Even when I close my eyes, I can still hear Cal’s anguished screams.
CHAPTER 30
VIOLET
“We have to go.” My voice is soft, quiet even, but it breaks through the anguished cries like a gun being shot.
“No!” Cal screams, pulling at his pink hair while he paces.
Feeling numb, as if I’m no longer in control of my body, I repeat, “We have to go.”
Cal whirls on me, eyes burning with pain and fury, but whatever he sees in my expression causes his shoulders to slacken and his face to crumple in defeat.
“You’re right,” he states, squeezing his eyelids shut. Movements mechanical, he extends a hand to me. “Barret would want me to get you out of here. There’s no way in hell I’m losing you too.” He stares at me with dead, impassive eyes.
When I remain immobile, staring at the spot I’d last seen Barret, Cal thrusts his hand farther into my face. “Violet,” he warns, and I stare at the proffered limb, unable to muster the will to take it. After a moment, I reluctantly interlock our fingers and allow him to pull me to my feet. He releases me immediately, almost as if my touch is toxic, before striding in the direction we were heading before…
Before…
Before “before” became such a horrendous word.
Cal’s all business, the lines of his body taut with tension and barely suppressed pain. I know that sooner or later, he’s going to fall apart so completely, so irrevocably,that he’ll barely resemble the man I know and care for. Death has a way of doing that to a person.
Barret’s dead. That one thought loops through my head, each time bringing about a blistering stab of pain like a hot poker being shoved through my chest.
Stubbornly, I hold my tears at a bay as we move farther and farther down the road. I can’t help but notice that the once-vibrant green grass turns a brittle brown the farther we get from the city. And there, in the distance, is the silhouette of the hospital.
It’s an older building that rises majestically over the boughs of trees, ribbons of red and orange from the setting sun illuminating it in a fiery glow. Instead of relief, all I feel is a sense of foreboding as I stare up at the brick structure. Unlike the rest of the buildings in the arena, the windows appear to be intact, if a bit dusty. An abandoned ambulance rests beneath a low-hanging awning, its doors thrown open, as if the humans had been in the midst of an evacuation.
Without trepidation or even fear, Cal stalks up to the glass automatic doors.
“We need to be careful,” I caution, peering into the surrounding forest and searching for any threats. The eerie silence makes it feel unnatural—disturbing, even. It makes me itch to run away and hide.
“We need to get inside,” Cal counters, voice bereft of any emotion, his grief overshadowing logical thought.
Before I can protest, a figure materializes between two trees at the edge of the forest, the asphalt shaking with each step he takes.
A cyclops.
He stands over ten feet tall, his single eye a jaundiced yellow color. His greenish skin is tinged with shades of gray and black, almost as if he is ill. When he roars, spittle flying, I see only four teeth in his mouth, each a hideous shade of amber and lengthened into sharp points.
“Oh, fuck.” I begin to hesitantly back away, gesticulating wildly for Cal to join me. Instead, he spreads his pink wings and takes to the sky, soaring over the cyclops’s head once before landing on its shoulders. He wraps both of his arms around the creature’s neck, and I watch the cyclops buck and kick in an attempt to remove the added weight.
“You motherfucker!” Cal barks, his arms tightening around the monster’s neck. His hands are just barely able to touch at the center of the cyclops’s throat, his muscles straining and rippling. Smoke wafts from Cal’s body, and his eyes erode over, the pupils swallowing the irises.
I take another step backwards, but this time, it’s not in fear of the cyclops. It’s in fear of Cal.
There’s something primal and otherworldly about him, something that causes every hair on my body to raise. When he bares his teeth, I see sharp incisors that hadn’t been there prior.
The cyclops releases another roar, the vibrations threatening to rupture my eardrums.
As they both fall to the ground, Cal still clinging to the monster like some sort of demented spider monkey, I can’t help but see the violence in his eyes, teetering on the brink of complete and utter annihilation. He’s a tsunami rapidly approaching the shoreline, bringing nothing but death and destruction in its wake.
Cal begins to rain down punches on the cyclops’s back, each blow causing the creature to grunt and hiss in pain. I have no doubt that the cyclops is stronger than Cal, but the cupid’s rage is giving him an edge in the fight.
Unable to watch this assault a moment longer, I race forward with my vampire speed, aim my gun, and fire into the cyclops’s single eye. Droplets of blood splatter my face and arms, the texture slimy as I vigorously wipe it off.
Still, Cal keeps hitting the dead monster, his knuckles cracked and bruised.
“He’s dead,” I whisper, unable to raise my voice. “Cal, he’s dead.”
He doesn’t seem to hear me, his movements jerky in his agitation. Tears run in rivulets down his face as his sightless eyes remain focused on the threat.
“Cal!” I lean forward to touch his arm, and he jerks away, falling off of the giant’s body. He stares at his hands as if he doesn’t recognize them, as if they belong to someone else entirely. His body shakes as he holds up his blood-soaked palm before lifting his eyes to mine.
“What did I just do?”
