Page 72 of Shackled to the World
The sour taste of his lie hung in the air.
She had no choice.
He would die if she left him.
She turned toward Kevin and yelled, “Run!”
He gave her a startled look, taking a fist to the face. Shaking off the effects, he hesitated a moment longer before darting off into the woods like a shot. The wolves started to go after him—until Annora whistled sharply. “You go after him, you lose me.”
The wolves hesitated, instincts demanding they hunt down their wounded prey. They sniffed the air, then turned toward her as if scenting her delicious blood, their eyes gleaming yellow and glittering with hunger. Fangs hung out of their mouths, their jaws misshapen, like they had too many teeth crammed inside.
Razor-sharp claws tipped their fingers, their arms too long and hanging awkwardly from their shoulders. Their hair receded, their foreheads shrinking, the bones of their faces crunching, while their flesh bubbled up from their skulls, like they were shifting in slow motion.
Annora stood her ground while they charged. She lifted her hand, blood dripping down her arm, and gave them a happy wave and smile. When they hesitated, exchanging a confused look, she released her stranglehold over the afterworld, doing her best to keep it from chasing after Kevin.
It burst into life around her, quickly eating up the forest floor and spreading like a dark plague through the trees. The temperature plummeted until the werewolves’ breath fogged the air. Dark particles swirled on an invisible current, tugging playfully at her in welcome.
The sun had vanished, a bluish tinge taking over the world until the woods appeared haunted. The clearing turned gloomy, the trees broken and decayed, the leaves drifting to the ground, only to disintegrate on impact.
Her injuries were slower to heal, like she’d used all her energy to merge the two worlds, and her blood slowly dripped to the forest floor. She ignored the pain, her body numb to it, and she used the adrenaline to keep moving.
The shadows crept ever closer, and the wolves backed away, as if sensing the wrongness to it. Dark strands of fog crept closer, and the wolf she hit with the bat roused slightly, as if detecting danger. The shadows curled around him, and he screamed in terror.
He crawled toward her, claws gouging into the earth, but it was too late.
The shadows grabbed his leg and yanked him into the blackness of the trees beyond. He clawed at the ground, leaving deep ruts in the dirt, and his primal shriek of fear echoed through the trees like a dinner bell as more shadows streaked after him.
Only for his voice to vanish in a gurgle of death.
What the fuck?!?
Something was in the trees with them.
Something from the afterworld.
She edged away, cursing herself for not listening to Edgar when he tried to warn her.
The two remaining wolves scattered, their fight or flight response clearly stuck on the ‘screw this shit’ category. Not wanting to wait around for whatever it was to come back, she grabbed her backpack and hurried after her uncle.
Prem chirped from a tree, then waved a paw in the direction her uncle took. She reached up, scooping him in her arms, a sound of distress catching in her throat when he whimpered and curled around her. She grabbed the darkness and pushed it toward him, only for it to splash uselessly against him and drift to the ground like dust. He grabbed her finger and brushed his tiny hand against it, as if to say it was okay, and her heart shattered.
He was dying.
And she knew this time, there was no coming back.
Not willing to give up on him, she wove together a tiny blanket of darkness until the particles trapped inside began to sparkle with power. Edgar said he ran more on her power than his. If that was true, what healed her should also fix him. She hoped. She wrapped it around him carefully before slipping the now-unconscious critter into the afterworld, praying that he would heal and come back to her.
The need to seek out her uncle and dance on the mangled flesh and bones of his dead body roared through her.
It didn’t take long to catch him. The stupid asshole was still plunging blindly through the forest, making enough noise to attract the dead. She quickly followed his path, hearing him curse even before she saw him trying to untangle himself from a thicket.
“Hello, Uncle dear.”
He startled so badly he nearly fell back into the thicket when he whirled. When he saw it was her, anger darkened his face. “What the fuck did you do?”
“What?” Annora crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to see where you’ll end up after you die?”
It was like she’d kicked him in the balls, his eyes practically bulging out of their sockets as he scanned the darkness surrounding them.
