Page 43 of Blood of Hercules
I tasted vomit.
Nyx slid against my neck.
My attacker collapsed on top of me, convulsing.
She’d bit him.
I shrieked through my teeth as I shoved his body away and scrambled to my feet, heart racing, frosty breath uneven, as I struggled to catch my bearings and think. My skin crawled where he’d touched me.
I rubbed my hands across my grit covered arms like I could wipe the disgust away.
“Thanks.” I gasped for air.
“Kid, you need to stay alert and run,” Nyx said. “If they get close, I’ll bite them so you?—”
Two bodies slammed against me.
Then a third.
A fourth.
I lost count. Boys fought everywhere. There was no tact, no dodging and expert maneuvers like the fiction books described in the library.
There was no honor.
We were animals.
Cymbals crashed, and haunting music played.
Hell was not a place; it was cracked bones and hoarse shouts in the middle of a scrum. It was fighting in a melee of screaming black fog that sounded alarmingly like my foster parents.
Sanity disappeared as I punched, kicked, and scratched blindly in the middle of the chaos. Blood sprayed. Rain poured. Thunder boomed.
Baptism by fire.
A fist pummeled my face. My nose broke, and blood splattered. Copper flooded my mouth.
Someone pulled him back into the fog.
Hands tried to wrap around my throat from behind, but Nyx was already there, and they convulsed with a scream.
My ragged breath puffed in the air.
The temperature was below freezing as the fog rolled over me like a sadistic blanket—a woman wailed as she died.
“Filthy, abandoned mutt,” someone growled.
The ringing in my left ear was now a high-pitched burn.
I turned and ran.
Stumbled. Dodged. Sprinted in a stupor across the wet sand through the opaque fog.Away. Away. Away.I needed to getaway.
The ignominy was too much to handle. I pulled at my hair as I ran, retching with shame that I didn’t fully understand.
Lightning flashed, and thunder boomed.
Everything was distorted.
