Page 139 of Creatures that Breathe

The handsy one, Cross, tries to help. He tells me where I am, what’s happened, who the males on their knees are. He uses words like remember and friends and safe and I pull myself into a ball in the warm, smoking ash, press my hands over my ears.

My head aches, like my mind is endlessly expanding into jagged walls. Tears distort the males circling me, and I squeeze my eyes shut to block them out, block everything out.

Return to the numbness I woke up in.

I don’t know Upstate New York or Blackguard or Kingsguard or whatever he and his scary finds call themselves.

I have no knowledge of a prince.

Panic clenches my lungs, constricts, seeps into my very skin, suffocating and corrosive. Hot tears track down my face, sobs scrape their way up my throat.

Cross halts his futile attempts at explanation and gestures toward the males and one female around me. They bear the unmistakable marks of war, weary limbs, injuries, faces etched with horror.

The massive blonde one is on the brink of his own death. Shuddering, sweat-drenched, his abdomen riddled with holes.

The one in a crimson speckled suit—Atlas, Cross informs me—stands out in the sea of ash and smoke. A large chuck of his jacket is missing—burned right off—but he smooths it against his pecs like it’s a frayed thread as he talks into a flat shiny phone, ordering cars, making demands, exuding competence.

We hike through the wasteland, united, side by side under the ash gray sky. As night descends and cold sweeps in, a small shadow begins to follow me, a ball of black that emits warmth like a fire.

The others avoid it, fanning out, four stalking off to lead, four dropping back to follow. The handsy male stays within my reach.

Maybe the rest have had enough heat for the day. I move close to my warmer, focusing on how my little black friend rolls over hills and leaps valleys. The distraction helps me hold on to the numb feeling.

Eventually, the ash becomes dead leaves and those transform into rain slick pavement. I climb into the black SUV when Cross asks. I buckle and try to relax because everyone else does.

When I close my eyes, I still feel the sear of burning. It’s alive. Tearing through me, snapping across my skin with sharp, vicious teeth. It worsens when I attempt to remember something. Leaves me gasping for reprieve.

Cross stops me. His voice is firm and low, like the dark, starless sky outside the windows. “Don’t think about it now. Don’t do too much today.”

I flinch when he puts the top of his hand to my forehead. I jolt when he checks my fingers for bruises. Shut my eyes when he asks me how he can help.

It’s a constant battle to keep my mind centered, to not reach into my memories for echoes of his depthless voice, the familiar graze of rough hands, or the intense look of those eyes. Hammered gray, streaked with onyx, edged with the smallest hints of green.

It’s impossible.

I find it all. Let it slam into me, wave after crashing wave. Messy and bloody and violent. I wince when he offers me water.

He stops touching me then. Stops talking to me. A hard edge creeps into his gaze, and the grind of his teeth rivals the thrum of the car’s engine.

Worry begins to feast on me with tiny sharp teeth.

Cross knows what I am.

Pain flares beneath my left clavicle. Phantom pain from a past life, drowning me in a memory of receiving a small flame tattoo accompanied by a warning in my own voice.

Do not tell anyone what you are. They will use you. Shatter you.

It opens a floodgate of voices I don’t recognize, threatening to destroy me. The memories slice me up, sear over my skin, hurt me without leaving marks. I think the only way to get free might be to scream, but invisible hands choke me, stop the sound.

Black explodes in the car. I shoot forward in my seat, smash into my seatbelt. Tires squeal, the driver swears.

And then, for a fraction of a second, I’m warm, all is quiet, and everything is better.

Then I pass out.

We end up at a hotel in Boston. It’s a city that smells like sea and wet asphalt, and I don’t know if I’ve visited before, but the others seem so familiar, I must have.

The tall warrior with purple eyes and a Divine untouchable beauty asks Cross if he needs help with me.

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