Cold and warm liquid ran down her left arm, dripping from her fingers onto the sand with audible splashes.
Sand shouldn’t make that noise.
Brela forced her eyes open and blinked. It took her a long minute to realize where she was; for every sense in her body to adjust to the clarity in which she could see where she stood.
The smells hit her first. Ocean breeze, hickory smoke and campfire, something faint, like burnt cherry, and then a gaping absence of smell.
She was frozen in the shadows of Cason’s bedroom, unable to move. Unable to look down at the arm pinned to her side that was surely dripping blood. The celvusa’s teeth were still there, still clamped onto her body, but she couldn’t see the beast. Could only feel his presence holding her still as she was forced to watch the two bodies sleeping in the bed in front of her.
Shadows writhed around the room, reacting to the power her sleeping form radiated. That absence of smell wasn’t just an emptiness around her, like Oni scented. It wasalive, calling to those smoke-like markings that curled around her skin. Bending them to its will and forming the shadow ink.
When that Brela jolted awake, she gasped and found herself standing on the rolling hills between Severina and Rooke. She was miles away, but she could see with incredible clarity as the Wraturo attacked.
As fire and ice and lightning sparked on the grassy fields, blood sprayed.
Thesmells.Gods, the tang of blood had never made her sick before, but there was too much of it. Too many smells mixing. Hoarfrost and petrichor, strong oak, hickory smoke, grass, and darkness.
Brela flinched against the pressure of teeth on her body, the celvusa’s jaw forcing her to her knees just like her other form did in the middle of the blood-soaked grass.
But she didn’t kneel in grass. She pinned her other body to the wood floor of Gerrart’s office, inhaling sharply as the tang of blood overwhelmed that missing scent. A claw, wreathed in liquid shadow and now stained with red, curled closer to sliced skin, ready to execute.
Purple eyes looked up at her, such a fierce glare that she almost scared herself.
Wait, did that mean she’d scared the celvusa in Gerrart’s home?
Teeth clamped tighter in answer, blood running more freely down her arm and now soaking the waistband of her pants, and Brela quieted that train of thought.
She tried to open her mouth to speak, to ask what the creature was doing with her, but only a weak and pained cry left her lips.
What was it looking for?
As if in answer, black and purple smoke swallowed her and she stood…
No. A breathy whimper escaped her lungs. Men sprinted through rivers of blood. They screamed and cursed as silver glinted and flew. Bodies, some limp, some still twitching with the remnants of life, scattered the ground.
No, she begged.No, I don’t want to see this.
Her eyes wouldn’t close. Wouldn’t focus on anything except thethingthat stalked through Calcheth.
Head to toe in skin-tight black, already dripping in blood that did not belong to her, this form of her looked more shadow wolf than human. Not a single strand of white-blonde hair could be seen in her braid, the thing’s purple eyes as cold as the shadows pinning this version of her to the ground.
Blood wasn’t the only thing to splash with each step she took. Black and purple smoke lifted under her boots, glinting in the sunlight as they became solid weapons.
The soldiers didn’t stand a chance. They met her blades of silver and obsidian. It curled down the streets and sought flesh. Dead or alive, those shadows obliterated what was left. Tissue became pulp, bones became splinters and then dust.
She could smell all of it. The burning campfire smoke and tangy blood. Cherry and hickory and oak and death. So much death.
She’d done this. She’d led this massacre. She’dbeenthe slaughter.
A group of soldiers surged toward her in a last effort. They clawed their way through her daggers and solid obsidian shadows. Sliced and shredded her arms, hip, and ribs with their last breaths, but she didn’t scream.
And it wasn’t the Night Terror assassin who cleared through the horde.
Brela watched the liquid fire and smoke collect behind her other form. One second, the celvusa took shape, the next it was lunging. Teeth tore through the soldiers surrounding her, leaving nothing but shredded organs on the dirt and misty blood hanging in the air.
And when the soldiers were nothing more than slops of tissue and lakes of blood, the celvusa took its place beside the Night Terror and they unleashed themselves on what was left of the city. General Ourri became nothing more than strips of flesh and shattered bone.
She let out a whimper, the only sound left in her lungs. The only sound that could possibly exist after watching that carnage.
