He kicks into a run—and it lasts just one step before the guard is on him.
The man hits the ground with a grunt. His fall is face-down, and in a mere blink, blood starts to melt the snow around his head.
The faintest of moans rinses him.
My heart is slingshotting through me, over and over. It pulses in my head, violent, as the heels of my boots dig into the road.
I kick myself back, until my spine is pressing against something hard and cold. The metal side of a pickup truck.
I bolt in place.
But my heart hammers, wild and untethered, in my chest. It strikes my throat, cutting off my uttered moans of pure, icy terror—and I can only watch as the guard comes down on the man.
His hand slams into the nape of his neck.
A cry rips through me.
My hands slap to my face, muffling my shouts, but my gloved fingertips only brush my under-eyes, and so I seeeverything.
I see the fae’s strength crush the bone of the man’s spine; sharp, black fingernails cutting into his flesh until it’s mush; and I watch, horrified, as the faeliterally rips out the spine.
Blood splatters.
It splashes onto my hidden face, chunks of blood and muscle and flesh slapping over my gloves.
Then the guard, hunched over the corpse, lifts his buttery gaze to me…
My cry juts into a wretched groan.
The bile is rising in me, twisting my gut.
My mouth moves with garbled words, muffled by my hands.
Eyes on me, the fae rises.
My watery gaze follows him up and up, until he’s a tower of dark threats looming over me.
The breath that utters from me is nothing short of cowardly, like the tears spilling down my face.
He takes a step towards to me, and I cringe into the pickup truck.
The hard, sheeted metal digs into my spine, crushes into the back of my head. My boots worm over the road, pushing snow in small piles away from me, but I can’t force myself back any further.
I’m trapped in his slow advance.
His bootfalls sink into the slush of the human, the spatter that slicks the melting snow, the blood pouring too freely.
My hands lower from my face, slow, trembling, like the wobble of my wet lips, “I-I-I’m—”
My teary gaze finds a dart of movement over the other side of the bridge. My wide eyes latch onto it, the shadow dashing down the length of the metal barrier.
A man, a captive, running.
Hope ignites in my fluttering chest.
His gaze swerves here and there, panicked eyes searching for any fae who might be hunting him, noticing him, as he makes a break for it—and he runs for the slope down the side of the bridge, the one that should take him to the riverbank, the same one I was headed for.
The idea snaps in my head, and maybe it’s one I should be ashamed of, but I honestly don’t fucking care, and before I can think more than a heartbeat on it, my hand shoots out.
