Hold Me Closer, Necromancer - Lish McBride [103]
Douglas lunged, his mouth carved into a snarl. As he did, I reversed the knife and threw my arm forward, putting as much force as I could into the stab.
The world slowed down as the knife blade bit into his throat. The sounds of fighting around me dimmed. In the new quiet, I could hear the wet pop as the blade slid home. The hilt protruded from his neck, my hand keeping it in place. I wanted to keep it there forever, like my hand on that knife was all that was keeping him pinned still. Douglas’s eyes went panic-wide. Anger changed to surprise and fear, the emotions boiling over onto my skin. He hadn’t thought me capable of this. He’d underestimated me greatly, and I felt that thought register. I could literally feel his pain. How had he been able to kill so many times if it felt like this?
We stayed frozen like that, both of us overwhelmed. The image of Douglas bleeding, dying, my hand on the hilt of the blade, burned itself into my brain. It would probably stay with me until the day I died.
He jerked away from me, pulling the knife free from his neck. Blood fountained, spraying me in the face. I must have hit an artery. His blood struck my tongue—a viscous, heavy saltiness. My heart shuddered. No, not my heart. Douglas’s heart.
We’d completed the spell.
Power ran through me, stronger than before. My body convulsed with it, but I didn’t drop the knife. Douglas fell to his knees, and another wave took me. Something old and brittle shattered in my chest. My heart fluttered for a split second, tied to Douglas’s floundering beat. I felt the rhythm stumble and slow.
I felt him die.
At the same moment, I felt another death, like a flickering motion on the edge of my field of vision. My eyes stayed stuck on Douglas, but in my mind I could see Brid. Her face and hands bloody, her pale form standing over the crumpled heap of Michael. She’d gotten her revenge, though she didn’t look happy about it. She didn’t cry, but she looked sad that it’d had to come to this, that she had had to kill one of her own.
Brid was the only point of stillness in a sea of motion. Everyone else around her was still battling the dead. But Brid made no move to help them. Instead, she stared as Michael’s blood leaked out from the tear in his throat.
I watched with her. I felt it as the red pool spread at her feet.
And it was too much.
I screamed then, an unending peal of torment. The pain was excruciating. The pain felt glorious. I could feel every nerve in my hand, every cut in my back, every sensation magnified until the line between good and bad blurred into something so awesome, so awful, that I had to open my mouth and let it out.
I felt the room still, the fighting pause, everyone and everything hanging on to that scream. I couldn’t get a handle on it. In my mind I grabbed at it, tried to find an edge, but there was none. Power clawed at my insides, trying to get out.
My gift was tearing me apart.
I continued to scream, though my voice was becoming hoarse. I’d never known how much damage a sound could do to my throat. And I didn’t care. I kept screaming because it was all I could do.
It was Brid who grabbed my face. She looked tired and drawn. I didn’t realize how hot my cheeks were until her cool hands burned into them. I dimly remembered that Brid’s hands usually felt hot to me. Was that bad?
I looked for the horror in her eyes. Horror for what had happened, for what I’d done, for what I’d become. I couldn’t find it. Brid looked at me like she needed me to focus on what she was saying.
I stopped screaming. I grabbed her wrist with my free hand and held on.
“Put them back,” she whispered.
Was she whispering, or was I having a hard time hearing? I could see the creases in her lips as they moved. She wanted me to put something back. Wait…someone. She wanted someone put back. But I couldn’t remember who or what.
Brid must have seen my confusion. “The dead. Put them back.” She enunciated each word.