Page 40 of Zeke
Twenty feet from the cliff base, Zeke shifted her weight, pulling her from his shoulder. Her feet hit the ground, and she stumbled against the cold rock, palms flat back against the stone. He pressed against her for just a moment, his mouth near her ear.
“Hold on to me. Don’t let go, no matter what.”
Before she could ask what he meant, he crouched down. “Climb on my back. Arms around my neck, legs around my waist.”
She scrambled onto his back, arms wrapping tight around his throat, legs hooking around his hips.
“What are you?—”
He started to climb.
Straight up.
Her stomach lurched as the ground fell away beneath them. He found holds she didn’t see, somehow finding purchase on the smooth rock. He moved up the cliff face like gravity was just a suggestion, his frame bunching and releasing with raw power.
Ten feet. Twenty. The forest floor dropped away as he climbed with her clinging to his back. Wind caught at her clothes, trying to peel her from his body, but her grip around his neck was desperate, unbreakable.
She pressed her face into his neck, fighting vertigo as he climbed higher. Every instinct screamed at her to look down, to gauge the distance, but she kept her eyes squeezed shut. All she could do was hold on and trust that his strength wouldn’t fail.
A snarl from below made her risk a glance over her shoulder. At the base of the cliff, shapes burst from the tree line. Wrong-jointed bodies covered in black armor plating, red eyes burning with rage as they looked up at their escaping prey.
One of them tried to follow, claws scraping against stone. It made it maybe six feet before falling back with a frustrated howl. Another attempted the same, managing to gouge marks in the rock before gravity claimed it too.
They’d escaped. For now.
The cliff seemed to go on forever, Zeke’s breathing showing strain as he hauled both their weights up the sheer face. Her arms ached from holding on, trembling with exhaustion and leftover adrenaline. But she didn’t let go. Wouldn’t let go.
He’d asked her to trust him, and she did. Completely.
The rock changed texture, becoming rougher, more featured. A ledge appeared above them, and with one last surge of effort, Zeke pulled them both up and over the edge.
Chapter 10
The ledge was barely a couple of feet across, but Zeke’s gaze locked on a narrow opening in the cliff face. A cave, dark and defensible. Perfect.
The entrance was tight, forcing him to duck as he turned and pushed Michelle inside. Dry stone stretched back into darkness, wide enough for them to lie side by side if needed. But the opening itself was only wide enough for his body to block completely.
“Stay back,” he growled, the words coming out deeper than usual. His voice sounded wrong even to his own ears, layered with something that hadn’t been there before.
Her hand touched his shoulder. “Zeke, what’s wrong?”
He couldn’t answer. The legion ignited in his blood, a liquid fire flooding every cell with power he’d never felt before. His muscles expanded, bones shifting as his body grew larger, more massive than it had ever been. His bones cracked and lengthened, joints popping in ways that should’ve hurt like hell but didn’t. Heat blazed through him instead, rebuilding him from the inside.
His pulse hammered so hard his vision pulsed with it. Don’t think about it. He locked his jaw until his teeth ached, using the pain to anchor himself. This state, this terrible power… it was the only thing that would keep her alive.
His hands were bloody where they’d scraped against the rocky ledge on the way up here. As he watched, unable to look away, a black substance flowed from beneath his skin. It pooled then hardened instantly into a dark shell, covering his hands and spreading up his forearms to his elbows. The same protection formed on his feet, creeping up to his knees to cover where the rocks had bitten deep.
The world exploded into sensation. Not just sight and sound anymore, but a flood that threatened to overwhelm him.
Every heartbeat in the forest below registered in his awareness. Seven ferals at the cliff base, their fury was a bitter taste on his tongue. Three more were circling wide, looking for another route up. Small animals cowering in their burrows, their terror a high-pitched whine he felt in his bones. The rock beneath him pulsed with its own strange energy, old and waiting.
Too much. His brain couldn’t process it all, the flow of information threatening to overwhelm him. He forced himself to categorize, to sort threats from non-threats even as his awareness catalogued every beetle, every bird, every drop of moisture in the air.
“Zeke?” Michelle’s voice came from behind him, soft and worried. “Your eyes… they’re burning. Like coals in a fire.”
He knew he should respond, should reassure her, but the words wouldn’t come. His throat could only produce growls now. When she placed her hand on his arm again, trying to ground him, he shrugged it off. Every nerve screamed with focus on the forest below. Gods, I want her touch, a part of him cried, but the legion ignored it.
Movement below. Two ferals tested the cliff face again, their claws scraping against stone. The sound triggered something primal in him, and a growl erupted from his chest. Not an izaean sound at all, but something that shook the very rock beneath him, promising death to anything that dared approach.
