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Nothing.
I run, sprinting now, in the direction I last saw him. Leaping over a log, I stumble, cracking my ankle beneath the weight of my body. “Rafferty!”
A gust of wind blows over me, and lightning splits the sky. Then, I see him.
On his knees.
A woman stands over him. Her obsidian hair is nearly to her knees, and it shields her face from my view. But the claws where her hands should have been get me onto my feet. I grasp a fallen tree branch and limp, barely managing to make it to the clearing.
She throws her head back, opening her mouth wide, but nothing comes out.
Rafferty continues to kneel, his eyes wide, mouth slack.
“Move, Rafferty!” I scream.
He doesn’t look at me, but she does with eyes as black as her hair, sneering at me. Wrapping my fingers around the branch, I lunge forward and swing.
She catches it with a clawed hand, though, and snaps it like a twig. Shards of wood fall to the ground, and she stalks toward me. I throw myself in front of Rafferty. “Back the hell off!” Keeping my eyes on the creature, I pat down the side where he stashed the dagger.
My hand closes around the hilt, and I hold it out in front of me as rain continues to hammer the world around me.
“You are not getting him!”
The thing glares at me.You will be dead, soon enough.The voice in my head is so loud its deafening. Pain splits my brain, and the dagger falls to the ground as I cover both of my ears.
Visions of me, pale and lying in a satin coffin fill my brain.
No one is there.
No one cares.
I’m alone.
Dead and alone.
Orange eats up the vision, and soon, I’m watching the coffin shoved into an enormous concrete box. Fire eats away at it, reducing all that is left of me to ash.
A man roars.
Then, Rafferty is in front of me, shaking my shoulders. “Ember, get to your feet!” he yells.
I try, but my body is frozen in place. He mutters something then lifts me and runs back through the trees.
My gaze falls on a body lying in the clearing, a dagger sticking out of her chest.
“Are you all right? Injured?” He sets me down inside the cavern and falls to his knees in front of me.
“Wha-wha-what was th-th-that?” I stammer as the cold settles into my bones.
“A bloody banshee,” he snaps as he rubs my arms with his hands. “They seek out those who are dying or those who will be dead soon.”
“It told me I was going to be dead, soon enough,” I manage through chattering teeth.
His eyes darken. “It wasn’t even here for you,” he says.
The implication of what he’d just told me—it clears the rest of my fog. “What?”
“It appears I am also not long for this world.”
