Free Branded by Keary Taylor Page A

road. I bent down and picked up a handful of the powder and formed it into a ball. My aim was surprisingly accurate considering the many cumbering layers I wore and it landed square on the back of his head.
    I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so lighthearted and care free as we chased each other around the house, throwing snowballs as fast as we could. There weren’t too many times when I had allowed myself to be so relaxed around anyone, parents and friends included. It seemed so easy for Alex to bring out a side of me that I didn’t think existed. A part of me that just wanted to be me and felt free to be just me.
    “I don’t think that’s the best spot to lie down,” I said with a chuckle as I watched Alex lay right in the middle of the road.
    He sat back up and looked to his left then to his right before looking back up at me with a smirk. “I really don’t think anyone’s going to be driving on this road for quite a while.”
    I had to admit he was probably right. Even though it was nearly ten, there weren’t any tire tracks on the road yet.
    We were pretty well snowed in.
    With a blissful sounding sigh, he tilted his head back till he fell perfectly flat on the snowy road. I chuckled at him and shook my head. I looked across the road to the hill that rose up from it, wondering if we would be able to find a straight enough path to sled between the trees on it.
    “Come make a snow angel with me, Jessica!” Alex said in innocent delight.

    As I looked down, I was fairly sure my heart stopped beating for a moment. Flashbacks from my nightmares filled my head as I beheld the perfectly beautiful man with piercing blue eyes and brilliant wings newly formed at his side.
    “I…I…” I stammered, frozen in terror. My hands started shaking and I felt slightly weak in the knees. My ears started ringing and I couldn’t concentrate on any other sound. My breath came in sharp, painful bursts. The scar on the back of my neck prickled and started to burn.
    “Jessica?” a voice called but it sounded muffled and very far away.
    And then darkness swallowed me whole.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    I always felt sure I knew terror as no other person did but the terror I felt now could not even compare to what I had before experienced.
    It was completely dark, wherever it was I might be. It hid things from my eyes and it seemed to be in alliance with the voices I heard. It unmercifully veiled them in its impenetrable folds.
    The laughter was maddening as the voices heckled, rising in volume and dementia with each passing moment.
    Cold clammy hands reached out at me, tracing fingers along my cheek, down the back of my neck, across my thigh, grasping my ankles. The feeling of the condemned pressing closer in on me, nothing but hands touching, was beyond petrifying.
    Through all these sensations a new one began. The feeling that a more solid and lucid being was standing directly before me, cloaked cruelly in the darkness. A new distinctive set of hands reached forth, ever frigid and clammy as the others but more deliberate, more powerful.
    They placed themselves on either side of my face and I felt my insides chill as I had the feeling eyes were boring into my own. Those hands slid slowly down to my shoulders, down my arms and I felt myself being pulled closer to the unseen being. The arms that started to wrap around me were just as cold as the hands attached to them.
    I wanted to run, to disappear, to die but could do nothing as those arms forced me into an arctic embrace.

    I sensed rather than heard as the thing seemed to be inhaling my scent and felt as if death had finally found me when a pair of lips brushed my ear.
    “You shall be mine,” a voice clear and sharp as ice whispered.
    As soon as the words were spoken I was released by the mass of cold hands and felt instead that my body was being shaken violently, the air around me warming quickly.
    “You shall be mine,” the voice again whispered into the darkness. It was