“F-friends…,” he croaks. “New friends… here fordinner.”
20
Istand slowly, a cautious handstretched out before me as I place myself in front of Jyn. “H-hello there,” I stutter. “We, uh… seem to have lost our way.”
Jyn drags herself to her feet, then clings to my back. I can feel her trembling. “Sai,run.”
“Run, run, run,” the man echoes, his whole body jittery like a jumping spider. He stands naked, his limbs shriveled and each one of his ribs prominent enough to count. He’s more skeleton than human, whatever humanity he had having died ages ago. “Run from me? That… makes me so sad. So long since new friends came last. So long since dinner.”
There’s no calming my skittering heartbeat. Reaching back, I take Jyn’s hand in my own. “Please,” I say, trying and failing to keep my voice level. “We really must get going.”
“Four moons,” he croaks. “Four moons since the wisps trapped me down here. So… so hungry.”
My mind reels. I don’t understand how he’s managed to survive down here. I can only assume that these cursed wisps have something to do with it, stringing him along with their magic long enough for him to make it to his next meal. In this case—us.
Jyn’s fear runs so cold over our connection that it almost scalds my hand, like I’ve dipped it into a bucket of ice water. While I can’t read her thoughts, I’m still able to sense her frustration scraping along the sides of our bond. She’s still in a terrible state, lucky to be standing. I can tell she wants to shift, to transform into the mightier version of herself, but the rolling sickness in her stomach blocks the free flow of her magic. She’s in no condition to fight after our disastrous narrow escape from the emperor’s crows.
Her safety lies solely in my hands.
We take a deliberate step back. He takes a step forward.
Something crunches underfoot. Bones.
Humanbones.
“Sai,” Jyn says tightly.
The man takes another threatening step forward. Saliva spills from his lipless mouth, thick globs dripping down the point of his sharp chin. “Just a bite,” he says with a maniacal laugh.“Just a bite!”
He lunges toward us with such alarming speed that we have no time to retreat. He latches onto my arm with force, digging his sharp nails into my flesh as he bites straight through my hand. A scream rips itself from my throat as he gnaws my forefinger off at the base knuckle. The disgusting crunch of my finger between his teeth leaves me sick with nausea, too dizzy to catch myself before I stumble onto my back.
He’s on top of me in an instant, slicing through the skin of my arms, my chest, my throat. He smells so putrid that it makes me gag. I kick and punch, doing whatever I can to throw the monster off. My own blood drips from his mouth, coating my face with spit and the smell of iron.
“So…juicy.”
Disgust and panic swirl within me, but there’s not a second to waste. I wrap my legs around the crazed man’s hips and lock him to my body, screaming over his rotting shoulder.
“Jyn,run!Go!”
“I’m not leaving you here!” she yells, leaning heavily against the cave wall for balance.
“There’s no time to argue! Find a way out while you still can.”
The monster throttles me, wrapping his long, rotten fingers around my throat. He’s missing a few of his nails, one or two of the remaining ones dangling by their nail beds. He squeezes so hard that I swear I feel my windpipe collapse beneath the force. Leaning forward, he licks a stripe up my cheek. Goose bumps break out across my flesh.
“I will save you for later—oh, yes! A nice big meal. The pretty one will be a nice snack—such a nice snack!”
“Take your hands off him!” Jyn shrieks, charging from behind.
She’s grabbed a long bone from off the ground—a femur, I think—one of its ends having happened to be broken off into a sharp point. She lances him through the back, piercing him straight through the chest. The sound he makes is disgustingly wet, but he’s nowhere near dead. I’m the one who must finish the job.
I throw him off me, clambering on top as quickly as I can to keep him pinned beneath my weight.
A blazing heat surges forth from my core, my fear unexpectedly erupting into uncontrollable anger. My mind blanks. Nothing matters except the crack of my knuckles against his jaw, the fading light from this monster’s eyes, the twitch of his fingers as I beat him past the point of submission.
I’m not myself. This unshakable frenzy can’t be explained. There’s no way to describe the thrum in my veins, the fire that spurs me on. It singes down to the tips of my toes, builds in an enormous pressure behind my eyes, tastes like bitter charcoal on my tongue. Something inside me is changing, but I’m so consumed by this sudden bloodlust that I don’t register anything except the sound of my fists beating his head in like a drum.
Even as his red thread of fate turns black and begins to dissolve away, I don’t regain control. I can’t.
