My face flushes hot even in the cold air.
“I don’t know, I just want to be sure—” I stop, my attention is caught by faint motion on the ground. Near the base of a tree in the front yard of the Oats’ house. The movement is odd… unsettling, even at a distance. Something about it just screamsWRONG!
Dread pooling in my stomach, I tip my head to one side, squinting to try to make sense of what I’m seeing. “What is that?” I ask, pointing.
Devon follows my gesture. “I have no idea,” he says after a moment, not sounding happy about it.
At first glance, it appears to be just a thin drift of snow, accumulated against the rough bark of the trunk. But the contours and texture are all wrong, and so are the wispy movements.
Part of it is blowing gently with the wind. Not individual snowflakes swirling in a mini-cyclone, as you might see with an actual drift. No, this is more cohesive than that, like a long strip of nearly see-through fabric, the end of which is tattered and torn into five uneven segments rippling in the breeze.
Or…
My brain puts together the pieces belatedly. It’s a hand waving.
21
I jerk to a stop, breath catching in my throat.
Then, pushing down instinctual panic and the urge to run in the opposite direction, I force myself forward, toward the tree and the strange material beneath it.
The bit that’s moving in the breeze is most definitely arm-and hand-shaped. In fact, on the forearm portion, I can see the faint outline of ink. A tattoo. It’s not distinct enough for me to read it, though.
“It looks like skin,” Devon says with disgust. “A shed skin.”
He’s right; it looks as though someone shook loose the outer layers of their skin. Now that I’m closer, I can pick out the shape of a leg and a foot in the heap, even the intricate whorls of an ear.
Clothes lie nearby, an ice-encrusted sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Boots, one flipped sideways and the other still upright. Under normal circumstances, I would assume they’d been tossed out of a moving car as a prank or forgotten on a vehicle roof and fallen off. But inthismoment, the abandoned clothes only add to my growing sense of dread.
I edge around the base of the tree, trying to wrap my head around what I’m seeing. The skin is grayish, flaking, and light—light enough to be carried on a breeze until it wrapped itself around a tree, like a discarded shopping bag. Within the husk, small bright white fragments remain, reflecting the weak sunlight.
It takes me a moment—and a flashback to high school anatomy—to recognize one of those small pieces as the rounded portion of a ball joint.
Bones. The bright white bits arebone.
I clap a hand over my mouth, fight against the urge to vomit.
Whatisthis? From what I can see, the skin is whole. Not torn. Oh, and also, normal humans don’tshed their skin. Not like this. And they sure as hell don’t disintegrate their own bones.
Is this part of whatever spawn has been killing people?
Thebloop-bloopof a siren at the far end of the street reminds me we’re on a timeline. Once all the other students clear out of here, someone will notice us.
I bend down and gingerly extend a finger to touch the… thing. Itfeelslike dried out skin, just a little thicker than what you might remove after a bad sunburn.
When I yank my hand back, with the intention of scrubbing my hand on my legging, the husk crumbles instantly, scattering the bits of bone across the frozen ground.
Shit.
I pick out one of the bone fragments—it’s a duller white than the snow so it stands out in contrast. But it, too, disintegrates as soon as I pinch it between my fingers, leaving only a chalky residue.
As if all the nutrients, all the life has been drained right out ofit. Like a kid sucking the air out of a water bottle until it twists up and crumples in on itself.
Not possible. This is not possible.Chills skitter across my skin. This looks a lot like Death. But Death on steroids or something. My father never bothered with the physical body, just tore life from humans when needed or when he felt like it.
This is different. But not different enough that it could be War or Sanguine or any of the other Old Ones or their spawn.
But I am the only child of Death.
