Page 70 of Feral Omega

A blur of motion cuts him off, something huge and savage hurtling from the trees to slam into him with the force of a freight train. They go down in a tangle of flailing limbs and snarls, rolling across the clearing in a maelstrom of blood and violence.

Gasping, I force myself upright, clutching my ruined arm as I try to make sense of the chaos. And that's when I see him, hovering over the guard like a reaper come to collect his due.

Wraith.

His massive frame looms over his prey, shoulders hunched and steam pouring from the vents and tubes of his mask, mingling with each rasping breath in eerie, mechanical counterpoint.

The guard scrambles backward, eyes wild, rifle forgotten as he tries in vain to escape that implacable, loping advance. But Wraith is on him in an instant, tree-trunk arms lashing out to seize him in an unbreakable grip.

I can only watch, frozen, as Wraith rears back and slams the man into the frozen earth with enough force to crack bone. He doesn't even seem to register the guard's feeble struggles, his icy eyes utterly devoid of anything remotely human.

Then, with a savage wrench, Wraith rips the guard's head to the side in a spray of crimson. There's a sickening crunch of cartilage, tendons straining beneath the skin as Wraith twists and pulls with inhuman strength. I flinch, bile rising in my throat as the guard's head caves in like a pumpkin beneath the pressure of Wraith's grip before separating with a tearing squelch from the shattered torso.

He rises slowly, a hunk of tattered flesh still clutched in one massive fist. Blood streaks his clothes, his mask, the snow around him painted in blood and viscera.

My breath catches in my throat as he turns toward me, that cold, lupine gaze finding me instantly. I tense, fingers digging into the frozen earth as my pulse thunders in my ears.

There's no shred of recognition in those pale blue depths. No hint of the strange, fleeting connection I'd glimpsed during our trek through the mountains.

This is the beast laid bare, the monster unbound.

The reaper come to claim his next soul.

He takes a lumbering step toward me, each footfall sending bloodied snow cascading from his massive frame. I shrink back against the tree, fingers scrabbling wildly for a weapon, anything I can use to defend myself.

My hand closes around the cold steel of Valek's rifle, still lying in the churned snow where it fell, just barely within my reach. Gripping the stock, I brace myself and bring it up, sighting along the barrel with my good arm.

"Don't," I rasp, the word edged with pain and desperation. "Please... Wraith... don't make me..."

He doesn't react, doesn't even seem to hear me. Just keeps advancing with that same inhuman, implacable tread, a juggernaut of muscle and savagery. I swallow hard, my finger tightening on the trigger as he draws nearer and nearer.

Five paces...

Four...

Three...

Two…

Please, God... I don't want to do this...

His shadow engulfs me, blotting out the world until all I can see is the gleam of those pale, merciless eyes glaring down at me through the mask's soulless lenses.

I squeeze the trigger.

The rifle... doesn't fire.

Horror washes over me in a sickly wave as I realize the magazine is empty, the weapon little more than a useless hunk of steel in my hands. I'm out of options, out of defenses against this unholy force of nature bearing down on me.

There's nowhere left to run.

Wraith's hand lashes out, closing around my bleeding throat with crushing force. My own hands fly up on instinct, nails scrabbling uselessly against his granite grip as he hauls me into the air like a child's doll.

I can't breathe, can't think past the agonizing pressure and the terror blazing through my veins. Black spots dance at the edges of my vision as he holds me suspended, my feet kicking helplessly above the bloodstained snow.

Through the haze, I meet that cold, dead stare. See the promise of oblivion reflected in those pitiless depths.

This is it, I think with a strange sense of detachment. This is how it ends.

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