Page 159 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“Get away from me!” I swerved backward from his sickening tongue running over his lips.

His foot hooked behind my ankle as he forcefully let me go. I tripped, and his face morphed into the night sky as my back hit the ground. Air exploded out of my lungs and paralysis set in my diaphragm.

I gasped for a full inhale. My throat had closed and tears streamed in rivulets down my temples. Stars shimmered in the sky, the ceiling to the expanse of my safe place, but not a single puff of air drifted into my windpipe.

He lowered to his knees, straddling my hips, and his cold hands slid under my t-shirt and jacket. But the repulsive touch jolted me awake, and I jumped onto my elbows, viciously kicking at him.

“You like it when it hurts, don’t you?” Grabbing my jaw, he roughly hauled my head up, only to slam it back into the ground.

Something tiny but solid hit my skull and blooming pain blinded me. Everything went woozy and my arms fell to the sides, useless.

“Do you think we didn’t check your medical records? We know what you did. You still owe us for that. When they learned that you were here, helping these assholes, they decided it was time to send a message. Do you know what they said? That I can do anything to you.Anything. So I won’t kill you. I’ll drag you back to the city and lock you up. I’ll make you my pet. I’ll chain you to my bed like the bitch you are. And I’ll make sure you havemy children.” He lifted my t-shirt over my breasts. “But I’m not obsessive. I like to share. My friends will love meeting that ass of yours.”

The picture he’d painted pulled me out of the state of dizziness, and I shrieked, reaching for his eyes to gouge them the fuck out.

He clamped down on my throat, compressing my trachea. I gasped as I pulled on his grip, writhing underneath him. All the while, he repeated his promise. “That mouth will belong to me. That pussy will belong to me. That ass will belong to me.Youwill belong to me.”

The world gradually melted away. I couldn’t kick, punch, scratch, or yell.

I was…away.

Drifting.

A jab of pain.

He’d ceased strangling me. My back bowed as I galloped oxygen and a second sting shredded my nerves. Rubbing my throat, I found him biting my nipple, his abhorrent mouth all over me. Releasing the bud, he smiled, red coloring his teeth, and I screamed.

“Shout all you want, but no one will come to save you. Where are your boys, huh? Hiding in that compound? Not for long.” Squeezing my neck with increased force, he cut off my airflow. “I’ll peel your eyes open to watch us crush your pathetic leader and his sadistic dog. And I’ll punish you for each tear you spill for them.” He spat on me, and my tears couldn’t wash away the slimy sensation of his drool sliding down the side of my nose and into the crook above my upper lip.

He smothered my gagging by throttling me.

This time, the stiffness took over quickly. Calmness washed over me with each passing second without air. My peripheralsmelted away. As the last bits of energy left me, my body convulsed.

He let go of my throat, taking hold of my head and slamming it into the ground. A breath I was so desperate for lodged itself in my lungs as the night sky above me blurred.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see anything. I floated in darkness, no light to be found. I felt so shallow. Empty. The endless nothingness morphed into a soothing embrace, like a cloud, and I relaxed as I slowly ebbed further away, becoming a vessel without a pulse, a mind, a heart.

Hooking the hem of my jeans, he tugged them down together with my underwear.

But I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t have any muscles anymore. My body didn’t belong to me anymore. It wouldn’t listen to me. It was just a shell I was a prisoner of. I had been reduced to a passenger observing the events from afar. No emotions, no feelings, no sensations.

No pain.

He pried my legs apart. “They can’t get real pussy in Ilasall, so you’ll have to do. Who would want you otherwise? You’re used. That’s all you are—a bitch. A whore. Worthless.”

A silhouette crossed my vision, and the messenger’s head was suddenly jerked back. A flash of movement, and hot blood spurted on my chest, my stomach, my thighs.

The shadow wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into him, and his body warmth seeped into me from a million miles away. I simply didn’t care for it. I’d ceased to exist and the only scrap of me surviving—my soul—resided in the eye of a hurricane. So calm. Peaceful. Soothing.

Far away, behind the bellowing wall of air, was a world, and the shadow who had come for me. Except there was nothing left of me to save. I was trapped in my own body. My capillaries hadfrozen like a spiderweb and cold ate at my bones. Their crumbs turned into frost, sealing me shut.

A promise reverberated in the wind, rocking me back and forth. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’m here. I’m not letting you go. I’m taking you home. I’m here. You’re safe.” The deeply familiar voice cracked. “Fuck, do you even hear me? You’re safe, Kali, safe.”

51

ZION

“I’m not losing you.” I brushed the tangled hair away from her face, the strands sticking to her wet cheeks, and swore at her unseeing eyes. Her vacant look pierced my chest like an arrow with jagged edges and burrowed so forcefully into my ribs that they fractured.