Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 110809 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110809 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
I scream at the searing pain, my knees giving out. He pulls it up, slicing through vital organs, gutting me as the rest of the room cheers.
I can’t hold myself up at all. My wrists take the brunt of my weight. He wrenches my head back, his hateful gaze on mine. “This is for what you’ve done.”
Something pops loudly behind him. My vision is blurred, my mind going sluggish and cold.
Then he’s gone. I don’t see anything. Not Clay. Not the angry crowd behind him. But I hear them. They’re screaming. Gunshots fire in a raucous explosion, and I could swear I smell gunpowder over the scent of my blood.
The pain in my gut is a fire, one that burns through my lungs and sears my insides. It’s a mortal wound. I can’t see my intestines spilling out, but I know they must be. For some reason that horrifies me more than dying, affects me more than the excruciating pain.
I don’t know how long it goes on, but the screaming eventually stops. Or maybe my hearing finally goes, bleeding out of me like my heart’s blood. In that moment, I want it to be over. I want to die and escape the burning agony.
Vertigo hits, my world going upside down, and then someone is speaking to me. A voice I know. It says my name, but it’s as if it’s coming down a long, padded hallway. A muffled sort of salutation. Is it Death come to greet me?
“Georgia!” He says my name again.
“Death?” I ask, though I don’t know if I actually say it out loud. “Just let me die. Let me die. Take me with you. Please.” I beg him over and over.
“Drink,” he commands.
Something hot against my lips.
“Fucking drink, Georgia!” Death shakes me.
I try to do what Death tells me, but I only manage a small swallow. “It hurts. Take me with you. End it.”
My mind goes blank, nothing but a silent wall of black infinity. Am I dead? Did he take me?
“Georgia!” Death howls at me.
The burning in my gut returns, and I scream, my body awakening to molten agony.
Valen. He’s moving in a blur, his hands all over my bloody abdomen. Another jolt of pain—worse than anything the knife had done—wracks my body.
He looks up, his fangs long, then tears into his own wrist and smears his blood into my gaping wounds. The burning increases, my body dipped in acid, my organs turned to paste.
I scream until there’s nothing left. Until finally, blessedly, I’m lost in nothingness, a dream I hope to never wake from.
“Wake the fuck up.”
“Aang!” Evie scolds.
“What?” he snaps. “She’s lying here like Sleeping Beauty surrounded by dozens of corpses! I need a goddamn explanation!”
“Guys?” I open my eyes.
“Hell.” Wyatt scrubs a hand down his face. “We thought—”
“What happened?” Aang stares around. “Are you a sleeper agent or something?”
I sit up and realize I’m still in the atrium lying on one of the blue couches. This one isn’t blue anymore, though. It’s soaked with blood. The rest of the atrium is, too. My gorge rises as I catch glimpses of severed arms, legs, entire torsos ripped apart. Bits of paramilitary fatigues and guns that have been shattered or folded in half litter the ground—all of it splattered with gore. A massacre.
“Oh my god.” I cover my mouth with my hand.
“We need to get out of here. Now,” Gretchen calls from somewhere farther away. “Up to Georgia’s room.”
“I want a goddamn explanation. Who did this? What the fuck happened?”
“Aang, now!” Gretchen yells.
Aang scowls and holds out his hand. “Can you walk?”
I look down at my ripped shirt, the blood on my stomach, the intestines that were shredded only moments ago. “What—”
“Come on. We don’t know how bad the contamination is. If they fucked with the plague samples in the HCL, we’re all dead anyway.” Wyatt takes my arm and pulls me to my feet.
In a daze, I let them march me to the elevator and then up to my apartment.
“Where’s your laptop?” Wyatt calls. “I can check contaminant levels from there as long as you’re tapped into the—never mind, I found it. Password? Wait, you don’t even have it password protected? What the hell?”
I run my hands along my stomach, disbelief settling over me like a cloud obscuring the sun, my skin going cold. I was dead. At least, I was at death’s door. I shouldn’t have survived. But as I run my fingers along my smooth stomach, I realize what happened. Juno’s Miracle. Now it’s mine. Valen saved my life.
“You look like you’re about to faint.” Evie guides me to the living room and helps me into the armchair. She kneels in front of me. “What happened?” She frowns at my soaked jeans, the blood on my shirt, in my hair. My blood.
I can’t tell her what happened. I need to, but I can’t. The words won’t come. I stare at her, tears hazing my vision. Those people wanted to kill me. They had killed me, or close enough. The same people I’ve been working so hard to save. It’s so fucking twisted. A sob tears from my chest.