Lightning lit up the world with a flash that was too bright. Too close.
Someone screamed, a desperate, wretched sound that turned my bowels liquid.
Shadows tracked me, running parallel within the cover of the woodland. If they stayed there, it would be fine. The vibration of the mud men’s pursuit had faded—I’d lost them, for now.
Another flash.
The storm was closer. The lightning was almost on me, bringing with it the sharp scent of ozone.
The things running parallel to me broke cover and cut toward the track. My heart leapt into my throat, dread pushing me harder, tearing through my reserves to maintain the advantage of distance.
A rush of heat in my muscles warned me that I was testing my boundaries, that I needed to scale back, but that wasn’t an option, because the things chasing me were fast and gaining ground.
Pale, humanoid, and long-limbed was all I could collate without breaking my focus, but it was enough to tease the primal part of my brain that urged me to scream in terror.
I fought the urge and won.
A fuzzy sensation filled my head for a moment, and then a voice whispered,
“Anamaya.”
“Onyx.”
“Onyx…”
Shit, the voice was in my head. Horror fisted my heart. “Get out! Get out of my head.”
“Get out! Get out of my head,” the voice mimicked, rising above the storm, outside my mind, around me, echoing over and over. “Get out! Get out of my head.”
Several voices now—myvoice screaming atme—spawning a vise around my lungs.
My pace faltered, slowing me down for just a beat.
But it was enough.
Hands grabbed me, then shoved me off the tracks and into the mud.
I rolled and scrambled to my feet, surrounded by faceless, pale monsters, with arms too long and hunched backs. They circled me, screaming my words back at me until it was all I could hear, until my head pulsed, and I feared my brain would explode.
My vision blurred. No, it was them blurring. I turned this way and that, searching for escape—heart beating so hard I was afraid it would bruise—and, oh God, they were changing. Dark hair sprouted from their scalps, their skin deepening to a brown that matched mine. The blank canvas of their faces bubbled and warped until I was looking at a woman. The same woman I saw in the mirror every day. My dark brows, my sharp, angular face, my brown eyes.
Me. They were all me. “Stop it! Stop!”
“Stop it! Stop!” they mimicked, moving closer, mouths stretching in impossibly wide smiles that stole the power from my limbs, leaving me weak and trembling.
I couldn’t move. What was happening?
What was this?
“Onyx. We will crawl into your mind and eat your brain. Become Onyx. All will be Onyx. Yes, we like this. We want this.”
The certainty that I was about to die bloomed like a wildfire inside me. As I looked into my eyes, into the faces that belonged to me and now belonged to all these others, I had no doubt that, in the next few moments, my inability to feel pain would be my greatest weapon.
“Fuck you!” I spat the words through rapidly numbing lips. “Fuck you all!”
“Fuck you!” they screamed back. “Fuck you all!”
They lunged for me as lightning brightened the world. I screamed, expecting teeth and claws. But in the darkness that followed the flare, something gleamed silver, and the two creatures in front of me lost their heads.
