AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Calla, are there more keys?”
“Got some!” Anya jumps onto the stage, dragging a limp and bloody man in Westcott’s guard’s uniform behind her, and twirls his keys around her finger.
“Cam?” I ask.
“Went after Westcott,” says Anya, getting to work on Leif’s locks.
I search the crowd for any sign of them, but it’s impossible to see. Some members of the protest are fleeing, some are fighting off wendigos and Westcott’s guards. It’s a mess of teeth and claws and blood—but there, in the thick of it, the crowd is streaming in a single direction like they’re chasing someone. The wendigos are flocking to that area too. Likely to protect Westcott.
“Valerie.”
Calla’s hand seizes my wrist before I can step away. Why is she stopping me when she just told me to go? She juts her chin toward the estate. Through a window on the second floor there’s a line of girls—literallychildren—holding hands, their eyes locked on the fight and mouths moving in sync. They look so similar it’s hard to differentiate one from the next—same dark hair, dark eyes, light skin…
Oh God.
Calla’s chewed so hard on her lower lip she’s drawn blood. “This is about to get really ugly,” she says.
“What are they doing?”
Calla shakes her head, but the panic in her features hardens into determination. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Calla—”
“I’ll handle them. You handle things out here.”
I cast one last glance at my friends over my shoulder. They all stare back with the same solemn, determined expression.
With a nod, I plunge into the crowd.
The wind roars and whips around us far too forcefully to be natural. It nearly knocks me off my feet. Ducking my head, I push forward. Shrieks surround me as heat fills the air, and I look up in time to see the trees surrounding the clearing go up in flames so tall that I can no longer see the sky.
Another gust of wind cuts through the crowd, lifting people off their feet and throwing them several feet back. An elbow clips me under the chin and I drop to my knees, trying to avoid the other airborne bodies as blood fills my mouth.
I brace my hands on the earth to push back to my feet, but my fingers meet something warm and wet. When I yank it back, my hand is covered in blood. I follow the stains to the body lying a foot away—a woman splayed on her stomach with a piece of her skull missing. Her eyes are closed, her mouth open in a silent scream. People step directly onto her back as they rush past her.
I try to shove down the nausea surging up from my stomach.
But then the woman’s eyes fly open.
They’re glassy and unseeing, and her movements are jerky as she climbs to her hands and knees, then pushes to her feet.
I shove myself back as her eyes lock on me, and there’s absolutely nothing behind them but darkness.
This is what Westcott’s other daughters are doing up there.
“Shit,” I breathe, using the power from her own blood against her to freeze the muscles in her legs before she can come any closer.
But she folds at the waist until her fingers dig into the ground, then she starts to drag herself forward. A man lying behind her with his spine and arms bent unnaturally stirs, his head popping up next.
Dirt kicks up as a wolf darts past me, then two.Leif?I don’t turn to the platform to check. I scramble to my feet and follow. Anyone I take down in this crowd will likely come right back. I need to get to Westcott.
The crowd thins—from Westcott physically blowing them back or their own departure, I’m not sure. But then something brushes the inside of my ankle, and I shriek as a horde of mice sprints past me.
There’s a clear line ahead of me now, where Westcott stands with his guards, his complexion tinted red as he bellows something lost to the wind. But as he finishes, more people in the crowd disappear. At least, that’s how it first seems, the space they occupied suddenly empty. But then I notice more mice scurrying across the ground.
He’s transforming them.
The same way he transformed himself from a mouse to a man tohima million nights ago as I rotted in a cell and he locked me into the deal.
