Free The Last Revenant (Book 1): The Crash by J.S. Carter Page B

wouldn't get another breath. I sputtered, almost with a grateful smile. “You promised.”
    The familiar pair of blue eyes remained motionless with no hint of a response. Finally, their owner answered with a hoarse voice. “I’m sorry.” 
    The eyes never left me, but it didn’t matter. Now I began to smile. She began to smile, something that I knew would put him on edge despite just stabbing his childhood friend and lover through the heart. I began to slip away as her last breath had past her lips: soft, quite, a whisper in the dark. The words chilled me to the bone. “You’re too late.”

               Awakening
    I knew I was back when I woke up. I automatically pushed against the hand on my forehead until I realized it belonged to Martha standing above me. The familiar face did little to slow the pounding in my chest and I checked to make sure it was still intact. I meant to say something, but couldn’t quite figure out how.
    She used the opening. “Are you okay?”
    I sat up and caught my head in between my hands. It felt like lead and throbbed with a dull ache, a sensation a million times more enjoyable than whatever I had just put myself through. I kept my face hidden and made no effort to come up with an answer. How could I have been okay after that? At the very least, I was relieved to hear my own muffled voice. “What happened?”
    She hesitated and I could tell that she didn’t know either. “Amanda found you on the ground. I wasn’t sure what to give you or if anything would have even helped. Has this ever happened to you before?”
    I slowly turned my head to gaze through the cracks of my fingers and watched Amanda stare back at me, wide eyed, holding onto a fistful of Martha’s shirt.  It was the second time that the little girl had potentially saved my life. Either that, or she was incredibly detrimental to my state of well-being.
    “No.” I took a shaky breath and let it go into the palm of my hands. If someone had asked, I could have said that I had just used them to kill people in ways that I had never thought possible. “No, that’s never happened before.”
    “I thought maybe you might have tripped in the dark and hit your head...”
    She reached up and I pushed her hand away from my hair and stared into her worried face, the familiar lines tracing themselves around her eyes and back up onto the bridge of her forehead.
    Wasn’t it still morning?
    I stumbled up and shoved my head through the flap of Martha’s tent to see the purple sky following a sun that had just crested below the horizon, but that didn’t make any sense. The things I saw, the things I felt only lasted a few minutes at best.
    I turned back and meant to ask where Jeremy and the others were, but I already knew. His group should have been miles away from the camp by now. I felt a sharp pang of jealousy shoot up through my chest and I pictured them settling down for the night as free men, laughing and hitting each other in good spirits. At least someone had made it.
    “I think you dropped this...”
    I peered down to see Amanda step away from Martha and hold her hand up. Just on top, resting peaceful and inanimately, the familiar heart-shaped necklace caught light from a gap over my shoulder. It beckoned for my touch, but I was too afraid. I was scared of what would happen if it took control again.
    I kept my distance.  If Ryan or any of the others had seen what had happened to me...
    No.
    I couldn't afford to think like that. I was still alive. If I spent every waking moment second guessing myself, then there would be no point in keeping it that way. But it would be too risky to keep the necklace on hand in case I accidentally touched it. I needed more time to figure out where it had come from and how it worked. I needed to find out what had happened.
    I closed Amanda's hand, careful not to touch what was inside. “Keep it. Keep it safe for me, okay?”
    She peered down, confused for a moment, then