Page 18 of Consume
The tall man seethed with angry, cold energy, about to explode. But Daryl was already moving toward him and the bell.
My mind, the only thing that was still mine, seized. I had nothing. No control. No iron. A scream tore up my throat but never made it out. I wanted to hide. I wanted to dig in my heels and then curl myself into a ball. I wanted to survive long enough to rescue Ellison and Mase.
The ghost wailed as I drew closer, its darkness clawing past my scales to find the real me. Someone who couldn’t help him.
I touched the bell and made it ring, and relief surged through me that didn’t belong to me. Relief that the room was now inhabitable. It lasted a second, long enough for me to gain control and yank the chain attached to the bell. A second, and just a foot from the tall man.
He charged.
The bell’s chain didn’t snap.
Terror dragged my heart to my knees as I turned and ran to the table. Iron. Feozva, help me! I dove onto the table and grabbed the edge in an attempt to flip it to its side and block me as a temporary shield.
I didn’t work. The tall man snatched at my hair, flipped me onto my back, and hauled my head toward him. Fiery pain shredded across my scalp. My bones rattled. I screamed, the real me this time. Razor-sharp teeth filled my vision and snapped closer.
I screamed and clawed and kicked to get away. This couldn’t be how it would end. Consumed by ghosts from the outside and the inside until there was nothing left.
Poh. Why couldn’t she hear me? Why hadn’t she come running? Where were Josh and Captain Glenn? Surely it had been thirty minutes by now.
My body fell limp, my screams extinguished as if my few seconds of control had been blown out with a single breath. How pathetic that I’d let myself come to this. The iron maiden. The ghost magnet who’d survived years of torment and sort of learned to conquer her fears.
As the tall man’s disfigured mouth lowered, I realized none of it mattered. I’d already been devoured from the inside out, changed, unable to see through the impenetrable shadows that fogged my mind.
But I remembered something. I already had metal as sharp as the teeth puncturing into the top of my head. If I could just get to it. The tall man’s teeth penetrated scales and flesh and drew blood that snaked between my strands of Saelis hair.
The torture burned tears from my eyes. The realization that I knew how to stop it and couldn’t even move my hands scorched me to my soul.
He slurped and savored the taste as his teeth sank in deeper.
I can stop this. I can. You do not own me. None of you do.
The chandelier flickered above, or maybe that was my fading consciousness.
I could hold on though. For Mase and Ellison. A burst of desperation charged through my veins.Give me myself back!
As if released from a spring trap, my hands flew to my necklace. I plucked the ice pick free and stuck the handle part into my mouth, biting down.
The tall man jerked back with a bellow, a bleeding shadow. My blood. My tainted blood that drew too much attention.
Never mind that, or the brutal pain. The taste of metal surged my consumectalons awake. I sprang to my feet atop the table and grabbed at the delicate white metal chains that held the chandelier pieces together. I needed more. I only hoped they were alloy and not white gold.
Blood dripped from the bite wounds on my forehead and blinded me, but I swiped it away as part of the chandelier fell into my waiting hand. As soon as I clenched my fist around it, brought the whole thing, glass and all, to my mouth, my body lurched forward. It was as though someone had smacked me hard in the back, and the ice pick between my lips tumbled out. My feet swept out from underneath me. I smashed down onto the tabletop, all the air punched from my lungs. My fist pried itself open, and the opposing forces inside me crashed my wrist into the table again and again until the chandelier piece was forced free. It slid across the table and tinkled to the floor.
No. NO.
I finally gasped in a shaky lungful of air that filled every crack inside me with cold terror. My ice pick. Where had it gone? I couldn’t lift my head to search, couldn’t see much of anything other than red alarms flashing in my head.
That, and the tall man’s shadow, once again hovering in the doorway. His dark energy slithered around him while he waited to strike.
Back to square one. More like square zero without the ice pick.
“Hunger.” A sinister growl as the tall man pressed forward.
Tears ran down my face, not just for me, but for Ellison and Mase who were still trapped here. For Poh and Pop and Captain Glenn. For the rest of humanity who still didn’t believe they were in any danger.
For Ellison’s baby.
For my baby, whom I hadn’t even met yet.
