Men fight at the side of creatures. Get to Fallon.
Pressure, pounding in my head. An ominous cracking. Then my voice, screaming, Levi’s all right! All right! Followed by the lie. Going to find Fallon now.
Julien?
Still with me. I saw him—the vampire—my protector. My friend, disappearing, blinking back into view. Tearing through the enemy. I saw myself too, battling. The others. Levi, clenching his spear. Brin, her dark hair a sweeping fan each time she turned. The ominous silver stripe flashing in the sunlight…
“Noa, squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”
The woman again, annoying, her voice insistent. I would not squeeze her hand. Could not. Something was wrong with me. I was sane enough to understand that, but the dark had a tight hold. The seductive pull of a blacked-out movie theater with the action playing on the big screen.
My lips were dry. I wanted to swallow but had no saliva. No water.
I twisted my head to the side, needing to see what eluded me…
Chaos. Creatures, bodies, men fighting. Wet blood that made the mud glisten like a scarab’s back. A man in ancient armor, there and then gone. A girl I’d trusted, swinging a sword with more lethality than I expected. Questions, rising like the mushrooms I’d once admired in a forest, the pale pink mushroom caps turning in my direction…
See it, see it, see it…
A spear, piercing through Julien’s chest, back to front. The tip glinting in the sunlight.
The shock, widening his eyes.
His gaze, dropping to the wound, then up toward Brin. Turning toward me—
My gaze, turning from Julien toward Brin, watching the flames pulse from her outstretched hands—
No! The screaming in my mind. Julien… flames licking across his shadowed outline, bursting upward, a flaming phoenix.
Me… sliding into a dark, vicious place, wanting Brin’s blood.
Dropping to my knees beside Levi.
Breathing, breathing…
See it, see it, see it!
Ashes.
Not him, not Julien…
He was one of them. Brin, laughing. Nothing more than a betraying blood sucker. I wanted him to burn, like he—she nodded toward Levi—he needed to bleed.
Why? My voice choked.
You picked the wrong side. Her sneer. Flames leaping from my splayed fingers.
Near my head, the beeping raged, louder, faster, jumping from whatever machine was making the noise. My eyelids beat and beat against the stupor that held them tight. My hands strained against the restraints. The bed creaked.
“Noa?” The woman, agitated, calling to someone else. “Find her grandfather. He’s a healer.”
My fingers spasmed. So close. Behind my eyelids, my eyes hurt from the strain, from watching the images playing out in front of me.
The ash, coating my palms.
Levi, bleeding out.
Julien, gone.
