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I keep fightin’, tearin’ my way through the wreckage. I manage to kill another four dead things, but I’m…I’m slowin’ down. Whatever was in that fuckin’ venom was lethal and they’re closin’ in on me, backin’ me nearer and nearer to Echo, who’s gruntin’ and gaspin’ with the effort it takes her to call forward her gifts, but they’re not enough against these creatures. I’m not enough.Unworthy.Failure.
No. No, it can’t fuckin’ be. The Fates promised me, I’d give my life for hers, but if I die here and now there’s not a chance she’ll survive this.
I’m too busy gettin’ chewed alive to notice the ground rumblin’ at first. Got my fist shoved deep inside an Alpha’s stomach, his bones shootin’ up towards me like dry-ass confetti, when a growl distracts me and I look up and finally see ‘em.
The bears.
I roar, but the sound just blends into the symphony of fifty fuckin’ bears stormin’ through the forest, headed straight towards us.
13 | Echo
Lost
Caught between a nightmare and a dream, I watchas humungous bears pound towards us down the low ridge.They’re white. Pure white, the color of freshly fallen snow. They’re unafraid of the undead Alphas, unafraid of my Berserker, and they don’t stop. Three of the remaining dead things turn to face off with them and release these horrible shrieks that don’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before. The bears roar out a response and attack and the result is wonderful and wretched.
I’d call it a bloodbath if there were any blood other than Adam’s — and he. is. bleeding. He’s bleeding so much. But some of what’s dripping out of the wounds on his back isblack, almost like the Alphas — the dead things — have their own form of undead venom, too.
Meanwhile, no matter how he tears at them, the dead things don’t bleed at all and even the ones he dismembers somehow find their way to their feet and come forwardagain…and again and again. My eyes feel hotter than myskull, which feels too tight. My skin feels like it’s roasting away from the frame beneath it and my injured arm is throbbing with a pulse that doesn’t match the wild ricochet of heartbeats dancing up my arms.
Pain stands at a distance, no longer of use to me, while Fear sits up close, her long, cold fingers wrapped around my neck. It’s the closest she’s ever been, and it makes no sense. “I’m sorry, Adam,” I say as he limps to meet his next opponent, tackling two Alphas to the ground as they lunge for me. He’s protecting me and it’s killing him. No one’s ever protected me before and I hate the sight of it. Why doesn’t he give up? “You’re gonna die…don’t die for me.”
I reach my hand forward, but the vines that shoot out of the ground are difficult to manipulate and don’t come to me like they should — like they did when Adam ordered them into existence. My head isn’t clear, isn’t calm, I can’t concentrate. I need an order from him, but he’s in no state to give it.
And then the bears are on us. I scream, prepared to be ripped apart by their jaws and their claws, but the bears go only for the Alphas. The bears claw the Alphas to shreds, but a few bears are bitten and with each bite of a dead Alpha’s fangs, the bears fall right away. But they don’t bleed, either.
They just…vanish.
And when they vanish, six more bears take the place of the fallen. They come in waves that overwhelm and subsume. Two bears and six Alphas roll into me and Adam roars, moving to intercept them, but one of the Alphas I thought he killed is rolling back onto its feet — its one remaining foot — and sinking its claws — from its one remaining hand — into Adam’s neck. He roars in pain and drops down onto his belly no more than six paces in front of me. The Alpha sinks its fangs into his shoulder, black venom exploding everywhere, and Adam howls.
I scream and reach for him, lunging up onto my feet, but the sight of a white fox distracts me. I glance right and no — it isn’t a fox, it’s a woman. She’s pale as a sheet from her skin to her hair to her bright eyes, the color of cool water. She’s crouched on the ground, her hair in ratty tangles around her arms, falling all the way to the ground. Her eyes are pinned to me.
For no reason I can think of, I shout, “Help him, please.” Why this Fata Morgana should choose to help a half-dead Berserker and a more than half-dead Omega, I have no idea.
She jerks her head.No.Adam roars again.
“Please!”
She stiffens and narrows her gaze and looks at me like she despises me. “Move,” she hisses.
A sensation like wet concrete shifts in my body. I shake my head and rise up onto my knees. A vision comes to me and I’m in a cave. I can see the man who lives there — I can see his mouth, it’s moving.Freya.
“Freya!” I scream. “He’s mine!”
The white-haired woman who looks every bit nymph — or forest witch — rises up onto her feet, looking terrifying, looking enraged. “I summon you, Omega!” Her voice comes out as a whisper on the wind, her accent confusing and silted, almost like these are the first words she’s ever spoken.
Her hand reaches towards me and the concrete feeling in my chest liquifies to mercury, heating my bones, poisoning every bit of me. “Bring the dead ones down!” She disappears and a bear stands where she did a moment earlier and lunges to meet the dead Alphas charging for it. The Alphas take it down.
I choke on the scream that tears out of me as the last eight Alphas — one missing an arm, another, half the skin on its right side so it’s just bones wrapped in white and pink strips of meat — turn to face me. They take slow steps forward and I know I’m dead and —
You’re not alone.
The thought penetrates my stomach and Fear frowns down at me, shaking her head. She tries to reach for me again, but I lift up my hand and there’s a dagger in it.One he gave me. I point it at the Alpha coming towards me — three bears close in on him from the back, so I point it at the next undead.
The air seems to slow, time hiccupping for just a single, tremulous moment. And then it happens. Vines wrap themselves around my arms, around my whole body, and they’re controlling me as much as I control them as I plunge to the ground, blade-first. I stab it into the soft, yielding soil.
The Alphas hesitate, like they’re waiting for something to happen as they watch me with their milky blue eyes. But Adam and I are still losing. The bears are still disappearing. Adam is still pinned to the ground.He can’t die, not for me.I won’t survive it.
Something like that will tear down all of my conceptions about him and Alphas and Berserkers and what it means to be an Omega. And then what will be left? Pain? Fear? Maybe, not even them. Maybe, all that will be left is a void that’s begun to fill with things like compassion. Things liketenderness.
