“Die!” She cut at the neck, plunged the knife into the head holes, into the eyeballs, and felt the Thing begin to die.
Yesss.
The Lure seemed to wrench inward and twist. White fragments sprayed and a vapor flooded her nose, mouth. As it burned in the scent triggered a memory of a similar scent and taste on the day she escaped from the Top. She’d bitten a tentacle.
Blinding pain ripped at her thoughts then abruptly, everythingstopped.
Silence.
The Thing toppled, arms flopping, white eyes paling. To be sure, she ripped out the heart with one hand and kicked it so the last vascular connections shredded, leaving the creature to tumble into the void. The ground would smash it to a pulp.
Exhausted, she shut her eyes. A headache was ramping up. When she found herself again, she was sobbing in air and covered in blood. The dead heart was in her hand and she held it aloft, then cried out and crumpled to the floor. The heart rolled away. Her bloodied fist was before her mouth.
Temptation. Her hunger had become so terrible she would consume anything to satiate herself. The apple to Eve. Weak, she licked at her skin.
She stuck her fist in her mouth and sucked on the knuckles.
Only the silence interrupted her.
She looked up, and above her was Rutger. He stood with his legs spread and arms wide as if he shielded her. Beyond him were the other beasters, and blood, and bodies.
Among them was Tom, splayed on his back with his blond hair and angelic face disrupted by gore and blasted flesh. His eyes looked on nothing. People tended to him. People stared at her. Weapons were being drawn and trained, on her.
“No!” Rutger shouted. “No! Something happened here that not all of us saw clearly.”
“She killed the doctor.”
“What the fuck is she?”
“Her eyes are red, she has murderous impulses, and I saw dark red wings when she flew.” The beaster who croaked that out held his wounded, bleeding arm. His face was wrenched by pain and soiled by tears.
Flew?Cyn pulled her bloodied fingers from between her teeth.
That beaster who’d spoken, it was Vargr.
She’d shot him?
Oh dear gods.Tears burst from her. And Tom? Had she killed Tom?
“Leave her be for the moment.” Rutger’s voice was raw, and his speech came out deadly slow. “I believe… we may have seen a Ghoul Lord. We cannot trust our eyes, but I think I saw one, at the last.”
“We will have a trial!” a woman stated. That was Willow. “It will be fair and just! To me that was Doctor Nietz, but we have no body.”
Her heart was thumping so loudly she could barely hear them. Every beat cranked up the pain at the back of her head.
To her, the words that counted the most were Vargr’s.
“Someone needs to fly down and find the body. Don’t trust her.” His jaw clenched, unclenched. “If we don’t come from beasts, she doesn’t either. That leaves a lot of screwed-up fucking possibles.”
The crowd made more suggestions.
“She’s worse than us.”
“Yes.”
“What if Rutger is right? What if it was a Ghoul Lord?”
“I saw something odd too. He changed.”
