I couldn’t move. The paralysis had me locked down completely, turning my body into a prison I couldn’t escape from. I could feel everything, though. Every slice of its claws, every drop of blood sliding down my skin. But I couldn’t so much as twitch a finger to stop it.
And worse than the physical pain was what it was doing to my mind.
The Algea was reaching into my memories and pulling out the worst moments of my life, forcing me to relive them over and over while it crooned in my head with an eerie voice like a knife scraping against bone.
Look, it whispered.See what you are. See what you’ve always been.
Ian, Jeremy’s former mate. One of my best friends, who I’d grown up with. His face materialized in my mind’s eye without warning.
And then the memory slammed into me like a physical blow. I was there again, in the woods, only two years ago, though it seemed like a lifetime had passed since then. Jeremy haddirected us to search for a monster that had crawled out of the bleeds.
It had gotten Ian alone.
And Jeremy and I were the ones who discovered his body, at the edge of Lake Elizabeth, miles away from the commune.
Ian had been one of my oldest friends.
And he had died alone, at the hands of a monster.
It was your fault, the Algea whispered.You were too slow. Too weak to save him. You let him die. Just like you let everyone die for you.
“No,” I tried to say, but my lips wouldn’t move. The word stayed trapped in my throat.
The memory shifted, twisted into something much worse, hitting me in bursts.
Jeremy.
The scraping of talons on rock. A guttural snarl as the nightmare monstrosity burst through an opening in the ground before us.
A looming giant of a creature made of vines and bone crawling up from the earth, the smell of rot and decay clinging to it. Black viscous fluid that burned the ground.
Knowing it was what killed Ian. Feeling absolute conviction that we’d destroy it before it could destroy us. A rightness. This was what I did. It was my calling.
Then more of them emerging from the earth. Too many. The howling of other wolves in the pack in other parts of the forest, signaling trouble. The awful, sinking realization we weren’t going to be enough.
Then Thierry moving impossibly fast, a blur of destruction and violence.
Jeremy and I fanning out and attacking our respective monsters in unison.
A chaotic blur of snarling, tearing, and slashing. Dodging claws that glistened black and viscous in the moonlight.
Triumph as I launched myself onto the monster’s back. Biting down hard enough to crack a spine that was more wood than bone. Knowing my strong jaws would tear it apart.
We would win, after all.
And then, in my peripheral vision, Jeremy going down. The monster rearing back with claws, preparing to strike.
Panic tearing through me. Leaping down to the ground. Putting my back to my monster, ignoring every instinct screaming against it. My paws digging into the earth.
Disbelief. Split-second hesitation.Jeremy can’t die. It’s not possible.
Movement coiling in my muscles anyway, preparing to launch me forward.
The sick feeling of claws wrenching me off my feet. Being airborne and weightless, unable to stop it. A tree trunk rushing toward me.
Visceral panic ripping through me.Not strong enough. Not fast enough. Too weak. Too—
Impact. Darkness.
