Page 20 of Solivagant

Change him.

Keep him.

He didn’t respond.

The wounds. I had to heal his wounds. I tasted familiar blood, but it was different now. Wrong. It was cold. So cold.

I licked his face. His neck. There was too much wrong. Too much missing. Too much to heal. It wasn’t working.

No. No. No. No.

My Jem!

Pain. It seared as my side was impaled. I turned to see another human. Unfamiliar. A long, pointed weapon in his hands as it pierced me. Fear and rage on his face.

“Get back, beast!” it spoke.

Beast. He didn’t recognize what I was.

Had he done this to my Jem? Had all of them?

My vision continued to blur with my pulse. Louder. Faster.

He did it.

My hand wrapped around the entirety of his face and skull, clenching with a wet crack before he could retrieve his weapon from my skin.

A scream rang out from a short distance away. More humans rushed out of houses to investigate.

They did this. All of them. They were all guilty. They hurt Jem. Left him here, like this, for the scavengers.

That rumble rolled through my chest again, up my throat. It left my mouth in a sound louder than I’d ever made.

“Run!” one of them screamed.

I was faster.

Blood splattered over stone. Over wood. My claws dug into the flesh of backs and necks as I tore limbs from bodies. Heads from shoulders.

They all did this. They all had to die.

They couldn’t run from me. They couldn’t hide. They tried. I could smell them. Their disgusting fear. Their guilt. I found them all.

They screamed. They fought. They begged.

It didn’t matter.

I killed them all. The ones who fought. The ones who ran. The ones who hid. All of them. And that sound didn’t stop. The screaming.

It continued even as I smashed through their flimsy shelters and weapons. It continued after all were dead, and the embers from fallen torches raged with my rage as it claimed homes that were no longer needed. It was coming from me.

My throat hurt. My arms hurt. My soul hurt. All the pain escaped me with that unending scream.

With no more humans to extinguish, I took their animals. There were so many of them. So many options, so why had they offered my Jem?

Every soul I found, I crushed. But I didn’t claim them. This wasn’t about power. It was vengeance.

Wood splintered as I busted through the flimsy entrance to another home. Seeking destruction. Only destruction. Can’t think. Can’t think. Can’t think.