“Come get me!” I screamed, fisting the handle of my blade so tightly I was losing feeling in my fingers, “I’m yours, aren’t I? So come and get me!” My throat was raw from screaming. Inhaling ash and smoke. Lacking moisture. Ilia just laughed, determination coating his expression as he took a step toward me and wrapped a hand around my throat.
“I’m yours!” I shouted one last time before my air was cut off. Ilia shook his head in pity before throwing me against the stone wall. My head hit the stone with a crack, and I crumpled to the ground. My weapon fell from my hands, and disorientation clouded my senses. Squinting my eyes open, a blurred and dizzy vision of Ilia stepping toward me, resting his boot on my arm, made me cuss at him.
“Pathetic bastard,” I wheezed. I couldn’t see his face, but as he slowly applied pressure with his foot, I both heard and felt the snap of my forearm. I clenched my teeth together, groaning through a scream I didn’t want to give him.
“Humans are so fragile,” Ilia muttered, dropping to his haunches to tower over me. “It would be pathetic to let you live.”
Thank you,I still wasn’t positive Drustan could hear me, but my mind was all I had left,…for waiting for me. After all this time.
Abruptly, a deep, enraged roar pierced our ears. A hand with black claws the length of fingers, as if they were dipped into black ink, wrapped around Ilia’s throat from behind.As soon as those claws ripped out Ilia’s throat, silencing him once and for all, Ilia reached toward me as he fell to the ground.Behind him, watching his father crumble to his knees, clutching his throat in his claws, was Drustan.
Shackles dangled on his wrists and bare feet. Red rashes coated his joints. His eyes were black as night. His inky claws were bloody. Black, ominous veins haloed Drustan’s eye sockets. His canine teeth were exposed, displayed with a deadly growl as he reached for his father again and sank his claws in his shoulders.
In one swift move that couldn’t have been more than a second, Drustan tossed his father’s body right over his shoulder, away from me. Ilia dropped to the ground right at Audrey’s feet, who looked more deadly than I had ever seen her. Ilia panicked and started flailing. Unable to gasp due to the lack of a throat.
All I could do was stare at the sight.
Numb to it.
I watched as Drustan’s head turned toward me, and his black eyes widened in panic.
That was the moment I registered the sharp burn in my stomach. My breath caught in my throat from the sudden pain.
Drustan screamed. A loud, outraged, painful scream. I was pretty sure my ears started bleeding based on the wetness dripping out of one.
Instinctively, my good hand dropped to where the pain was, only to come in contact with the handle of Ilia’s blade. It stuck out of the center of my abdomen. The bastard must have thrownit at me before he fell to the ground. I gasped in pain; the movement made blood ooze from my body, down my clothing. A loud, throbbing clang echoed.
Surrounded by flames, shattered, broken shackles littered the ground in front of me where Drustan used to be.
Where did he go?
Audrey screamed next, but her voice was starting to sound faded. Farther away. The air was too thick with smoke from the doused fires, but I could see the silhouette of her figure ripping Ilia’s arm off his body—her hand now donned with its own set of siren claws.
I could barely inhale a breath.
“Vanessa,” Drustan’s warm, soothing voice was in my ear. The heat of his body enveloped me, and one of his hands curled over my good one. Near the blade that his father threw into my core.
Another scream filled the space. I couldn’t track who it was, but I hoped deep in my soul that it was Ilia. Even though his voice was ripped from him. The scream was feminine, and it sounded horrible. Like pain and fear and defeat.
Please, stop Ilia, I prayed to anyone who would listen. The pain from having a knife thrown at my stomach was more than enough to distract me from what I hoped was happening to him.
My vision was starting to tunnel, and blackness crept in from the edges of my sight. The tips of my fingers started to feel colder, loose, but lacking feeling. Eventually, something numb started to drape over me in a thick blanket.
“Vanessa!” Drustan shouted next to me. I should have jumped from the proximity of the sound, but I didn’t. Icouldn’t. Drustan’s sharp face filled my vision, void of black veins, gold irises wide and frantic. His blood red hair fell around his chiseled features, reminding me of the new taste on my tongue.Liquid that tasted metallic and salty filled my mouth before dripping out of the corner of my lip.
“You got me,” I muttered to Drustan, meaning every word. Something cracked in his gold eyes, flashing black at me. A distressed shout ripped from his chest. I somehow noticed the feeling of his torso against my side.
I didn’t recall being laid back, draped over his lap, but I was.
“Audrey!” Drustan shouted.
“Keep pressure on her!” his cousin called back from somewhere far away. His hand flexed on my stomach, and I whimpered at the new wave of pain and nausea filling my body. The darkness tunneling my vision was taking over now, and part of me was grateful that Drustan’s handsome face was the last image I would see before I succumbed to it.
Wild eyes shifting from black and gold. His clenched jaw, inches from mine. A warm embrace, cradling me into the next plane of existence.
“I have you. Stay with me, Vanessa,” he ordered.
“…I will…” I could only whisper the reply before sound was lost and darkness enveloped my vision.
