Field training: Day 35, hour 18
My monster screamed, and I joined its chorus. The desert scratched my throat as I bellowed, but I ignored the pain.
Red blurred my vision, and it wasn’t from my bloody eyelids.
Unlike the first time I’d let my monster free, this time, I didn’t lose consciousness.
I was wide awake.
We were one.
Pulsing rage coursed through my veins.
As I stalked forward through the storm, knives, bullets, and bodies flew around me. I didn’t let it distract me.
I ducked a bullet that would have hit my head and followed the faint trail of burned ammonia. The shooter was somewhere in front of me.
He would pay.
My back burned unmercifully, the enchanted letters a reminder of just who I was. I reached back and dragged my nails across it.
A motherfucking whore.
Fist clenched around something cold, I paused my hunt, and I stared down in confusion. When did I palm my dagger?
I hadn’t.
An iridescent ice dagger had appeared in my hand, and it was the same one I’d used to kill the fuckers who hurt Sadie in the beast realm.
The storm raged around me as I stared down at the glowing crystalline structure.
Streaks of light blue danced inside the crystal.
I’d never had a chance to study it before.
The edges were razor-sharp. But the structure wasn’t a simple dagger like I’d first thought.
It was an irregular shape.
One end tapered into a thin stalk, while the other end was curved and wide. I turned it over slowly. While the shape was wide and long, it was as thin as paper.
It glimmered and waved in the wind like it was flexible. It seemed impossible that something could be so solid but at the same time barely weigh anything.
Like water floating in my fingers.
My bicep itched with the urge to chuck it forward and end the shooter, but Lothaire forbade any use of powers.
The awful memory of the isolation tank rolled through me, and my fingers loosened on the weapon.
POP.
Agony exploded in my stomach as a bullet nestled in my gut. It fucking hurt.
I was so fucking done with letting people shoot me.
Moving on instinct, I dropped the crystal weapon and flipped forward.
As my body rotated through the air, three more bullets shot where I’d just been standing.
I palmed our issued daggers and landed on top of the shooter.
And stabbed him through the skull.
As the body deflated, it was ripped apart by an emerging ungodly. Its pincers flailed at me, but I’d been expecting it.
Before it could realize what was happening, I wrapped my limbs around its carapace body and sawed off its head.
Dripping in green-and-red gore, I kicked the dead ungodly, then picked up the machine gun and emptied a clip into the dead body for fun.
Lothaire had said we couldn’t kill with another weapon, but it was already dead.
The acrid scent of gunpowder surrounded me.
A grin stretched my cheeks.
“For the first time, I’m not embarrassed to know you.” Jinx’s voice was proud in my head.
Her approval was like warm sun on frostbitten skin.
I was glad Lothaire said we had to kill with our daggers; it was messier that way.
More personal. More exciting.
With a smile plastered on my face, I stalked through the screaming sands, looking for my next kill.
The hunt was on.
In my wake, limbs were severed, and heads rolled.
I killed the white-clothed creatures, then I annihilated the ungodly.
Hours passed fighting in the blood-orange dust, and for the first time in years, I was alive.
My fury was a tangible beat as adrenaline sparked my veins, and I fought in sync with the music that only I could hear.
A pile of mutilated bodies painted a pretty green-and-red picture.
Pulling out the pipe I’d tucked into my holster, I inhaled drugs mixed with sand.
Horse burst from the smoke and screamed in rhythm with my soul.
Pop.
My shoulder throbbed with the familiar pain of a bullet wound.
Whirling around, I stalked toward the fucking coward that had shot me in the back. He was going to look so pretty in my pile.
Lunging forward, I took another bullet to the stomach.
Worth it.
Body bent at an awkward angle, I stabbed my knives into the gut of the larger white-clothed figure. From the bulk beneath me, he was a man.
Then more agony exploded across my back as someone peppered me with bullets from behind.
I growled and inhaled more enchanted smoke.
Horse screamed louder.
Crack.
I broke the man’s neck. Whirled around and flung daggers into the eyes of the other fucker with a gun.
An ungodly roared behind me, and pincers slammed me down.
Another ungodly emerged from my second kill and stalked to join its brethren.
Lying on my back, I stared up at the monsters, and I brought the pipe to my lips. Horse kept screaming as he attacked the ungodly with his talons. They batted at it but then stopped when they realized he wasn’t corporeal.
Smoke, gore, sand, and wrath combined in an acrid ambience. It was fucking delicious.
Flipping to my feet without using my hands, I grabbed the ungodly and twisted its limbs until they ripped and popped.
It roared as we traded blows.
I laughed.
The drugs muted my pain, and the bloodlust in my veins made it fun.
Pincers slammed into my face, and my cheekbones cracked as the other ungodly attacked me from behind.
But I tensed my jaw and kept my pipe between my lips.
I grinned at my victory.
Then I launched myself off the shoulders of one ungodly and gouged out the beady eyeballs of the other with my bare nails.
Whoosh.
The ungodly lifted me and threw me to the sand.
My spine cracked.
For an endless moment, the world went silent. Orange dust glittered in the darkness as it hung suspended.
Sparkly.
I’d always liked pretty things. I puffed out smoke, and it danced among the diamonds. Horse flew through them in slow motion.
“Are you seriously losing your mind in the middle of battle? What the fuck is wrong with you? GET UP!” Jinx shouted in my head.
Little girl didn’t know how pretty the pain was.
Someday she’d learn.
Suddenly, the world reanimated, and the ungodly weren’t distracted like I’d been.
The blind one reached down with its pincers and clamped around my bicep.
I smiled at the muted pain. It didn’t even hurt.
Drugs are amazing.
Ripppppp. Squelch.
The ungodly held someone’s arm and flung it away into the storm.
Why can’t I feel my hand?
Shock flooded my brain, and the reality of what had just happened rushed into me like a reanimated corpse.
It had ripped off my arm.
I opened my mouth and fucking screamed.
My. Arm. Is. Gone.
Horse dive-bombed the ungodly, and the creature actually stumbled backward.
Self-preservation kicked in, and I stumbled to my feet. My legs barely complied, and pain signals sent shock waves down my thighs from my broken back as I hobbled into a run.
Every step sent jolts of white light exploding.
My eyes were wide open, but the world was getting darker on the edges, gravity pulling me deeper into the dunes.
Muscles burning, sweat dripping, I barely registered the clomping sound of the ungodly giving chase.
They were only a few feet behind me.
A few weeks ago, they would have already overtaken me and crushed me to death with their pincers.
But this wasn’t then.
This was now.
Lothaire’s training was the only reason I stood a chance.
Horse flew in front of me and cawed like he was screeching at me to run faster.
It was the last mile of a sixty-mile run.
The last rep of hoisting a boulder above my head after my arms were numb from exhaustion.
The last minute drowning in the dark sea.
As I put one foot in front of the other, agony throbbed through my missing shoulder cavity, and blood trailed behind me in a sticky path.
Bullets jostled in my mutilated muscles.
I didn’t have a plan. Couldn’t think fast enough to do anything other than run for my life.
Prey. The lowest form of life. The highest level of experience.
Adrenaline rocked through me like a live wire of shock, and it kept my eyes wide and my breath fast. It kept me moving forward.
The pounding behind me was closer.
Ungodly were gaining.
I tipped my head back and screamed as I pumped my arm with everything I had, expecting a collision at any moment.
Abruptly, a flaming figure appeared.
The adrenaline cut off.
Any will I’d possessed poofed away. Just like when Lothaire had told us we could stop running, my legs immediately gave out beneath me.
Face-planting into the soft sand, I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder.
Because I knew he would handle them.
Ungodly screamed as they were torn to shreds.
It could have been minutes; it could have been hours. With my face buried in the sand, time was meaningless as I bled out.
“Get the fuck up!” Malum screamed into my ear.
I nodded but didn’t move; that was all I could give.
The world tilted as I was yanked around. Strong hands wrapped under my remaining arm and held me up.
I moaned.
“FUCK! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR ARM?!” Malum screamed, dark features contorted.
His face was sculpted, like a chiseled bronze statute. There were small black flames flickering in his silver eyes.
“HOW COULD YOU FUCKING LOSE YOUR ARM? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?” the man bellowed in my face as the air got uncomfortably hot around us.
He smelled intoxicatingly harsh, like whiskey thrown into a bonfire.
“Why are your pupils dilated? Are you smoking during battle?” Malum’s voice was dark. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
His flame eyes hovered inches from my face.
I choked on sand as my mouth tried to form words.
“What?” He leaned closer.
“You’re handsome,” I whispered groggily as the world started to plunge into darkness.
“You will be punished for this. Brutally.”
Exhilarating.
Once again, I drowned in darkness.
