“And youhaveto do what he says?”
“I don’t have to, but I want to.”
“Weak.”
“Stop.”
“Useless.”
“Stop,” I insisted.
“You’re going to get them all killed.”
“Stop!” I screamed, my voice carrying across the meadow and echoing off trees. A crashing sound came from the woods that made me jerk my head towards the source, sighting movement. I almost called out for Cas and Brandon, thinking my yell had brought them back but intuition held me back—my heart thumping hard in my chest.
A flutter came from above and I looked up, seeing Mothman careening towards the earth. He was going too fast. I held my breath as he didn’t stop, crashing to the earth beside me, growling out in pain as he climbed to his feet, holding his stomach. Dark blood drenched his fingers and dripped down his clothes.
“Pollux!” I cried and he stumbled towards me, teeth gritted. His wings came out and he pushed off the ground a few feet as he lunged in front of me as fast as he could.
A gun went off. His body jerked and my own twitched in shock. Pollux turned towards me and I saw the gunman over his shoulder, having come bursting through the trees. A stray cult member that must have been chasing after us or him.
Pollux stumbled towards me, a hole in his chest, blood pouring out too fast. My brain was filled with nothing but static shock. He reached towards me, fingers stretching to touch my face that he couldn’t reach, red glowing eyes creased in pain. Then he began to fall.
I tried to reach out. Tried to catch him. The muscles in my face felt painfully etched in horror.
As soon as his leather duster brushed against my fingers, he was gone.
Pollux turned into thousands of moths that fluttered through my hair, brushed my lips, and trailed kisses across my cheeks. They smelled like dirt, smoke, and magic… and then upwards, into the sky, they left me.
My hands were still in front of me, waiting to catch someone who wasn’t there anymore. My lip quivered.
His clothes fell to the ground in a heap, lifeless, just a lump of cloth. My cheeks felt damp.
I was wailing, I realized, shattering pain pouring out of me up to the sky. The moths dispersed flying higher and higher, leaving me on the ground with nothing but bloody leather… and the man who had shot the gun, standing there in shock as he watched the moths.
My eyes settled on him and all that pain tightened into a horrible mass inside me. I screamed, pulling at power deep inside me. A power that wasn’t mine, but Makwa’s.
“Ava!” Makwa gasped but then his voice was gone as I forced his power to my whims. Black tentacles thrust from my body of my own will, shooting out at the man standing there in shock, his gun hanging low.
A roar of rage burned my throat raw as I used Makwa’s own body, shaping the tentacles around the gunmen. I saw black tears fall from my face and stain my shirt. I felt the agonizing burn of sunlight on the tentacles.
I wrapped them around him, pulling him off the ground, and tore into him with a vengeance I didn’t think I was capable of but the pain inside me was too immense.
He howled in agony, his gun dropping to the ground. The sounds of his body coming apart hit my ears but I kept going, kept ripping and pulling until he was torn into pieces. All it did was cause more pain inside me though. More hurt, morehorror.
I fell to the ground, enormous sobs shaking me. My chest was a carved-out hollow. It felt as if fists had hammered my body all over. My fingers dug into the ground, dirt driving under the nails. Black tears burned my eyes, falling into a puddle beneath me.
I didn’t feel like me. I felt like a corpse, a dried husk of awful feelings.
I made a horrible sound, an outburst of pain that hurt my ears and heart. The tentacles slid back into my body, away from the sun. I felt Makwa, small but still in my head. His power vibrated across my skin still.
“Ava,” a voice whispered, deep and demonic… unfamiliar. I looked up at the sky and saw moths clustering. My vision was blurry with tears as black and red fluttered in my eyes. All that was left of Pollux.
“Ava,” the voice came again. I gasped and looked behind me, frantically trying to scoop tears from my eyes as more moths came back and began to form a shape.
“It’s okay, love,” I heard a deep voice in my mind. My vision cleared and I saw him, Pollux, being reformed before my eyes. Moths collected to form his legs and arms. I was still sobbing, still feeling far too much. Was this real? Dark hands reached out, claws gently scratching at my skin until his palms cupped my cheeks.
“It’s okay,” Pollux said, fingers brushing under my eyes that must still be black. “Oh, Ava,” he said sadly, his arms wrapping around me, pulling him into his solid body. I latched on as hard as I could, trying to convince myself this was real, he was real. That I wasn’t seeing a ghost. It seemed too good to be true.
