Free Harsh Gods by Michelle Belanger Page B

her wrist, I twisted and felt the bones splinter even as I heard the snap. The knife sailed from her useless fingers. Squealing, she tried a haymaker with her remaining hand, wildly swinging for my face. I brought my forearm up in a block, then crunched my elbow into her nose. The palm of my left hand remained jammed against my leg. Blood spurted through my fingers. Gleaming arcs of it spattered the snow along the curb, a startling crimson against street-stained white.
    I won’t die here. Not before I remember myself.
    The words thundered over the stuttering pulse in my head. The world smeared hazy around the edges. Headlights starred in my vision. A car—turning onto Mayfield from Coventry Road. A few blocks away. I was close enough to the traffic light, maybe they would see.
    No. Not close enough. Not enough time.
    The guy on the sidewalk was getting up. Fish-Knife Lady’s broken arm dangled useless at her side, but she wasn’t out of the fight. I’d smashed her nose and it looked like a potato. She squinted around it with bleary eyes, blood making a grisly mask of the bottom of her face. It bubbled on her lips as she whispered—messages from whatever was controlling her, singsong rhythms of madness and pain.
    She dove for me again and I welcomed her. My left hand shot out—I knew that was dumb, but there it was anyway, wrapped around her throat till her eyes bulged. I needed that hand to stop the bleeding. What was I thinking? I was dying here. I was going to fucking die.
    Still I held her, elbow locked, lifting her up till her feet danced against the air. I dug in my fingers till I could feel the pulse in her neck. It thudded hard and wild against my palm. My own heartbeat leapt in answer, rapid and thready. It trembled down the length of the scar.
    Thud.
    Light burning around my fingers.
    Thud.
    A wash of brilliance spilling across her flesh.
    Thud.
    Heat like a bonfire. A swift, burning river of it, racing along my arm, down through my belly, settling in my leg.
    She jigged and twitched as I held her, bloodshot eyes rolling back in her head. Scrabbling with her good hand, her fingers plucked ineffectually at my own.
    I didn’t drop her until she stopped moving. By then the blood had staunched along my thigh.

10
    What the hell was that?
    I stumbled away from the dead woman, choking on the bitter taste of blood.
    Memories exploded like flashbulbs behind my eyes. None of them were my own. I didn’t want to hold on to them, couldn’t stand their feel as they seethed within my mind. A life of loss, addiction, maddened whispers that never let her rest—the flood of foreign data drowned all but the panicked thunder of my heart.
    Then another impulse leapt from the torture of her memories to mine. My skull felt too small to contain its booming words.
    I WILL REBUILD MYSELF, ANAKIM, AND ALL WILL BOW AGAIN.
    A hail of violent perceptions drove me to my knees—chains, smoke, the shattering of stone. On its heels, a strangling sense of panic. The sensations washed through me with no context or order. Spewing desperate curses, I pressed my hands against my ears as if that was going to help block things piped directly into my brain.
    At my outburst, the guy bolted, stumbling over his dead companion in his haste to get away. The intruding presence withdrew as well, departing as swiftly as it came.
    Tires squealed. The headlights, distant before, veered in my direction. A car lurched onto the curb. Spotted—I’d been spotted. This registered only dimly as I fought to bring order back to my brain. The pale corpse lay five feet from me, eyes fixed and staring.
    I looked away.
    I’d sucked the life out of her mortal shell. Drained her to heal my own wound. The certainty left me staggered and nauseous. I hadn’t bitten her, but I could still taste her blood.
    I thought only Nephilim did that.
    “Zack? Zack?”
    A hand on my shoulder. I shoved it away.
    “Mother’s Tears, Zaquiel. Talk to me. That’s arterial