Page 3 of Guardian Falling
Fucking dead!
Because I just watched his neck snap in her hand.
My brain scrambles for explanations, for tricks, for a version of reality where this didn’t happen.
He’s dead.
One second alive, breathing, trying to impress me with cheap courage. His hands warm on my body, the next… a crumpled heap of cooling flesh at my feet. A person, a human being, is gone so fast my mind can’t even keep pace with the loss.
My hands start to shake, but no scream comes.
No instinct to run kicks in.
All I can do is stand here, staring at the body of a man I barely knew, my pulse roaring in my ears as the world tilts violently.
Because whatever she is…
Whatever stepped out of the dark and ended a life as if it meant nothing…
It’s still standing right in front of me.
And now it’s smiling.
Whatever this thing is—it’s fucking grinning at me.
The scream building in my chest never makes it past my lips. Terror clamps around my throat with iron fingers, freezing the sound before it can escape. My legs unlock on pure instinct, and I stumble backward, my ankle twisting in my stupid heeled sandals, but I don’t care because I need to run.
I need to move.
I need to survive!
I make it three steps before her hand locks around my wrist.
Cold sears into me on contact. Not the cold of night air or ice water, but something deeper, the absence of warmth, the kind that belongs to graves, crypts, and things that were never meant to breathe. The shock of it steals my breath, panic detonating in my chest as instinct finally takes over.
Run. Fight.Anything.
“No!” I gasp, the word tearing out of my throat as I wrench against her grip. “No, no, p-please—” My voice fractures, turns shrill, useless, as terror floods every limb and my feet scramble for traction that isn’t there.
She spins me around effortlessly.
The world blurs, lights streaking, my stomach lurching as I lose all sense of direction. Then my back slams into the hood of the car hard enough to knock the air clean out of my lungs. Pain blooms sharp and bright between my shoulder blades, the impact rattling my teeth, heat flaring where metal meets bone. I gasp, a broken sound clawing out of me as my hands slap uselessly against the warm hood, my palms stinging.
Before I can even suck in another breath, she’s there.
Too close.
Her body cages mine in, inches from my face, and the space between us collapses until I can see every impossible detail—her skin flawless and pale, her eyes burning red with hunger, lips curved in something that might be amusement. I catch her scent, metallic and stale, the sour smell of blood left too long hangs in the air, and my stomach clenches hard. My heart hammers wildly, my ribs aching as fear crushes down on me so hard I can barely think.
I’m trapped.
And she knows it.
No pulse flutters in her throat.
No breath disturbs the air between us.
When she smiles, her canines extend with a soft click that I feel more than hear, elongating into fangs that gleam wetly in the moonlight.
