GRAY
My brain checked out, leaving my instincts in charge. I lunged, slamming Jonathan’s deformed hybrid body to the ground and straddling him. My hands wrapped around his neck, fingers breaking through the loose skin and sinking into the flesh, right down to the brittle bones beneath. I swallowed back a gag as his putrid blood spilled over my hands, but still, he writhed and bucked beneath me, some unnatural force giving him superior strength.
In a blur, he shoved me off and rolled on top of me, pinning my arms at my sides with hands that were part human, part monstrous paw, tipped with razor-sharp claws that pierced my skin. Blood from his neck wounds dripped onto my face, and I closed my mouth and turned my head, trying to look for something in the grass—anything—to hit him with.
No rocks, no sticks. I had no weapons but the dinky lighter in my pocket, which I couldn’t get to… and my magic.
Jonathan lowered his head and nosed my cheek, my jaw, my neck, inhaling my scent. The smell seemed to make him tremble, and something in his lower body—I didn’t even want to imaginethatdeformed thing—hardened against my thigh.
I bit back another gag.
Oh,hellno. This isdefinitelynot happening.
He shoved his cracked, bleeding muzzle into the curve where my shoulder met my neck and licked me, his tongue like sandpaper, his hot, sick breath coming more frantically. His jaw opened, and he bit down hard.
I braced for the pain that never came.
He had no teeth. No bite. Nothing but festering, stinking gums that smelled as rotten as the rest of him.
I took a deep breath through my mouth and closed my eyes, willing my heart rate to slow. I was in my own realm, surrounded by my own magic. Everything here was connected to me, including the Shadowrealm on the other side of the forest. This beastlythingmight’ve had strength left in his body—hell, he might’ve been immortal, for all I knew—but he couldn’t hurt me here. Not really.
In that moment, the truth blazed inside me like its own sun.
Jonathan was evil and repulsive. His appearance alone was enough to give me nightmares for the rest of my life, never mind the stench.
But I was no longer afraid of him.
He had no power over me.
A sense of utter calm descended on me like a heavy blanket, and I stopped struggling against his hold. Instead, I redirected my energy and sent a gentle call to my sacred place, pulsing my magic into the earth, sending it deep beneath the surface. I felt it trickle down through the grass like water after a rainstorm, slowly seeping into the dirt, through tangled roots and loose rocks, past earthworms and beetles and the decaying bodies of creatures long since buried. There were layers of bedrock, each colored band marking the passage of an eon, and the skeletons of creatures that no longer existed. It was a mirror of the earthly plane, one of many dimensions that touched and overlapped and called us home.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but I felt it the moment my magic reached the source. The energies connected instantly, warming me, and the deep, ancient magic of this place twined with mine, inviting me to draw it upward, inward.
We are part of you, blood of Silversbane,came the whisper in my mind. As you are part of us.
My skin began to glow. The magic simmered inside me, heating my blood.
It was time.
There was no force, no explosion of sparks and violence, no out-of-control burst that shattered glass and splintered wood. Only a gentle nudge, and Jonathan was flat on his back, the air rushing back into my lungs in the absence of his crushing weight on my chest.
Unhurried, I slowly got to my feet, wiped my face on the bottom edge of my T-shirt, and searched the area for a piece of wood or a stick. I finally settled on a thick, foot-long chunk of tree bark near the forest’s edge, wrapped in dried moss that seemed perfect for kindling. Certain it hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier, I glanced up into the shimmering tree branches and smiled, sending the woods a silent thank-you.
A muffled grunt behind me alerted me to Jonathan’s presence again, and I turned to face him, scrutinizing the sockets where his eyes used to be. “Why won’t you just die?”
He shook his head in response, but I couldn’t translate his answer. Maybe he didn’t want to die, and haunting my realm would be his final stand. Maybe hedidwant to die, and just didn’t know how. I couldn’t imagine anyone—even a piece-of-shit hunter like Jonathan—wouldwantto remain trapped in that form.
It wasn’t a life.
It was a mistake.
Well, I certainly didn’t owe him any favors, but if death was what he wanted, I’d be more than happy to put him out of his misery.
I fished the lighter out of my shirt pocket and lit the mossy end of the bark, blowing the red-hot embers to a flame.
“I’d cut off your head, half-vamp, but I didn’t bring a blade. So, fire it is.” I held up my makeshift torch, my own magic surging inside, warming me as much as the fire. “Fair warning… This might sting a little.”
I lunged for him again, but he spun away out of my reach and dashed into the forest.
