Page 37 of Jagged Souls

I scream in rage as Aleric phases away, leaving me to plummet towards the earth. I can’t open my eyes. The wind is ripping across my body. I won’t survive a fall from this height. I am helpless to stop it.

As I tumble out of control, I cup a hand over my chest and protect that little smear. It’s all that remains of my little girl. If I’m to die, I will die with her in my arms.

I wish I could hold Micha one last time.

Wish I could save her from whatever hel she’s in.

Wish I’d never panicked at the thought of losing Khalid or her to my enemy. I should have trusted her. Despite all the evidence, I should’ve believed in her like she did me.

Regret fills me as I rage against an entity I can’t defeat. The night sky swallows my screams of vengeance without a care. Gravity pulls me down.

Down.

Down.

Blinded by the wind, I can’t see when death is coming, so I’m anticipating it every second. But beneath my anger, I’m holding on to a silver lining: maybe I can find Bambi in the Underworld. Maybe I can be the father to her I never got to be.

I hit the ground feet first.

My bones break all the way up from my toes to my hips. Shattered fragments sever veins and arteries. The knives I always keep on me stab and slice into my flesh. Broken ribs pierce my lungs. My spine gets crushed in multiple places. My aorta snaps free, and a reaper of death comes for me.

But then she stops.

Backtracks.

Hesitates on the edge of my vision, her smoky wings spread out, her glowing green scythe in her hand. Various souls cling to it in shapeless blobs. One end of them is tethered to her blade by a fading wisp; the other end’s a face screaming in rage – or perhaps agony. She is a keres, and her kind comes for those who’ve died a brutal death, those with unfinished business. No one she takes ever wishes to go.

Her long green hair, matted with blood, hangs over her face, and she stares at me with cruel black eyes between the strands. More blood stains her clothes, and she smiles at me, each tooth long, thin, and sharp. Two rows of poisonous needles.

“Not yet it seems,” she coos, her words both a roar and a whisper. As her power hits me, she vanishes.

Pain explodes through me.

My eyes snap open.

Aleric is shoving a woman I don’t know into my face. Her throat has been slit, and her head’s been pulled back. Blood gushes from her wound, filling my mouth, and the Craving hits me full force.

I try to resist, only wanting to feed from my wife, but I’m not just starving now. I’m dying, and the bloodlust inside of me has already had a taste. It will not be denied.

And still I fight it.

The vampire above me rolls his eyes as he pulls the dying girl off me. “Stop being a child,” he says as he drops her to the ground.

He grabs my jaw and snaps it hard to the right. It breaks with a loudcrack!

“Aleric!” a woman shouts.

“He’s fine.” Grinning, he grabs my chin. “Fight me now, asshole.” Forcing my mouth up and down, he puts on a stupid accent. “I am Varius, and I have a small penis. I got it from my father.”

“I swear if you don’t –”

Ignoring her, he looks down at his crotch in surprise. He gasps, then shouts, “Who the fuck cut off my dick?”

“I’m fucking about to,” a man mutters.

“I’ll hold him down.”

“Just say the word.”