“Come along, pet,” Asher murmured, and wrapped a clammy palm around my elbow. “Time to go.”
As if in a dream, I did not fight him. Couldn’t. Not with legs made of watery clouds, and a neck too loose and rubbery to support my head.
“Fuck,” Asher hissed, and lifted me in arms scarcely more reliable than my own boneless meat-sacks. I could feel it in the way he trembled, straining to bear my weight. Feeble, his muscles deplete.
“Move your rickety old man assright fucking now!” Marco snarled, backing us off the podium and into the seething masses. Finger not quite on the trigger as a wave of civilians swept onto the stage to avoid the pools of liquid plasma still glowing with enough heat to leave what remained of General Tilcot bubbling with the reek of roasting pork.
My head lolled, only to be caught in the crook of Asher’s arm. Bleary eyed, my attention was snared by the shimmer of turbulent emotions hovering above the crowd. As if it were a cloud, a tantalizing miasma of panic and fear. Of primalfeelingso thick in the air my mouth watered at a sight no one else could see.
“It’s… chaos…” I whispered, hypnotized by it. And then, lifting one trembling hand, I reached. Fingers outstretched, so I might catch a passing sleeve. Brush against an exposed forearm. Touch what I desperately needed to taste so I might stop the burning, aching cold where an inferno no longer burned.
All I needed was a single instant of contact…
“Don’t,” the captain barked, and trapped my fingers in his palm. Squeezing too hard. Enough that my joints groaned, my lips drawing back in a hiss of pain and protest. “Focushere,” he whispered, lips dragging across the edge of my jaw. Inky gaze wild as his eyes darted back and forth in my periphery.
“It’s so…” I shook my head, refusing him. “Beautiful.”
Strong white teeth flashed, a warning forced between his lips. “Mila.Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare.”
But his promise of retribution came too late. Falling on ears deaf to everything but the oppressive hum of bone-crushing grief.
“Yes…” I whispered, and reached into the seething dark. Soaking myself in it, I rolled my neck as it washed over me. The pain… the anguish and the heartbreak.
It was mine to endure.
A punishment earned. Exactly what I deserved, for in return for my blind, stubborn ignorance, I was to suffer agony before I followed Sasha into the welcoming dark.
I exhaled, and let my mind go blank. Seeing everything around me through the eyes of a conduit. A void that needed to be filled with the teeming waves of chaos swelling all around me.
From the distance, the captain cursed. Deep, vicious, it was a sentiment that reverberated through his very bone. “Marco,” he hissed, “get us out of here.Now.”
“And how exactly would you like me to proceed?” the soldier retorted, his every line tight. “The only way out isthrough.”
The captain’s fingers tightened. My face pressed almost into his armpit when he hiked me up. “She’s got no control,” he said, scraped raw and left open. Vulnerable. Barely holding on. “I-I can’t stop her. Can’t hold her back for much longer. And then… if she takes me with her…”
Something… unspoken passed between them. Utterly beyond my comprehension, though I felt the morbid weight of it and knew without understanding that it was a deadly something they spoke of. It was there, in the way Marco’s knuckles went white around the grip of his weapon, the dry click of his throat working to choke down a swallow.
And it was there in the fumes of grim determination shimmering across the captain’s skin.
I pulled a breath between the points of my teeth and groaned as a hint of what I needed burst behind my eyes.
Murder.
The duty and conviction of a career soldier.
I shivered and burrowed deeper into Asher’s arms as energy pulsed through my system. Amplified by the swarming legion, I groaned and felt it when that energy lashed out.
A fight broke out somewhere behind us.
I could feel the dull thud of connecting fists vibrating in the air, could feel the impact of each strike as if it were my own flesh rippling with the force.
Breath hitching around a ragged inhale, my spine arched and bowed.
“Fuck,” Asher snarled, and pressed me closer still. My face buried against his throat, his fingers bunched and tangled at the back of my skull. All but smothered against his chest.
Heartbreak, confusion, excitement, terror, bloodlust… it was all right there. The entire emotional spectrum swirling around us. So thick in the air I didn’t need to touch to feast on what was so readily available.
I was a conduit.
