Page 223 of Breathe Like Hell

Kill. Kill. Kill.

My vision was blurring and my hands shaking violently by the time I got close enough to drop onto my feet. Heart lurching, I stumbled toward him, but it was like I’d forgotten how to move. Every step was stiff and unnatural, my brain disconnected from my physical reality because none of this made any sense in my brain.

The flame was so bright, surrounding his form in a silky sheet of crimson. A flame I’d seen too many times over the course of my life. The flame of an angel dying.

Somehow, I forced myself to step closer.

His face was already almost gone.

A choked noise burst out of my throat, and I couldn’t breathe, my chest tightening and tightening and tightening. Pure horror encroached on every thought in my brain. His gorgeous face. The only face I’d ever seen in my dreams.

No.

I watched the last of his blond hair burn into nothing.

No.

His powerful body, surrounded by red flame, disappeared in front of my face. And there was nothing I could do. I gasped my inhales, my heart pounding so hard it was making me sick.

I just stared at him.

Paralyzed.

Less than a minute later, it was over.

The flame extinguished. The pavement was empty, like nothing had ever been there.

And Micah Killshaw was dead.

PART II

WHITE FEATHERS

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

DAKOTA

I collapsed on my stomach the moment I had ground under me, my entire body screaming, pain stabbing through my veins with every breath. I was lying in a large, shallow pool of water, its surface reflecting the black sky. The water was cool on my cheek and the side of my mouth.

It lapped quietly against my aching ribs, washing diluted ribbons of blood away from my skin. There wasn’t a current or real waves or an actual shore. Just an endless sheet of dark water disappearing into a horizon somewhere unseen under a sky of pure onyx.

My head was pounding and I could feel all the blood matted in my hair, still wet and sticky, clumped in the strands. My spine throbbed with a dull, consuming ache. I shifted instinctively, and something heavy dragged through the water behind me, making my breath catch.

Feathers brushed against the backs of my arms, unfamiliar enough that my own body startled me.

When I dared to turn my gaze outward, a large white wing was there. It was also covered in blood like crimson lace, laying limp in the reflective water.

I flexed instinctively, and those hundreds of snowy feathers answered instantly, sending a wave of unease through me. The sensation reached places inside my body I didn’t have names for, muscles that had never existed until moments ago.

A single white feather drifted loose, landing on the dark surface beside me. Concentric ripples spread outward until they vanished into the endless water, making me dizzy.

There was a weird warmth tingling in different areas of my body, each heartbeat tightening invisible threads inside of me. The more I breathed, the stronger the feeling got.

Hands, arms, ribs, hips, skull. Everything felt fuzzy, the pain dulling with every breath.

I tried to keep breathing as deep as I could, focusing only on that, and not the way my thoughts were threatening to crush me with their panic.

I moved, pushing to sit up, my knees bent in front of me, staring down at my ruined body. Bones shifted beneath my skin, bruises disappearing before my eyes, cuts stitching themselves together before I got the chance to experience the depth of their pain. I watched all of it in a daze.