Free The Risen (Book 2): Margaret by Marie F Crow

thoughts of their soft flesh under them. Feet shuffle in a haste to reach the blocked space ahead of them, resulting in a faltering of ranks. Placid faces pull back, showing the true monsters that we are. The game is over. The dance is ending. We are no longer hunting. We are ready to kill.

CHAPTER 14
    H is screams fill my ears and it thrills me. There are words in his raised voice, but it is the sheer sound of it that matters to me. His fear vibrates the room with his small voice. The voice is weak and yet forceful with the loud shouting of his emotions. It rolls our eagerness inside us with a force from behind a thick dam until it bursts forth, unable for it to be restrained any longer.
    She has attempted to block us again with a thick reflective barrier. The boy that has finally stirred our inner nature is secure behind it. Our army crashes against its mirror surface with the full force of our disappointment as we are being cheated again from our need. Disappointment rips through us and out with sounds of desperation for him.
    The handle that she used to open it is too high for our outstretched arms. Fingers dislocate, snapping and popping as our mind forces our bodies to find him. Shoulders are brought out of joint with our minds wrought with anger and need, destroying these fragile shells of ours. We feel none of it. Only the cramps that are clutching us with a madness all to its own. We feel only the pain from the hunger that we are unable to satisfy now.
    His screams still fill the air even blocked from us like this. It is a mingling of fear and pain from within this metal closet in the kitchen. There are pictures that are spread over the doors of two women which are set in the same backdrop of this room. The whispers come again. I know these smiles that we are destroying with our efforts to figure out this riddle. Moments of time are shown to me from memories I hold in another part of me. A part that is still fighting to hold on as I fight to let it go.
    Mrs. Bell. Mrs. Tawny. That part of me is begging me to remember. Almost pleading with me to remember, coaxing me back to another state of mind. My mind, my new mind, doesn’t have a need or room for such a life. It would only defeat my new purpose. I can’t have that, and the whispers are shut away, placed back in the darkest of corners that I won’t explore.
    We are so mindless with our focus of him, that we have forgotten his partner. A scent that drove me to a level of madness, I had put out of my mind with the easy target of the one so simple to spark with fear. Fear that triggers the beast inside of me that is needed to do what I need to happen.
    Her scream now dances on my conscious, pulling my attention back to predator. My body shuts down and lets my mind and its hidden beast take over. They work as one, giving my body commands, gliding it into action. The anger I was feeling washes away leaving my face back to a mask of preparation. Pain, and all its torment, is muted so I may focus on her. So that I may destroy her.
    My head tilts to gain a better view of her. To watch her as my body glides forward, becoming a barrier myself to the boy that she let slip away. Her scent is not the same. It does not have the sharp musk of panic anymore. It is a blend of softer undertones with her normal smoky flavoring. This unsettles a piece of me and I focus harder on her actions.
    My eyes follow her hand. Its random movements against the wall tell me that she is searching for something. She is looking for a way to defend herself and another instance that has this same feeling comes to mind.
    Like what they did that stopped April. I can see the one like me falling to the floor while we stood there pondering the cause of the noise. A moment that allowed the prey to remove those from us, reducing our numbers and our protection, just as she is searching to do now.
    Anger at the thought of such a weak creature looking to harm me triggers the beast in me. I can already taste