Page 90 of Bizarre Bonds
We don’t know how long ago the process started—it could have been creeping over her since yesterday, or it could have begun this very moment.
Whatever’s happening to her, it appears to be messing with her self-control. Several seconds later, she wavers into physical form again with a ripple that passes through her body before it fully solidifies.
My pulse hitches. Before I can think better of it, I throw myself out of the shadows too, springing on top of a car—without smashing it, of course. I have manners.
“Viscera!” I holler. “Your body is starting to fail because of the rift you came through. You’lldiesoon. But we can try to help you!”
I can’t say I’m surprised by her snort in response. “You don’t know anything, Shiny Girl!” she shouts back, and manages to slip into the shadows again just as Raze bursts out of them.
More cars honk. Tires screech as an SUV collides with the back of a pickup truck.
With a growl, Raze lunges after Viscera. Pedestrians along the street gape as his tall, sinewy body ripples with basilisk scales.
The rogue shadowkind is bringing out the predator in him, and he’s so focused on catching her that he can’t concentrate on his form.
We’re charging past the high rises now. Just a couple of blocks up ahead looms the tallest of them—that glinting structure of mirrored windows and smooth steel that Rollick said the city’s people are particularly proud of: The Diamond Victory Tower.
It stands out like a single candle on a birthday cake. One I can’t help thinking would be awfully tempting to blow out—or over, if you’re so inclined.
Certainty sinks into my essence that Viscera must be aiming for it. Taking a deep breath, I plunge into the shadows and hurtle onward.
I’ve just come up on her last location when she pops into being at the base of the looming tower.
As she appears, her figure morphs. Her hair shrinks again, deepening to an unusual grayish-mauve hue. Her biceps bulge.
Which gives her all the more power to ram her fist into the polished marble wall next to the glinting lobby doors. Supernatural energy warbles alongside the impact.
A flinch ripples through my essence even in the shadows.
“Stop her!” I call out, not even sure who I’m talking to.
As I speed the last short distance between us, Viscera pummels the skyscraper again. Then her skin seems to shudder.
The outline of her body wobbles with a momentary translucency, as if she’s turning into gelatin from the outside in.
For the first time, a dash of coppery panic reaches me—sharper than the stew of bewildered uneasiness that’s wafting off our mortal audience.
Viscera’s expression hardens, but I know what lies behind her fierce mask.
She’s scared of what’s happening to her.
Raze materializes a few feet away and tackles her without hesitation. Viscera’s screech suggests he’s exuded some of his basilisk poison.
Her body flickers again, and she slips through his claws as if she’s made of mist.
I sway to a stop a couple of buildings away, my breath rasping and my feet radiating an ache up through my ankles.
It takes a massive effort to push the words from my throat. “Viscera, please! You’re going to fade away. All you have to do is stop fighting us and stop breaking things. I swear we’ll do whatever we can to make sure you survive.”
She wavers right through a parked jeep and ducks under it when Raze pounces, but her voice peals out from the space beneath as if she couldn’t meld with the shadows. “What good is a promise from a weakling like you?”
“That ‘weakling’ convinced the rest of us not to kill you in the first place,” Hail snaps. A frigid wind whips down the street, shoving aside the stunned pedestrians and warbling around the jeep. “You already owe her the life you still have.”
Mirage makes a brusque sound of agreement, circling the vehicle. “Our Rainbow isn’t weak. She’skind.”
“Who the fuck wants kindness?” Viscera bolts for the tower just as Raze wheels to leap at her under the jeep. She batters the panes with her fists again. “Nothing in this place was kind to me. It called me and now it won’t let me in.”
She’s opened up spidery cracks all through the marble. With each new blow, the gaps spread wider. The bands of steel around the panes shudder increasingly visible indents.
