“Lytta, I’m not– I’m just me. Just, Brooks. I don’t–”
“You are the darkness, Brooks. You are the void, the space in between, the ocean that holds us all afloat. You are lost, but I,” her voice broke, “I have given myself to you wholly so that you may rise and take your place amongst the stars, so that you may rule over them once more and sow the seeds of destruction that shehas planted.”
“Oh, my,” a high pitched voice slithered through the dark. “Mistress is not going to like this.”
Brooks and Lytta whipped their heads around to find Rue on the landing.
“Rue?” Confusion muddled his thoughts as she stared at him with that unhinged gleam in her eye.
“I should have fucking killed you!” Lytta screeched, those black eyes reflecting the moonlight eerily.
“You couldn’t touch me if you tried, Zeus’s whore,” Rue hissed.
Brooks gripped Lytta’s shoulder and turned her body to face him, but her stare never left Rue.
“Lytta, what the fuck is going on?”
“She’s been watching you, Brooks. Clinging to you like a little shadow so she can report every move you make because she’s spineless fucking filth!” Lytta screamed the last part in Rue’s direction, tugging against his hold in a flurry of madness.
Lytta continued to scream degrading words and threats, but all Brooks could register was Rue’s maniacal laughter.
“Hey!” Someone yelled across the rooftop. “You can’t be up here. What are you doing?”
Rue wiggled her fingers in their direction before fleeing down the steps.
Why didn’t the orderlies take her?He wondered a split second before men in white scrubs appeared.
Footsteps rushed to the small space on the rooftop they had made their comfort zone, the thundering threatening to taint the safety it once imposed.
A rough hand grabbed his arm and yanked, pulling Brooks from Lytta’s grasp. Rage flared inside as he watched the other orderly do the same to her. An iron grip dragged her toward the fire escape where another orderly was waiting with a syringe.
“I’ve opened the box and given the world destruction, Brooks. You have to wake up and–”
Lytta screamed, a gut-wrenching sound that rang in his ears and boiled his blood. Blackness stained his fingertips and flooded his veins, a monster of night taking shape as ice spread from his feet and covered the rooftop in glittering sheets.
His passenger roared, the sound reverberating through his skull as it took control. His body turned out of the orderlies grasp, a mere human lacking the strength to hold him there. Brooks didn’t have time to smell the fear rolling off of the man in waves before he gripped his throat and hoisted him into the air. With one swift movement, Brooks’ arm was inside the man’s torso, reaching under and up through the rib cage to hold the beating life force in his palm. With a sneer and one quick squeeze, the useless organ beat no longer, but rather crumbled in his fist.
The body burst to ash and Brooks’ mind lurched at sight.
“Let me in and we will devour them!”His darkness raged.
“No!” Brooks yelled into the night. “She’s hurt, I need to get to her.”
“If you do not let me in, I cannot help you, you fucking idiot!”
“Help. Her,” he pleaded.
Lytta was lying prone on the ground with the two orderlies standing over her, one pulling the syringe from her neck as the other stared at him in horror.
He and his passenger stalked predatorily toward the two, their pulses thrumming through the air like the beat of a drum in his ears. To their credit, they didn’t run. They prepared to meet his passenger head on in battle armed only with a syringe laced with toxins to tame his beast.
Brooks lunged for the orderly holding the syringe first, careful to avoid the broken girl on the ground. As he reached for the man’s throat, intent to snap his neck quickly and move on to the next, the other moved to tackle him low and fast. Brooks was on the ground before he could blink with the weight of a man on his chest.
He struggled to move, his passenger raging inside as his strength dwindled. His burst of energy was evidently all it had to offer before being swallowed back into his psyche.
A sharp stab to his thigh wrenched a cry from his lips and, as the drugs swept through his system like an airtanker battling wildfire, he listened to the beast roar inside his head as he stared helplessly at the unmoving body on the ground. He reached for her, using the last morsel of muscular control he could wrangle from the sedative.
“Lytta!”Silent screams wracked his chaotic mind, pleading for her to rise.
