Page 9 of Reaper's Ruin
Nothing. Just smooth, unmarked skin.
“What is happening to me?” I whispered again.
A twig snapped nearby.
My head jerked up, every nerve suddenly on high alert. Through the trees, I caught a glimpse of black leather.
Him.
My breath caught in my throat. How? How had he found me again?
He moved through the forest with silent grace while his eyes—those intense, stormy, otherworldly eyes—remained locked on me.
I scrambled to my feet, body tensing like a coil ready to spring me to safety.
“Who are you?” I called, surprised by the steadiness in my voice. “What do you want from me?”
He paused, head tilting slightly as if my questions had surprised him. For a moment—just a fleeting second—something that might have been confusion crossed his face.
Then he was moving again, closing the distance between us with long, purposeful strides.
I didn’t wait to see what would happen next. I wasn’t controlling it before, the jumps were just things that happened against my will, but now, as he closed in on me again, I tried to make myself go. To get away... from him.
I squeezed my eyes shut, concentrating on that falling sensation, willing myself away from this predator who somehow kept finding me.
The world shifted, then I opened them and spun around taking in the impossible sight around me.
I stood on black, cracked earth where rivers of molten lava cut glowing paths through the landscape. The air shimmered with heatthat should have scorched my lungs but didn’t. In the distance, a massive volcano belched smoke and ash into a crimson sky.
People moved along the lava flows, seeming to scoop it up like you’d take water from a stream. They wore no protection against heat that would incinerate a human yet were completely unharmed. They looked nearly human, but their skin had a warm, golden glow to it, and their hair shimmered with auburn and copper highlights that caught the light like burnished metal.
I staggered away from the nearest lava river, disoriented by the sudden shift from forest to inferno.
“This can’t be real,” I murmured. “None of this can be real.”
But with each passing moment, with each new impossible place I found myself in, that explanation grew thinner. If this wasn’t real, what was it? Was I in a coma? Was I hallucinating? Had someone slipped me drugs?
Or was I...
The thought had been circling the edges of my mind, too terrible to acknowledge. But standing here, watching people walk through lava unharmed while I remained unseen and untouchable the truth crashed into me with cruel clarity. But before I had time to process the horror of that thought, as if summoned by my thoughts, a flicker of movement caught my eye.
He stood atop a ridge of black rock, silhouetted against the red sky, his cloak billowing around him. Even at this distance, I could feel the weight of his gaze.
“Leave me alone!” I shouted, my voice breaking. “What do you want from me?”
He began to descend the ridge, moving with that same lethal grace, never taking his eyes off me. Something about the way he moved reminded me of documentaries I’d watched about predators stalking their prey.
Focused. Relentless. Inevitable.
He wasn’t the first shadowy figure I’d seen since this nightmare began. There had been others—dark silhouettes glimpsed behind that misty veil, but the others hadn’t gotten this close. They’d appeared once and when I’d blinked away, they’d never reappeared. This one—this hunter with storm-gray eyes—kept finding me no matter where I went, and I started to doubt he would ever give up.
I stumbled backward, tripping over a rock and nearly falling into one of the lava flows. Not that it would hurt me, apparently. Nothing seemed to affect my strange, inexplicable form.
I concentrated again, desperate to escape, and the world dissolved around me.
When it reformed, I stood in the middle of my house. My normal, messy house I still shared with my mother since I couldn’t afford my own place while I was in nursing school. The house I’d grown up in and loved, even with its leaky faucet and drafty windows that made us bundle up beneath extra blankets on cold, winter nights.
“Home,” I breathed, relief washing over me.
