A pain filled cry rent the air. Terror filled Cassie, but she could not take her eyes off of the creatures attacking her in order to see how Melissa was doing, or how badly she had been hurt. Chris shouted, and then another monster went flying by Cassie, its hands clenching at the knife buried deep in its chest.
Continuing to use the crossbow as a shield, she focused her attention on the other one that kept coming back at her. Its reddened eyes were narrowed with fury as it clawed and flailed in unnerving silence. Trying not to let her panic and terror overcome her, she swung another punch at it.
The thing ducked at the same time that it grabbed hold of her fist. A strangled cry escaped her, but she could not tug her hand free of its grasp. Her hand tightened on the crossbow as she continued to fend the other one off while trying to tug her hand free. The creature’s eyes spit red fury as it tugged her closer; its grip on her hand was painful.
“Why do you get to be normal still?”
Cassie froze, her eyes widened as horror filled her. She gaped at the thing, frozen in startled surprise by the fact that it spoke. That it could speak! She had not associated speech with these half crazed, wild things. She would have thought it was impossible, but it was speaking to her, and it was making sense, even if its voice was the most horrid thing she had ever heard. It was low and grating as it slithered out of him like a snake crawling out of a hole. The sound of it sent chills down her spine, it made her blood run cold as terror pounded across her.
It could speak, and its thought processes were far more advanced than she had thought! Shaken, confused, disoriented Cassie could not move. And its question, its question! Why did she get to be normal? How did this creature know what had been done to her? How did it have enough reason to understand any of this?
The world seemed to slow, Cassie’s eyes narrowed as she studied it. The features of it were a mangled blur of human and monster. Its red eyes were filled with hate and hunger. But there was something oddly familiar about it.
Then, she remembered. She had been locked in her cell still, before Dani had rescued her. One of the creatures had peered into the window, tried to get into her cell, hoping to kill her, wanting to destroy her. It (no not it, this thing before her), had been chased off by Dani’s power.
But now it had returned. It knew that she had been in that laboratory too, knew that she had emerged, not unscathed, but certainly not the same thing that these monsters had become. It knew that she had emerged much better off than they had, and it hated her for it.
“Why!?” it snarled.
Cassie had no answer for it, she could not think of one. It was not fair that she had come out almost normal after what had been done to all of them, but that was not her fault. She had not done this to them, she had not done this to herself. It should not blame her, but it did.
Cassie opened her mouth, but before she could respond it ripped her forward. Having been shocked into immobility, Cassie was thrown off balance by the sharp tug. She staggered, trying to keep hold of her crossbow at the same time that she tried to regain her footing. A hand entangled in her hair, causing a sharp cry of pain to escape her as her head was ripped roughly back.
She swung her fist up, hoping to connect with something, anything but coming up with nothing but air. Panic rose up to drown out her stunned surprise. She was surrounded, and at the moment they had the upper hand. Using the crossbow, she slammed it hard into the chest of the one she had been fending off, knocking him back a good five feet. Using the brief reprieve, she turned toward the one with its fingers entangled in her hair.
Before she could do anything, it jerked her hair back and struck with the unnerving speed of a cobra. Her terror, confusion, and disbelief were swiftly buried by the pain that rushed up to swamp her. A scream rose in her throat, but it strangled there, unable to break through the agony that seared through her veins.
Devon had said that it was painful to have blood drained against your will, but this was far worse than anything she ever could have imagined. Her muscles froze; her lungs stopped working, her veins burned as the blood was unwillingly, and greedily, sucked from it. Her skin fired with pins and needles that poked her more rapidly than any tattoo gun. She felt as if a million fire ants were crawling over her, nibbling at her, tearing at her flesh as they ripped it away from her.
She wanted to scream, but she could not get the air into her lungs to do so. She wanted to cry, but her eyes were also on fire and they burned away the tears that formed in them. She wanted to fight back, to move, but her limbs had locked into place, her muscles were as unbendable as rocks. She wanted to do many things, but all she could do was stand in shattering agony as she listened to the disgusting, slurping sounds of her blood being ripped from her.
The one she had shoved back came at her again. Her arm had frozen with the cross bow up, her fingers clenched tight around the trigger. It knocked the crossbow aside, snapping her arm back, but she still did not release the crossbow. Even when it snatched hold of her arm and sank its teeth deep.
A groan finally escaped her, or at least she thought it did, but she couldn’t tell beyond the explosion of pain that seemed to shatter her skull. Red and white lights blazed before her eyes, she wanted to fall, wanted to curl up and die, wanted to do anything that would get her away from this.
She barely heard the small cry before she felt the small rumble in the earth, the power being sucked from it. She dimly realized that Dani had arrived, that she was drawing energy from the ground, getting ready to release it. Cassie felt a small amount of relief, it would be ok now. But before Dani could release her power on a blast that would have rocked the earth, shook the walls, and rattled the glass within the windows, one of the creatures pounced upon her. Dani fell back with a startled cry as the wave of her power was abruptly cut off.
Cassie’s vision blurred, darkness pulled at her, trying to draw her under, trying to pull her away from the pain that held her within its iron tight grasp. Horror filled Cassie, she tried to gather enough of her wits past the pain in order to try and regain some kind of control of herself. But she could not push the pain away enough to do so. Terror filled her as she realized the darkness was going to win, and she knew it was a darkness she would never wake from.
CHAPTER 13
Devon’s head snapped up as he felt the strange pulsing electricity within the earth. He knew what that pulse was; knew what the familiar rumble in the earth meant. He braced himself for the jolt that inevitably followed it, braced himself so as not to get knocked on his ass. But the earth did not rock, the jolt did not come.