Page 157 of Sun-Kissed Fangs
Her body went stiff. And she didn’t look away from Harper. As though she wanted the last she saw of the world to be Harper’s eyes.
Her head dropped. And she lay still.
Harper felt her lips move. Felt sounds escape, but she couldn’t hear them. All noises were drowned out by blood rushing in her ears and her heart shattering into pieces.
Kieran made a gesture, and the arms around her vanished. Harper sprinted across the snowy clearing, falling to her knees next to Maya.
“Wake up!” She didn’t recognize her own voice. It was shaky and raw, as though she’d just been screaming, but she had no memory of doing so. “No. No, Maya, you can’t be… You have to wakeup.”
She didn’t move. Her body was completely still. Her skin had lost all its warmth, instead taking on a sickly grayish tint.
Someone shouted her name. Evie and Nell, yelling for her, but she couldn’t make herself look at them. She just clutched Maya’s hand, staring at her and willing her eyes to open so this awful scene wouldn’t need to be accepted as reality.
“Come on.” Kieran grabbed Harper by the shoulders and pulled her away. She struggled, even though it was pointless. Even with how hurt he was, she couldn’t do anything against him.
“And the humans?” a woman asked. The same one who had tried breaking into the cabin.
“Bring one of them. Kill the other.” Kieran let out a low snarl. “I need a hunt after this.”
“You fucking bastard!” Harper punched Kieran in the chest. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you touch them, you piece of—”
He clasped a hand over her mouth, muffling her protests.
“Just be quiet, baby. It’s all over. You’re safe now.”
Something pinched her shoulder. Pain tightened over her skin, followed by a rush of lethargy. Her thrashing grew sluggish, her sight blurring with no tears to blame.
Someone yelled. Screamed. Loud pops of a firearm followed and then a heavy thud. Noises that were so close, yet so far away.
Harper didn’t even feel cold anymore. As consciousness drifted away, she fixed her gaze on Maya’s body. On her soft, delicate features and her limbs being buried by falling snow.
Maybe it was the darkness. Or her blurring vision. Or just desperation, Harper couldn’t be sure. But she saw more than the tragedy of the scene.
Right before her vision went dark, Maya’s fingers twitched.
Chapter 37
A musty smell tickled Harper’s nose. Thick and sour, enveloping her like sweat-soaked bedding that hadn’t been changed in weeks.
An eerily accurate descriptor. When she opened her eyes, she found herself lying on a yellowed mattress; a blanket wrapped so tightly around her that she could barely move her arms.
The smell scratched at her throat. Gagging, she kicked at the blanket, and though she managed to free herself, it came at a cost. Vision-stealing dizziness rushed through her skull, making her groan and grab her head.
Her hands clinked. She was wearing handcuffs. And her shoulder hurt. She had been injected with something. A sedative, going by how heavy her head was, like it was filled with water.
Moving slowly, she sat up. She was in a decrepit warehouse with most of the windows broken, and the only sources of light coming from a few smoldering barrel fires. An awkward-looking chair made of pallets and animal skins sat a few feet from her, and ropes dangled from the ceiling.
It was quiet, too, the only noise being the wind outside. A few people walked past the windows, but the warehouse itself was empty.
If you ignored the body about fifteen feet away, with strawberry blonde hair spilled over the stained concrete floor.
“Evie!”
Harper shot to her feet, dizziness washing over her at the same time as she stepped forward. A sudden pull yanked at her foot,and she crashed down on the mattress again. A short chain was clasped around her ankle, tying her to a nearby support beam.
“Evie? Evie, can you hear me?”
Her hair was streaked with dried blood. She was wearing the same restraints as Harper, of handcuffs and an ankle chain, but she hadn’t been graced with a mattress or even a blanket. Her breath clouded in front of her lips.
