Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
She backs away from me, arms wrapping around herself as if in pain. “I need a moment,” she says, her voice altered, rougher somehow. “Keep going. I’ll catch up.”
Jensen places a warning hand on my arm. “Aubrey…”
I shake him off, moving closer to my sister despite his unspoken warning. “Lainey, what’s happening?”
Her face contorts with what appears to be intense pain, her breathing becoming ragged. When she looks up at me, her eyes have changed—the blue more intense, more alien, the last traces of humanity fading from her gaze.
“It’s the hunger,” she gasps, clearly struggling to speak normally. “It’s getting stronger. I can’t…I’m too tired.”
“Fight it,” I urge, reaching for her despite Jensen’s sharp intake of breath behind me. “You’ve fought it for three years. You can fight it now. For me.”
A bitter laugh escapes her, the sound all wrong. “It doesn’t work like that, Aubrey. I’m not strong enough anymore. Too tired. Too cold.” Another spasm wracks her body, and she doubles over, a moan escaping her lips. “You need to get away from me. Both of you. Now.”
“We’re not leaving you,” I insist, though I do take a step back, instinct finally overriding emotion.
“Then I need to tell you something,” she says urgently, visibly fighting for control. “While I still can. They’re hard to kill. Bullets won’t do it—just slow them down. Even severe wounds heal eventually. Maybe you can take off their head, but that’s not easy. Only fire destroys them completely. Burns them to ash so they can’t regenerate.” Her gaze shifts to me, intense and pleading. “Remember Mom’s fear of fire? It was more than a phobia.”
The pieces click into place—my mother’s inexplicable terror of open flames, her refusal to even light candles in our home. She’d known, somehow, that fire was the one thing that could truly destroy what lived in her blood.
“There’s kerosene in the cabin,” Jensen says. “Enough fuel to create a decent blaze if we need it.”
Lainey nods, then another violent tremor passes through her. This time when she looks up, her face has changed further—features sharper, more predatory, teeth visibly elongated. She drops to her knees in the snow, hands clutching her head.
“Go,” she manages, the word barely recognizable. “Please.”
I kneel in front of her, ignoring Jensen’s warning hand on my shoulder. “Lainey, look at me. Focus on my voice. You can fight this.”
She raises her head with visible effort, and for a moment, I see my sister in those alien eyes—terrified, in pain, but still there. Still fighting.
“Aubrey,” she whispers, her voice almost normal again, though the effort clearly costs her. “Sweet Aubrey. I need you to do something for me. Something terrible.”
My throat tightens with dread. “Anything.”
“End this,” she says simply. “While I’m still me enough to ask. Before I become like them completely. Before I hurt you.”
The request hits me like a physical blow, stealing my breath. “No.” I shake my head vehemently. “No, Lainey. I can’t, I won’t—”
“You have to,” she insists, reaching for my hand with fingers that now end in definite claws. “I’ve been fighting this for three years. I’m so tired, Aubrey. So tired of being caught between, of never being fully human but never surrendering completely to the hunger either. I need peace. I want peace. I want to be with Mom and Dad again.”
Tears blur my vision, freezing on my cheeks in the bitter cold. “There has to be another way. We can find more of the minerals you mentioned, make the mixture stronger. We can research a cure—”
“There is no cure!” Lainey interrupts before she breaks off into a coughing fit, spitting out black blood. “I’ve searched these mountains for three years, studied everything the hungry ones know about their own condition. There’s no going back from this. Only forward, into complete transformation, or…” She trails off, the implication clear.
“I won’t kill you,” I say, my voice breaking. “I just found you again. I can’t lose you like this.”
“Then you’ll watch me become something monstrous,” she replies, a note of desperation entering her voice. “Something that will hunt you, hurt you, with no memory of being your sister. And then you’ll die. Is that better?”
I have no answer for her. Both options are unbearable, impossible to contemplate. Finding Lainey only to lose her again—whether to death or to complete transformation—feels like a cosmic cruelty I can’t accept.
Another spasm tears through her, more violent than before. She falls forward onto her hands, body contorting unnaturally, a sound escaping her that’s halfway between a human scream and an animal’s snarl, her spine jerking up and down.
“It’s happening,” she gasps, voice distorted. “I can’t hold it back much longer.” She looks up at me one last time, her eyes briefly clearing, my sister visible through the monster she’s becoming. “Please, Aubrey. Let me go. Let me die as myself, not as one of them.”