Page 106 of Bitten & Burned
The dock was a blur. Nothing on the deck. But as I boarded and flew down the stairs, the smell hit me.
Acrid. Human. Wrong. Mold. Rot. Sweat.
Gods, it stank.
I bolted into my bedroom and nearly dropped her gift into a puddle of blood.
Four bodies sprawled, mutilated, blood sprayed across my silk sheets and pooling at the corners of the bed. The room was a battlefield.
And in the center of it—Rowena.
Listless. Pale. Cradled in Quil’s arms, lying there, limp as a dishrag.
I choked. Dropped the bag. Slid to the floor beside them, my knees slipping in blood as I crawled over to them.
“Gods—is she?—?”
“She’s alive,” Quil said.
His voice was rough, tight—the kind you use when you’re clinging to sanity by the edge of your teeth.
“But I got here too late. They were… they wanted to take her.” His jaw twitched. “They were touching her.”
He spat the word like it burned.
And he was right. In this context, it did.
Rancid. Putrid. Gods, if I’d gotten hold of them… I’d have turned them inside out. I’d have peeled the skin back from their faces last just so they could see the carnage I’d made of them.
My throat was tight. “Just touching or?—?”
He nodded once.
“Well,” I said after a pause, “then you weren’t altogether too late.”
His head whipped towards me, eyes blazing. “They shouldn’t have laid their filthy hands on her at all.”
“I knowthat,” I said. “I only meant—I’m glad you were here, Quil.”
“I should’ve been faster,” he muttered. “I felt her. In my chest. I felt her panic.”
“Me too,” I said, softer. “Do you know who they were?”
“I got a name off the little one,” Quil said, jutting his chin towards the smallest corpse, crumpled in the corner. “She said, ‘Lady.’ Doubt it’s her real name.”
“‘Lady’ is a dog’s name,” I muttered absently.
“Yeah, well…” He didn’t finish the thought. His arms tightened around Rowena. “I should’ve boarded when you left. I waited on the dock. Thought she deserved privacy. And now?—”
“I shouldn’t have left either… I wanted to… do something special for her.”
I looked down at the paper bag. Crumpled. Blood-speckled.
“She was so happy when I left her.”
Quil turned to look at me. “She was happy because she was with you.”
My throat clenched.
