My palms slapped into his chest. “You. Hate. Me.” I emphasized each word with another slap of my hands. “You’ve always hated me and now Luke is gone and it’s all my fault, so just do it! Hit me! Fucking hit me!”
Logan caught my wrists, gripping them painfully. “Stop it,” he snarled.
“Do it!” I screamed again, my traitorous voice breaking. “Do it! Do it! Do it!” I struggled in his grip, twisting and thrashing until he released me.
“I said, stop it!” he roared.
“Fuck you!” I screamed hoarsely, coming at him again, pounding on his chest with everything I had. I wanted him to feel what I felt. I wanted it to build up inside of him like it had built up inside of me. And then I wanted him to hit me. Slap me. Shake me. I didn’t care which, just that I needed his violent retribution, like I needed air to breathe.
Instead, he only stood there.
He stood there and let me hit him until every last bit of energy I’d scraped together had leached from my body and I was slumped against him, shaking and sobbing and he was gripping my arms, holding me upright.
Once I’d quieted, I’d expected him to shove me away, only we remained locked together—me gripping his shirt, him holding tight to my arms, each of us pressed close enough together that I could feel the heavy vibrations of his heart against my cheek and the low pulse in his fingertips on my arms. We weren’t hugging, not even a little bit; we were merely holding one another upright, our grips fierce.
Only when the ground suddenly exploded did we jump apart, scrambling away from the body of a Creeper that had fallen from above. There was little time to react before another body came crashing to the ground in another messy explosion.
“Time to go!” Logan dove to reclaim his pack.
Backing away from the bodies, I blinked up at the cliff’s edge. There was a noise—something that sounded a lot like a hum. Like the buzz of bees, only harsher. The harder I listened, the louder the sound grew.
As a shadow fell over the ravine, blocking out the sun, suddenly bodies began to pour over the edge—a waterfall of living death.Theywere the noise, the hum—a raw symphony of a hundred toneless groans echoing throughout a no longer empty ravine.
“Run!” Logan shouted.
