“Caro-line.” I tried to smile, but it hurt too much. “Nice. Accessory.”
I’d have to tease her about it later. When I could talk without splitting the skin of my lips.
There was a pop and a crack as Caroline began the process of the shift.
“I’m here, Aileen,” Caroline said seconds later, startling me out of the sleep I’d begun to drift back into. “Everything is going to be okay.”
Of course, it was, I thought at her. I’d never doubted her.
The sound of a zipper being undone came. Then the beep of buttons being pushed. A phone rang once before it was answered.
“I have her. She’s hurt bad. What do I do?”
I sunk back into sleep before I caught the answer.
The taste of blood on my tongue and the power infusing it brought me screaming back to consciousness.
I struggled, nearly choking as blood dribbled out of the corner of my mouth.
“You have to drink. You’re too badly burned to heal on your own.” Caroline’s arms tightened around me, making me aware of the fact I was resting with my back against her front, her bleeding wrist against my mouth. “I know it hurts. Just a little longer.”
I whimpered as the current of power continued to build.
My brain switched off, instinct taking control. I jack knifed, trying to sit up. Scoot away. Anything to escape the thing that was hurting me.
“I’m so sorry, Lena. I’m so sorry,” someone apologized, over and over again.
Somehow, I ended up on my side, something clamping my legs and arms so I couldn’t struggle. Blood continued to fill my mouth.
A muffled scream left me as the lightning storm within burst.
Suddenly, I was no longer lying on cool sand, surrounded by rock. Rather, I was elsewhere. An old growth forest. Lightning striking from the sky to set fire to the trees around me. The flames climbed higher and higher, consuming the underbrush until I was left standing in a soot blackened sea of destruction that extended as far as the eye could see.
The world fell silent, everything quieting for a brief moment. Smoke billowed from the fire, something forming in its depths.
A creature.
Born of darkness and shadow. A reflection of myself. She was rawer. Less civilized and more vengeful. A little too quick to seek violence as her first, second, and last resort.
The fear I’d squashed deep inside and pretended not to feel when Brin and my grandfather told me about this “becoming” fell away. As terrible and fierce as this creature was, she wasn’t without her rationality.
She was still me.
I would struggle with new instincts, but at the end of the day, I wouldn’t lose the person I was.
“That was quick. I didn’t expect you for at least another half hour,” someone outside the forest said.
The intrusion broke me from my contemplation of the entity forming inside me. A wintry scent flooded my nostrils.
Liam.
Someone took my hand in theirs and lifted it. A second later, lips touched the inside of my wrist.
“I’m so upset with you,mo chuisle. This is the opposite of what you promised.”
Despite the chiding words, Liam’s tone lacked heat. Even as out of it as I was, I could sense his concern.
Unable to speak, I formed soundless words. “Knew. You’d. Come.”
