Page 58 of Her Rabid Beasts

It hits me then. He would rather us dead than free.

“Shoot!” Mrs. Ulman cries.

My litter-mates flee in all directions, led by instinct. Shots are fired but I stay still. A heavy thud sounds from behind me. One of my brothers snarls before another shot cuts him off mid-way.

And then I’m screaming and roaring and all I know is a terrible, violent rage that burns through my marrow and sets my soul on fire.

Everything turns black. And I know I’m alive and I know I’m conscious, but something is caging me where it is deep and dark. There are faint screams. My body is moving, but it does not feel like mine. And yet Iknowit is mine.

The faint smell of guns being fired tingles in my nose. There is a taste in my mouth. Something burns. All I can do is wait as a power that is bigger than me, stronger than me, holds me tight in its grasp.

Blood. There’s so much blood. It’s on my human hands, lining my human palms, and caked under my human fingernails. My naked body is sticky with it, the hot, dry air of the arid desert congealing it onto my skin. The metallic tang of it fills my nose. But it’s not just blood that I sense.

I rub at my eyes, trying to understand. Trying to clear the fog that engulfs my brain. The four jeeps are scattered around in the distance, as if their owners left them in a hurry.

But there is blood splashed on the side of the vehicles as well. I look back down. Chunks of flesh lie about me. Like a giant tore through humans and only left their parts behind.

Terror chokes me as my vision clears and I understand what I am seeing.

I’m standing amongst bodies. Bodies that lie still and silent. Lions with bullet holes and humans eviscerated by some merciless monster of nightmares who chased them down one by one and tore them apart one by one?—

These are people I know. My family. And my enemies.

This is a massacre.

The dusty wildlife sanctuary of my home has become a killing ground, and somehow, the only soul left standing is me.

I fall to my human knees with a thud and a cloud of red dust billows around my waist.

A gurgling sound makes me snap my head left. A bloody body the size of a grown man lies choking on his own lifeblood. I scramble towards him. His face and throat have been torn open, as if a claw slashed right through one eye all the way across to his mouth, twisting it down. But he has a bald head and a red beard…

“Ulman?” I choke, not used to using my human mouth. To my own ears, my voice sounds a hundred years old. Haggard and rusty.

The man who murdered my family gurgles on his words.

“You…”

Ulman tries so hard to speak and I don’t want to look at him any more. Next to him is Mrs Ulman, by the long hair. And a girl with strawberry blonde plaits, a bush hat lying a few steps away.

Frank Ulman finally gets it out what he’s been trying to say. “Fuckinganimal.Monster.”

The words condemn me. Sharpen my mind.

I stumble back from Ulman’s dying body. A roar, broken and beastly, erupts from my bloody throat.

I did this?

And I remember none of it.

Horror is a machete, shredding my heart to pieces.

Chapter 26

Aurelia

Iwake up from my dream of Lyle’s past with my heart pounding, covered in sweat.

Sheer terror fades into a low fizzing in my skull as I realise that I’m not in the dry heat of the outback, but inside my dorm room at Animus Academy.

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