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“Only a small percentage of males survive the transition. No woman has. You are going to die.”
CHAPTER3
Dannika wanted to refute his claims, but the sadness in his eyes conveyed the truth. “Are you going to kill me?”
Raine took a deep breath. “No. Not until you beg me. Then I will do as you wish.”
Despite the searing pain coursing through her body, she rolled to her side, clutching the couch cushion. “Never going to happen.”
Raine’s lip twitched. “I admire your spirit, but wait until your insides boil. Even if you don’t ask for mercy, your heart will explode in your chest. Either way, you will die.”
The smart remark died on her lips as her muscles contorted. She took a quick gasp before her body seized. The room spun and turned dark.
She tried to resist, but found her mind drifting away, pain flooding through her again and again.
A voice called to her, soothing and masculine. She wasn’t sure where it was coming from, or who was speaking to her, but she wanted to listen. He seemed worried, heartbroken.
She hadn’t believed in souls until she felt hers fracture. It broke open, allowing the darkness to seep in. A black mist that invaded the light, attempting to consume the purity and innocence. She had imagined her death many times, but even in her most imaginative nightmares, it was nothing like this.
The shadow fused with every cell in her body. At first, she thought it was a virus, but as her body continued to heat, she understood it for what it was. The transition. Her body burned in agony. The intense heat ripped through every limb until she admitted that death would be a mercy.
As the pain intensified, the shadows slid through sinew and bone, saturating the tissue with dark agony. The sweltering blood twisted her insides until her screams vibrated in the room. The chilling sound was anything but human. A hollow echo of her former self.
She fell to the floor beside the couch. Her body contorted so violently; she could no longer make a sound. Every breath was in excruciating torture, worse than the one before. When the darkness settled in her stomach, she vomited black blood onto the red, plush carpet.
She remembered the haunted house she and a co-worker had visited the previous Halloween. Fake blood had run across the cheap carpet as a vampire feasted on its victim. Now, she was the horror show. She would’ve asked for death. For mercy, but she could no longer form words. While her veins boiled, her intestines felt like they were being cut to shreds from the inside out.
Raine was wrong about one thing though. Her heart wasn’t exploding in her chest. It had slowed so much, she waited for it to take its last beat. Would she have a heart attack just to prove him wrong? Was she so far gone she would die out of spite?
Dannika forced her mind to focus on one word. Mercy.
When she thought there would be an end to the madness, her eyesight wavered. Shadows pulled at the corner of her vision. Arcs of black mist consumed the surrounding room, turning it to a gray haze as if she were watching a black-and-white movie in real-time. She could see every detail in the room. The couch, coffee table, and the potted plants. The picture of a white wolf, howling at the night, that hung on the wall beside the door. But none of it was colored. Even through the dark haze of agony, her new reality was intriguing. Calling her its mistress.
“You’re in the final stages, Dannika. I’m sorry for your pain. You lasted longer than I expected.” He moved his arm in an arc, encompassing the room. “You have entered the shadows. You see them as we do. This is the world in which we travel. Every light has a darkness, and every darkness has a pathway. We travel those dark highways in a matter of seconds, pulled from one dark tunnel to the next. Streaming from one location to another in seconds. It’s a powerful gift that came at a price.”
She hissed when her blood churned in her stomach like a cauldron about to overflow.
Raine rubbed his eyes. “You will find this hard to believe, but we are necessary to combat evil. We protect humanity from the reapers. I promise your pain, your death, will bring retribution. I will not rest until we have eradicated the reaper clan.”
Dannika focused on his chiseled jaw, tanned skin, and hard masculine lines. She would’ve focused on anything if it would ease her agony. She assumed the end was near when her breath turned to short pants, but the pain eased.
“It’s not as bad now,” she said at last.
His brow furrowed. “Humans call it the calm before the storm. We call it hope before oblivion.”
She shook her head as she brought her breathing under control. “I’m telling you, I feel better...”
Raine sat forward. “Dannika?”
Dannika’s chest arched in the air as her shoulders dug into the carpet. Her jaw locked in an unshed scream as the bones in her back broke. Her heart stopped as her eyes glazed over. There was a moment where she looked down at the distorted creature beneath her, her own misshapen image mirrored in her shadow-imbued eyes.
She reached out with ghostly fingers, grasping at her inhuman body. Her fingers wrapped around the warm sphere in her chest. Her soul anchored between the human and shadow world. The body beneath her contorted and reshaped, but it didn’t breathe.
Black blood trickled from her mouth as her eyes remained open and unseeing. Was it another hallucination or had she been seeing, hearing the shadow world her whole life? It was a question she needed the answer to if she could find her way back to the shell beneath her. Shadowy fingers clutched the warmth within her chest, pulling her forward until she rejoined with her body. Pain ripped through her skull before her chest rose with its first breath.
The room remained black and white, but everything was ultra-focused. Dust particles floating in the air were as distinguishable as the wooden carving displayed on a wall-mounted shelf.
The room wavered before going dark. There was no light. No dark. There was only Raine. His body heat radiated in hues of yellow and orange. His voice cut through the darkness.
