Page 6 of Whispered Warnings: Part One

“Bitch,” I curse at her. It’s not until the guys raise their eyebrows at me, that I realize that I have said that aloud and not in my head. I wave them off, “Don’t mind me. I'm just arguing with my inner voice, it's perfectly normal.”

River bursts out laughing. “I think we may have a different definition of normal.”

“Everyone has a different definition of normal to Neith,” Van smiles affectionately.

“Rude,” I reply, with my own grin plastered on my face.

I know he is joking, I know he didn’t mean anything by it, but I can’t help the initial sting of his words. I am not normal and most of the time I am one thousand percent okay with that, but after just coming back from the dead, and having the voices still present in my mind, I would like to be normal. Or at least not feel like I am going completely and utterly insane.

I have been through enough shit in my life that there is a very real possibility that my mind has broken and created the voices. There is a possibility that they aren’t real, and that scares the shit out of me and makes me murderous all at the same time.

Murderous because if my mind is broken and I am crazy, I know exactly who is responsible. I feel murderous whenever I think of him though, so that doesn’t really change anything.

“And hurt,”my inner voice mutters, she sure has a lot to fucking say at the moment.

I growl and shut that shit down immediately, it does no one any good dwelling in the past, and that is where that shit needs to stay.

Forever.

“Guy’s, we really should do something about the moving dead bodies because they are definitely moving now,” Griff interrupts my downward spiral.

I grimace, my nose scrunching as I look at the twitching bodies, “Maybe they are reacting to something and aren’t actually reanimating?”

My suggestion is disproven when one of them sits up.

“Okay, not that then,” River replies, whispering even though they can’t hear us. At least, I don’t think that they can.

I move closer to the edge of the now see-through bubble, trusting that Ransom’s magic is going to hold and that none of them are going to grab my ankle or try to eat me or something equally terrifying.

“There is no light in their eyes,” I mutter.

“What do you mean?” Evander asks, coming to stand next to me. He studies the one that I am looking at, the one that is just sitting there, staring straight ahead. “Okay, I see it. It’s like the lights are on, but no one is home.”

“Exactly,” I reply, happy that he can see what I do. “Like they are just shells with nothing inside, no soul.”

“Let me see if I can see their spirits,” Raiden says, a hint of apprehension in his tone.

He still thinks that I am going to freak out on him or judge him for being a Reaper, and I think it is going to take him a while to see that isn’t the case. It’s obvious to me that it isn’t just the reputation that all reapers have that is causing this reaction in him, he clearly has shit in his past that has hurt him deeply.

I find myself growing angry at the thought, feeling protective over this man that I have only known for a few days.

“There isn’t anyone home, none of them have any souls, but I’m not sure if it’s a new thing or if they were always that way,” Raiden says with a frown, his magic fizzing out.

“I think they had their spirits when they first came through the portal,” Doc says, “their shouts sounded panicked when they realized that it was closing and creatures with no spirits don’t feel things like panic.”

“Good point,” Raiden frowns.

We watch in silence as they all get up.

“We should probably go out there, we need to round them up or something and get them transported to the lab. I would like to see exactly what has happened to them and whether their spirits can be returned to them, that sort of thing,” Doc says, interest sparking in his eyes.

Evander nods, “You got it, Doc. Ransom, bring the barrier down. I think we have had it up for too long anyway. Winston said that we needed to bring it down before we gained too much attention.”

I frown. I forgot that he said that. We have definitely had the barrier up for longer than we should have, and now I’m worried about Ransom, and the rest of them actually, gaining attention from the sick fucker that is creating the hybrids in the first place.

There isn’t really anything else that we can do though, we can’t leave it up indefinitely, so we have to take it down and hope that Winston was wrong or that no one has noticed.

The barrier drops and I am immediately hit with the sense of wrongness. It’s in the air; it’s permeating the forest. It is covering everything, saturating the surrounding area and everything in it.

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