For a moment, I honestly believed she’d just left me there for good. But she came back, rubbing fistfuls of snow over her hands and forearms, cleaning off the blood.
When she finished, she drove some sticks into the dirt, making them into little triangles, and then draped the rabbit skin by the fire. She looked at me over the flames, her face an eerily blank slate. We stayed like that for a moment, just staring at each other, taking each other’s measure. Finally, she answered my question.
“My grandfather died. Round about Thanksgiving. I ran the homestead by myself for a while. Then some men came. They tried things. ” She shrugged. “I protected myself. But the township saw it different. They locked me up; said I was only sixteen and needed to be put in a home. But then someone came for me. He told them he was a lawyer. But he wasn’t. He told me about this place. And I came. ”
I stared, dumbfounded. In some ways, the girl before me was as new and pure as the snow falling around us, and yet she’d already lived a lifetime in just sixteen years.
Emma removed the spit from the fire. She’d impaled the creature with a stick, and it looked like a dark, glistening bunnysicle. “Rabbit’s done. ”
I g
ave her a broad smile, reaching my hand out for a leg. I’d never tasted anything so good in my life.
We were just finishing up when we heard the rustling. We froze, our eyes meeting over the fire. There was another sound—guttural and hissing, like a growl from the back of a human throat.
Then we saw the eyes. They glowed red and rabid, lacking the ancient stillness of Vampire. Instead, this thing emanated chaos, fury. Hunger.
And it was looking right at us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It leapt at us from the darkness, its feral growl ripping through the snowfall’s heavy silence. A hideous thing in the shape of a person, though whatever humanity it once knew was long gone. It saw the fire and flinched back a step, standing and panting.
Paralyzed by pure terror, I could only stare.
Its skin was crackled and black with decay, looking like thin parchment wrapped around a webbing of pure, lean muscle. Tufts of hair clung to its bald and peeling scalp. Red eyes stared at us, glowing from dark sockets.
The thing pulled back its lips. It had only a few teeth, all rotted. Except for the fangs. Two shining, perfect fangs. They looked long. And sharp.
Emma and I rose slowly, edging close enough to stand shoulder to shoulder. It began to circle us, keeping a wary distance from the fire. Emma slid the knife from her waistband, her progress so careful and deliberate, I barely even realized she was moving.
God, I loved that girl.
I’d mistakenly believed the creature was plodding. Or had seen the fire and was cautious. I should’ve known never to underestimate anything I encountered on this isle.
With a tearing shriek, the thing flew at us. At me.
I didn’t have time to think. It grabbed my arms, and pain ripped through my body. Its nails sliced easily through my coat, piercing deep into my skin. They felt like talons that’d been sharpened to hard points.
I was screaming senseless things. Random words . . . no, what, off, go, no.
Adrenaline dumped into my veins. Its attack slowed, and I became aware of everything. The crackling sound of its skin as it opened its mouth, the rancid stench of its breath, the gleam of firelight on shining fangs. The warmth of my own blood seeping down my arms.
It dragged me a few steps back into the darkness.
“Stop!” I stomped my heels into the ground, trying to flail free of its grip. But those nails dug deeper. It was stronger than anything I’d ever encountered. Stronger, even, than my father. “Off!”
It leaned closer, and I thought it might bite me. A cascade of surreal thoughts swirled through my head. How strange to be taken this quickly. To be killed, to disappear from the world so easily. Eaten like meat, and without thought, as I might eat.
But the thing didn’t bite me. It wasn’t that merciful. It grabbed me instead, sniffing me.
I flailed, kicked, struggled—anything to pull myself free. But its grip was too strong. And then it began to squeeze.
Its foul limbs wrapped around me, squeezing tighter and tighter, until it was crushing the life from me. I couldn’t drag in enough air to catch my breath. My screams became strangled.
My ribs creaked. I thought my hair was being torn from my scalp, trapped in the vise of the creature’s arms. I heard a keening wail and realized it was me. Tears and snot streamed down my face as I gasped for breath.
My cries became choked whimpers.