The Killing Season (33 page)

Authors: Meg Collett

I nodded. Tears stinging.

This is what I’d expected right? What I’d waited all this time to hear? Why, then, did it surprise me so badly? Hurt so freaking much?

“Would she have gone fast?” I choked on the sobs crawling up the back of my throat.

Hatter swallowed. He hesitated a bit before he nodded. “Yeah, Sunny. She went quick.”

Beside me, Luke patted my hand to comfort me. I sagged into him, our heads bowing together. “We’ll find her,” he whispered to me.

He coughed and something wet splattered across my cheek. Hatter recoiled in shock. Frowning, I raised my hand and wiped my fingers across my skin.

They were red.

Luke coughed some more. “I’ll find you,” he told the blood-stained snow.

He collapsed.

* * *

Ollie

Someone was touching me.

Their fingertips lacerated my skin, broke through the flimsy barrier and scraped along my bones. Touching was bad for me now. Worse than it ever was before. I couldn’t tolerate it.

I screamed.

More hands descended on me. Holding me down. Holding me together. Blood stained their skin, their long sleeves pushed up muscular forearms. Faces came in and out of my view, multiple people, with splatters of blood across their cheeks and mouths.

My blood. I was bleeding everywhere. It leaked out of me with every exhale. Every drop of it tore itself from my body.

I screamed some more. Loud, ripping sounds that tore from me, more animal than human. It didn’t sound right, didn’t sound like me, but I knew it was because I was more animal than human. And my throat felt as raw as sandpaper from making the noise.

Everything hurt. Everything hurt so badly. Had Max given me more saliva? I think I dreamed killing him. If I had, it was a good dream. I wanted to go back to that dream but the people wouldn’t stop touching me.

The stitches on my chest burst apart, and the pain reached into my chest and tore me from myself. I went in and out, opening and closing my eyes, screaming and gasping for air. The front of my body, from neck to navel, instantly turned wet with a river of blood.

Ah, yes. That was right. Max had given me the last dose of saliva this morning.

“Oh, shit,” a guy said from behind me. It was his hands holding my neck still. I twisted and tried to bite him. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“Ollie!” someone shouted in my face. I blinked. Thaddeus leaned over me, holding me down, holding me together. “Look at me, Ollie! Hold on. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

“What’s wrong with her?” someone else asked. “Why is she screaming like that?”

We were in a car, possibly a large SUV. I knew because I was laid across a backseat, and Thaddeus crouched in the floorboard beside me. The car hit a bump and lurched forward, engine screaming as loudly as I did. The guy who’d just spoken leaned over the backseat and handed Thad packs of gauze and towels. Thick black scars roped up the side of his neck.

Black scars. Something niggled at the back of my brain.

“I smell the saliva in her blood. It’s making her feel pain,” Thad said, ripping open the gauze with his teeth and pressing it against the hole in my chest. “But there’s too much of it. I smell too much. Jesus Christ, how much did he give you?” he asked me.

All of it. Too much and not enough.

“I told you we waited too long,” someone from the front said, possibly the driver.

“Shut up, Lauren. Just drive!”

A woman with long black hair, her pale face a mask in the night’s darkness that filled the car, craned around in her seat to look back at me. Her teeth glinted as she bared them at me. We hit another rut in the road, and I knew she was hitting them on purpose just to send me launching off the backseat and rattling my loose heart around in my cage of ribs.

“Doesn’t look like much to me,” Lauren said from the front. “Maybe if we hadn’t let that creep have her for so long, she wouldn’t be so damaged.”

“Lauren! You’re not helping!” the guy from the back shouted.

Ignoring their words, I started kicking my legs, pounding them against the door. The touching. The touching was driving me mad. I thrashed and snapped my teeth at anything that came close enough. Thad gave up trying to stop the bleeding in my chest and just held my hands down.

But I was close. I felt it.

Death was right there. Close enough to kiss.

I wasn’t fighting away from it. I fought toward it.

“Take me!” I screamed at it—at Death. “Fucking take me!”

“We have you, Ollie. You’re safe. We have you,” Thad said, panting as he struggled to keep his hold on me. I was so close.

“Take me! Takemetakemetakemetakeme.” I started choking on the air, the blood. I couldn’t breathe.

Thad released one of my arms and shoved a towel onto my chest. He laid across it and me, screaming for Lauren to go faster. Faster. Faster.

So close. Right there. Just there. Faster. Faster.

“The great Ollie Volkova,” Lauren said with a sharp laugh that sliced through my ears. “Nothing but a bloody gash ruining my goddamned truck.”

I blinked. Things slowed. Even closer now. I felt Death’s lips on my own.

Thaddeus rose from my mouth where he’d just blown in a great gust of air that pumped up my lungs and sent my ribs bending backwards against my heart.

He growled and started compressions on my chest.

He was taking me away from it.

“He fucking broke her, Thad,” Lauren said. Her voice easily cut through the quiet car. Like a cold knife through warm skin. “She’s gone. We waited too long.”

“Shut the fuck up! Do you hear me? Shut the fuck up!” Sweat rolled down Thad’s nose and fell on the corner of my mouth. He tasted salty, desperate, wild.

He looked it too.

Hovering above me, the guy from the back shook his head, long blond hair falling into his eyes. His black scars stood out on tanned, sun-kissed skin. “She’s gone, man. Lauren’s right. She’s broken.”

Broken. I’d given away too many pieces of myself.

The broken monster. Nothing but loose strings, unraveled and tangled up, and broken wooden limbs. Unblinking painted eyes staring up at nothing. A broken doll with the cut-out heart.

“He didn’t break her,” Thad said somewhere above me. “She wouldn’t let him. Hex told us how long to wait before saving her. He wouldn’t mess this up. She’s too important.”

The darkness slipped in and closed my eyes. I sank into it like a warm bed on a cold night. Easily. Willingly. With a great sigh of relief. Thad’s voice followed me down the dark hole.

“You are not broken,” he whispered in my ear. His words were a silver rope cast down into the darkness with me. “Ollie Volkova breaks for no one.”

He shook me. Pounded on my chest. Slapped my face.

“Ollie Volkova does not break!” he screamed.

But he was wrong.

I turned away from his voice, from the rope he’d cast out into the darkness to save me.

Acknowledgments

These things make me queasy. But here goes. Big ‘Thank You’ to my indie publishing team: Najla Qamber, for the fantastic covers; Jessica West, for helping me wrangle this beast; Kristina Circelli of Red Road Editing, for making this not a grammatical disaster; Stephanie, for the early read; my amazing Reviewers Club, for every single review and all your enthusiasm for these books AND for helping me find all those pesky typos; and My NOT A Street Team members, for helping me spread the word.

For Nate, Wylla, Mandy, and Drax. Thank you all for letting me live in the house.

Thank
you
. For reading this. For your kind words. For your love.

I appreciate it all, and it does not go unnoticed.

About the Author

Meg Collett lives deep in the hills of Tennessee where the cell phone service is a blessing and the
Internet
is a myth of epic proportions. She is the mother of one giant horse named Elle and three dogs named Wylla, Mandy, and Drax the Destroyer. Her husband is a saint for putting up with her ragtag life.

Don’t miss the next book in the Fear University series!

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Other Books by Meg Collett

The Fear University Series

End of Days series

End of Days Trilogy Box Set

Days of New serials