Page 95 of Fangs
“No!” I said immediately. “I’m not scared of you. I don’t know how to explain it, buthispower feels so different from mine, and yours feels… it feels like… me.”
He abruptly stood, startling me. He paced the length of the room then stopped at the small window over the kitchen sink, bracing his hands on the counter and hanging his head. Nausea rose, and my fingers twisted the end of my braid repeatedly. He already seemed angry, and I’d barely begun.
“There’s more,” I whispered.
He turned around and pinned me in place with that unreadable expression, crossing his arms over his chest.
Fuck, I regretted bringing this up, but I couldn’t stop now.
“C’mon, Bones. It’s fun.” Vulture grinned crookedly at me, holding up two vials. “Ever heard of fun?”
I rubbed my arms nervously. I had a rare afternoon of freedom because Juck was gone on a day trip, leaving me under guard of Grip and Vulture. Grip was currently snoring outside Juck’s tent, and Vulture had snuck inside, surprising me with two narcs he’d gotten somewhere. I knew many of the Reapers got high for fun, but after my first and only experience with narcs, I didn’t want anything to do with them.
“What’s the matter? You scared, lil girl?” Vulture gave me a taunting grin. He was only six years older than me, but he loved reminding me of it.
“I’m not scared,” I muttered, even though we both knew that was a lie.
“Didn’t you have a narc when you broke your arm?”
“Yeah and… I didn’t like it.”
He rolled his eyes. “You probably just had a bad trip. It’s not like the same thing will happen again.”
I desperately wanted to believe him. The bruises on my body ached, and all I wanted was to be able to drift away from my real life for a little while. “You think?”
“Yeah, dumbass. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”
I let him prepare everything, and he showed me how to inject it into the crook of my elbow. I was trying to convince myself this was going to be different, but as soon as the drug hit my veins, I knew I was horribly wrong.
The shadow man swiftly entered my head with brutal expertise. I could feel the anger coming off him in waves, and he didn’t even speak before tearing through my memories with what felt like razor-sharp claws. The pain left me gasping for air; writhing on the ground, I had no chance of stopping him. I still couldn’t see anything other than what looked like a vaguely human-shaped dark shadow. This time, there was a desperation about him that hadn’t been there before. He was muttering to himself, and I tried to pay attention to what he was saying, but I couldn’t make out the words. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt him pause. Strong fingers gripped my chin.
“Open your eyes,” he growled.
I didn’t know why he wanted me to open my eyes, but acting on pure instinct, I squeezed them tighter shut. His claws dug into my skin, and the metallic tang of blood filled the air.
“Open your eyes,” he said quieter, but his malice was unmistakable.
Tears leaked down my face, and I was sobbing in gasps of breath through my teeth, but I didn’t open my eyes.
“You want to play games, love?” he crooned, caressing my face with the tips of his claws. “We can play games.”
He tore his way into my memories again, leaving me screaming in agony, but he was moving slower like something was holding him back.
“You think you can hide anything from me?” His mocking laugh filled my head again. “I will find you, Ember, whether or not you cooperate.”
I sensed the crack reappear, but I forced myself not to react. The half dose was leaving my system much faster, and he didn’t seem to know anything was different. I waited until he seemed distracted by one of my memories of Dune, and then I fled. He realized what I was doing too late, and his furious voice screaming my name was the last thing I heard before I bolted upright in the real world again.
Beside me, Vulture was half-conscious, grinning at the ceiling with glassy eyes. I barely managed to lean off the bed before I was sick, shaking like a leaf. I knew I needed to take care of the mess before Juck came back, or he’d add more bruises, but I could only lay there, sprawled on my stomach half off the bed, gasping in frantic breaths of air that left me lightheaded for what felt like forever. Finally, the terror faded enough for me to crawl over to Vulture and curl against him. He didn’t even notice my presence, but I didn’t care. I just desperately wanted to feel the comfort of another person.
Mac’s emotions felt like a thundercloud in my head, but I frantically grabbed the final memory I needed to show him and yanked it up to play through my head.
I was lying in Juck’s bed again, struggling to breathe through the pain in my chest. Tears slowly leaked down my face. Juck was talking to someone, but I had trouble concentrating enough to hear it. I wondered if Vulture was still alive. I doubted it. I remembered Rally’s face twisted in pain, the horrible screams that had ripped from him, and the blood?—
Juck suddenly appeared above me, and I tensed, biting back a cry of pain at the movement. He stared at me silently for a while, and the swell of fear made me dizzy.
“You in pain, Angel?” he finally asked.
I didn’t know how he wanted me to answer that, making me even more panicked. Did he want me to say yes so he knew he’d successfully punished me? Or did he want me to say no so we could move on and never speak of this again?
