I advance, spreading my left hand wide, forcing the boy to collapse to the ground completely. He tries to crawl backward; however, the wall stops him. His eyes are wild with terror as I tower above him, stepping over his frail body.
The rush floods , drowning in hunger and rage. I give in; my foot lashes out once, cracking the back of his skull against the dark stone.
His scream dies into a gurgle. I kick again, and again.
By the third, silence. As it is with the others—broken necks, shattered throats, bodies mangled until they no longer beg for rcy.
But I am not finished. My blood rages: it howls. I kick him once more, his head bouncing lifelessly, the golden moonlight spilling into the alley and painting his ruined face.
The bruises bloom across his skin in blue and purple shades. And for a mont, his face is not his own. It is Ren’s—my brother. Everyone’s face resembles his now.
But Ren is gone. And this boy is not. The light fades.
His teeth are splintered, his hair matted with his own cooling blood, his eyes fading into bluish-grey emptiness. His shoulders slump inward, the fight long gone, and still—I cannot stop myself—kneel, sinking into the ecstasy of hunger, and feast.
My lips find the wound, drinking directly from the skull where his bluish blood oozes out.
It burns on my tongue, thick and warm, but with every swallow, the light inside my eyes dims. Sothing else seeps in.
Darkness. And with it, the feeling of my skin loosening, as if being sand that drips from my own body. I lose my grip on my own body entirely.
...
A single, long gulp of air surges into my lungs. I exhale barely a quarter of it, then choke, upright, colliding with sothing solid above . A low grumble answers. Gene.
He rarely curses in my presence, but tonight, he does. “Eos!” he barks, towering over , his brows furrowed, his gaze sharp.
I ignore him; my breath cos too fast, ragged, burning in my chest. Sweat drenches my back, clinging to the duvet beneath . My left hand trembles as I look at them—skin-tinged blue, veins etched across my knuckles. Everything shimrs in shades of blue. My cough wracks , spraying a mix of red and blue onto my elbow bend.
Gene steps back, disturbed. Behind him, Cham lingers by the window, silent as always. He is a shadow that rarely speaks, but watches everything; Paul—the little boy—sits on a chair in the right corner of this darkened room.
“Eos,” Gene asks again, his voice sharp, “what have you been up to this night?”
I drag in another breath, my throat raw, my head pounding. “I’ve...” I try to answer, to na the horror, but the words falter, slipping like water through my lips. “I’ve dread about the...” My tongue stills. The rest is lost.
I press my palm into my forehead, my body sagging into the cushion, grumbling under my breath. “I don’t know anymore.”
I look at my hand once more—trembling still—my breath uneven. “I wanted to kill.”
Kill them all.
The words spill again inside of my head—foreign yet mine—bleeding from my tongue as if whispered by sothing inside . Staring at my left hand, the dried blue stains crust on my knuckles. My eyes drift past Gene’s boots to the floor, where more blue marks are sared.
“We must leave. Now.” Cham’s voice cuts through with a calm and practical manner. His silhouette blocks the dim sunlight streaming through the window, the glare stabbing into my eyes.
“Kill them all,” I murmur suddenly, my lips twitching, my neck prickling as if sothing crawls beneath my skin, through my ear, twisting my head against my will.
And then, I smile. My legs move faster than I want them to, restless, alive with sothing not entirely my own. “Then let’s go and search for another place to stay,” I say, louder this ti, so the others hear it too.
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