I flinch when one of my ribs snaps out of place—the start of a shift. She's so terrified that she's making the choice for me.
I'm about to shift.
"Miss Murley," Kaitlyn begins again, reaching toward me even as her hostility scores its way over my throat. “Peoplediedthanks to your actions. Can you give us a statement about?—"
I can't let her touch me. She'll feel everything I'm feeling.
Run!my animal screams as emotions make my head swim and the world sway.Run now!
I do.
As my shift begins, I bolt away from the fae woman and the cameraman and the people and their feelings?—
Right in time for the front of a bus to slam into me.
Bang.
Everything goes white as my ears pop. The world inverts, turning over itself, flipping and spinning until I slam into the ground. My head cracks against the cold asphalt before its roughness strips at my skin as I roll to a halt.
Brakes screech all around. Adrenaline sears through my system as screams echo from nearby, lancing my sensitive eardrums. I realize hot blood is dripping freely from my nose, pooling with the rest of the blood leaking from somewhere. My head, maybe?
"Move! Out of the way!" a stranger's voice shouts.
"Oh my gods!"
"Elise!" Athanis's voice calls from what seems like hundreds of miles away.
"What just happened?" someone else gasps, shocked.
Blood seeps out of my left hip and leg, which look all jumbled andwrongwhen I crane my neck up. My left arm looks wrong, too, but that probably has something to do with the bone protruding out of my shoulder.
One tough thing about being a shifter is that adrenaline and shock don't usually dull pain for more than a second or two, since the healing jumpstarts things so quickly. Even though my healing is a bit slower than most in the House of Shifting, since I’m a prey shifter, I still get that fun little half-second delay.
My brain registers the pain throughout my body all at once, letting me know that something is majorly wrong with my insides, too.
My damaged head slumps back to the asphalt as my vision spins. For a moment, all I can feel is my broken body and hot blood and warm tears and the little world I built for myself being flipped upside down.
Everything hurts, inside and out.
I finally try to breathe and end up hacking, but I can feel my hip starting to mend itself. Something inside me cracksagain, attempting to get back in its proper spot. Furious tingling courses over my spine and in my head, where my body seems to decide the most work needs to be done first.
Ow. Ow. Ow.
Can I just black out and stop feeling all of this already? I'm pretty sure I have a nasty concussion on top of all this other fun, so where's that little benefit?
I really wish Jessica was here right now. If she were, she would remind me that if I don't heal quickly enough and the blood loss gets me, at least we can check out the dating pool in the Beyond together.
Maybe a new start in the Beyond wouldn't be so bad. It could be peaceful. Maybe I could finally get a new boyfriend there.
At least it would keep me from having to face the end of the human life I've worked so hard for.
"Miss? Miss, can you hear me?" a woman is asking.
It feels like I've been lying in agony for forever, but I'm pretty sure it's been only a handful of seconds since that bus hit me. Or rather, since I hit the front of that bus.
"She's alive," Athanis tries to tell the woman who probably can't see him. "Her spirit has not yet joined the plane in which I walk. Elise, give this kind woman a sign you're still alive."
I feel someone prodding gently at a tender spot on my head.
