate, to live through the ramifications of what I’ve caused by ignoring an ongoing knowing.
Chains lunges forward, snatches Kris off the ground.His teeth lengthen as I watch in horror.
Then he rips out her throat.Drinking Kris’s blood even as it goes cold.
Oh, Precious.
She screams.More pain rolls off her, lashing against me as she drops the gun and runs to her dead friend.
DeVille suddenly moves, not dead after all.Brought back to consciousness by Precious’s scream?He tries to surge to his feet, grabbing for Presh as she passes, but he manages only to slow her for a moment.
Chains is still gulping down Kris’s blood, though most of it appears to have soaked her limp body and the pavement around his feet.He slams a kick to DeVille’s ribs, the blow so forceful that DeVille loses hold of Presh as he tumbles across the street.
The young shifter slams into a streetlight.Something snaps— possibly his spine.He falls flat, face down, and doesn’t move.
I’m already running.But then Chains, moving too fast for me to track, drops Kris and grabs Presh.He pulls the little awry against his chest, wrapping a bloody, clawed hand around her throat.
And I stop.
I stop, still too far away, with my hands held forward, pleading.
The shifters surrounding me halt their forward lunges as well, brushing up against my shoulders before an intense energy swamps over both Rought and Rath.They’re trying to trigger their transformations, but can’t.Maybe whatever dire-mage potion they inhaled back in the clubhouse has a hold on them still?
All my focus is on Chains’s claws slowly pushing into the tender skin of Presh’s neck.
“Please,” I whisper to Chains.“You can walk away.”
“Trade yourself for the little twisted cunt and I will,” Chains says.His voice is a pained growl.The bones in his face shift.
The blood drinking … he is trying to go berserker.But it shouldn’t happen that quickly, should it?It shouldn’t be something that can just be triggered.
“I will,” I say, keeping calm.My gaze is steady on Presh.Her face is turning purple.“But not if you kill her.You’re killing her.”
Chains still has enough presence of mind that he loosens his grip on Precious’s neck.
She gasps, “No, Zaya!”
Chains shakes her so hard that I’m afraid he’s going to snap her neck.
