Page 174 of Her Psycho Beasts

There is shouting as felines move forward to replace the broken archers, and I feel an incessant tug as multiple beasts try their telekinesis on me.

My power sweeps it away and their power goes tumbling like seaweed in the surf.

Focusing my power, I unleash it upon the next wave of felines and hyenas, but stronger beasts have come forward now, and their power pulls at me…and finds purchase.

I roar at them as they advance towards me, no less than twenty hands outstretched.

They force my knees to crumple. I land heavily on bone, my torso kept straight.

Cain sneers at me from under his heavy black beard. “You’ve thought yourself infallible for too long. You and your kind.” He stands aside and a lanky, pale figure is shoved forward, bound in obsidian. Silver hair shines under the streetlight, and two ice-blue eyes look in opposing directions.

“Mr Kharkorous!” Hammer shouts. “They say they want to kill me!” A knife coated with milky liquid is angled at Hammer’s throat. He feels the scrape and screams. “I want to go home!”

A snarl tears from my throat, but the telekinesis holds me firm. A phantom pops up in my periphery, wraith-like, hollow-eyed with jagged teeth. It is followed by another, then another. They line themselves up shoulder to shoulder, weaving through my enemies. Mouths open to reveal needle light teeth and they laugh in a pitch that mimics my own.

“They belong in an institution,” Cain snaps, “or six feet under. Fill him with arrows.”

I laugh again at that great joke, because Xander had destroyed Mace’s big supply of firearms. They had to resort to ancient tactics now.

Crossbows?

My laugh echoes in my own ears.

Mad or not, I want my regina. She is the object of all my desires. Of my obsession.

But a pain pierces my torso, right between the muscles of my hard abdomen. Disbelief clouds my brain as the shaft of an arrow, long and thin, juts out from my skin, the arrowhead disappearing completely. A fell burning courses through my gut.

Pain blossoms on my right side, then my left. I tug at the bonds holding me, the veins in my neck bulging, sweat eruptingupon my skin. Burning fills my stomach, my sides, my chest, as more arrows pierce my body.

I roar, straining against the forces holding me tight, pulling and pulling. My foot moves behind me and with one sweeping motion, I plant it before me.

“How is he still up?” someone calls.

“More arrows!” Cain commands.

“Mr Kharkorous!” Hammer cries.

Pain blooms in my chest. I look like a pincushion now. That burning is pounding through my body with each heartbeat.

A phantom tears apart from the group and wanders forward. I squint at it, wondering at this new development.

But she glows blue. She walks with familiar grace, silver hair full and floating around her naked body.

Not a phantom. A ghost.

“My son,” my mother rasps, her voice harsh, even in death.

“Mother,” I choke.

“This is not the way,” she says, her eyes furious as she beckons to the phantoms chanting their heinous song around me. “Take it. Make it yours.”

Something nudges within my centre. Something that feels golden and blue-eyed sassily demands attention.

I shake my head. “I want her to live within me. I want to feel her close.” Close, but separate.

She smiles. “Did you forget? She was made for you.”

I reach for those glowing drops within me, the power my regina blessed me with, that I had been keeping in a lonely corner of my heart, and grasp it with both psychic hands.

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