Bloodlaced by Courtney Maguire

Author:Courtney Maguire
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-64898-015-2
Publisher: City Owl Press

Twenty-Seven

Red-Eyed Monster

I screamed. The sound ricocheted around the room like something solid, sending me to the floor with my hands clasped over my ears, but I couldn’t stop. Even with my eyes squeezed shut, I saw her, felt her, heard her voice whispering through my veins. Asagi, what have you done?

Mahiro moved toward me, the scrape of his stockinged feet on the tatami loud as stampeding horses. I jerked away blindly, crashing into the wall behind me. Everything was loud. So loud. Even my skin screamed as my kimono scraped against it, the competing textures of cotton and wool sending electric vibrations that put my hair on end. I didn’t want to open my eyes. I couldn’t.

“Asagi…” Mahiro kept his voice low, but it still shook the air like thunder.

“She’s dead!” I cried, pulling myself tighter against the wall as his hand grazed my arm.

“Yes.”

“She’s dead. She’s dead, and I killed her. I killed her!”

Mahiro rushed forward and wrapped his arms around me. A jolt went through me, and I thrashed against him in panic.

“It is all right, Asagi,” he said gently despite my fists pounding against his back and shoulders. “I know it is overwhelming. Just breathe.”

“I can’t,” I choked between gasping breaths, but already my body was calming. His heart beat against mine, and something inside me responded. My muscles softened, and I went almost limp in his arms. “It’s so loud. Why is everything so loud?”

“Focus on one thing at a time,” he said, pressing his palm flat against my back. “Listen to your body.”

With a whimper, I buried my face in the crook of his neck and tried to do as he said. I took a ragged, shaky breath and heard it rattle through my chest. I took another and another, each one a little smoother than the last. In the relative quiet, I heard the soft thump, thump, thump of my heart and the hiss of blood through my veins. I sounded like a machine made of sinews and steam.

Mahiro’s chest swelled against mine with a deep breath, and I struggled to match it. Grief flooded over me with the memory of Kira pressing her chest to my back to ease me out of a panic attack. My deep breath turned into a sob that welled up from my toes.

“What did I do?” I muttered into his neck.

“You did nothing wrong,” he answered, stroking my back.

“But I…”

“You took back the life she stole from you,” he said coldly.

“But she was…my…”

“She was not your friend,” he snarled before catching himself. “It was…necessary. It is how we are.”

“‘How we are?’” I repeated, anger cutting through my grief. “How you are!” I shoved him hard in the chest, sending him flying backward. I tried to open my eyes, but sensory overload slammed them shut again. I grasped my head as shimmering pain slid over my skull. “What have you done to me?”

“I have made you,” he said, voice cracked and fragile with hurt. “I made you so you could live.

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