“No,” I demanded faintly. Weakly, I tried to move, tried to push its hand away. Breathing hard, my muscles burning from exertion, my fingers closed around its arm, my nails digging into its scummy flesh. As its skin peeled away from its bones, my hand fell away with its skin. Too weak to do anything more, a strangled cry rose in my throat.
There was a blast—an explosion that ricocheted all around me. As the Creeper’s hold on me disappeared, Logan took its place beside me.
“Were you bitten?” he demanded. Frantic hands pulled at my clothing, roughly turning me this way and that. I tried to speak—I tried to tell him that I hadn’t been bitten—but my mouth refused to cooperate.
“Not bitten,” he said, sounding relieved. “Not bitten… not bitten… .”
Reaching up, I pressed a limp hand to my chest and tried to speak… only no words came. No words. No tears. Just nothing. I was a silent passenger in my own body.
“We gotta keep going, okay? Willow, can you hear me?”
As Logan melted away, I was left staring up at the sky, the heat of the sun beating down on me. I thought I saw a bird—a black shapeless thing that dipped and dove through the never-ending blue above me. I stared at it, envying its freedom, the ease in which it could rise above this world, utterly untethered.
Turning away, blinking sluggishly, my eyes feeling as if they had glue in them, I glimpsed the passing brickwork of a dilapidated home. Then another house with a fadedFOR SALEsign hanging crookedly amid an overgrown lawn. Both were gone before I could blink again.
Eventually my eyes closed, the world winking into darkness once more.
Idly, I wondered if I would ever wake up again.
