Page 119 of Reaper's Quest

Winter dipped his head, his gaze meeting mine. He nodded.

Yeah. We needed to make a break for it, and fast.

Before we could shift a single inch, those spindly fingers dropped over his shoulders and clutched firmly.

His entire body arched, his face contorting with agony, as his scream reverberated through the stone passage.

I seized a tight hold on Winter and attempted to yank him free of the specter’s grasp. “No!”

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Two, then three more specter hands dropped upon Winter.

“No, no, no.”

Their grip clamped tight, their pull unrelenting.

Heat rose off my body, ripe with wild, uncontrolled anger.

“Let him go!” I yelled.

Any fear I had previously felt in the presence of those monsters had vanished, replaced with sheer desire and steeled determination to protect Winter. To save him from their attack.

My fury leaped off me like flames seeking their next combustible victim.

“You’re not supposed to want him,” I seethed, my jaw tight and musclesstrained.

That was what Winter had told me, and after what I’d formerly witnessed, I was inclined to believe him.

I grabbed the wrist of one specter and tried to pry it free. The touch of its skin sent a swirling howl through my senses; an all-consuming void filled with endless screeches and agony. I sensed a smile from the specter beneath my touch. It delighted in the deliverer of death dwelling within me.

Everything inside of me wanted to recoil, but I wouldn’t give up on Winter so easily. I might be a bringer of death to many, but I was more than that—could be more than that. I could also (apparently) save a life. Or lives.

I tightened my grip upon the specter’s wrist, and I pulled at its skin.

“Let him go,” I repeated between gritted teeth, all my effort shoved into the act of freeing Winter from their soul-sucking touch.

Winter’s eyes glazed and turned blurry. His hollers ceased, as did his struggle, his skin turning gray, and his healthy glow vanishing. His face became sunken, devoid of the male from moments ago.

He dropped to his knees, and I screamed in protest…or disbelief. My chest caved inward, crushing my heart.

And still, the specters refused to release him.

Wetness ran down my cheeks. Was I crying? When had I started crying?

A frenzied kind of panic wrecked my body. I didn’t have a clue how to fight these things. How to stop them. And I needed to stop them, because…because Winter…

“Not him.”

The protest had not been mine, and I startled at the intruding female voice. It thundered through the openspaces of the tunnel, and the specters… They complied. In a single beat, they released their many holds upon Winter.

He slouched forward into my ready and awaiting arms. His body felt cold. So very, very cold. Cold and empty. Seeing and feeling him that way carved a black pit into my soul.

I hugged him close to my body, praying my warmth would revitalize him as I kept a watchful stare upon the specters.

Several yards away, a female dressed to match the surrounding shadows stepped free of the darkness. The mad woman from my remembered dream.

Watcher.