AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For a few brief, glorious moments, he lost himself in the brawl. He threw and took punches. He felt the air rush out of someone’s lungs as his shin made contact with their ribcage. He grunted as his back slammed into a wall, and then he slid out of it and spun to drive his assailant’s head through the plaster. He left that limp body where it lay.
Everything else had been driven from his mind in a bout of beautiful battle until Sebastian’s panicked scream brought everything to a standstill. The sound chilled Leon’s blood, and a shudder shot down his spine. He spun around, eyes searching in the chaos and the yellow fog for Sebastian, forgetting the two men still in front of him.
Tucker pressed tightly against Sebastian’s back with an arm around his neck. Sebastian scrabbled at the arm with his eyes wide, but that wasn’t what made Leon’s stomach drop with horror. Tucker bared his teeth and stared intently at the nape of Sebastian’s neck, where he had his other hand. As Leon watched, Tucker jerked that hand free and exposed a long, bloody combat knife.
“No!” Leon shoved past one of the other men, rushing toward them.
But Tucker brought the knife down again into the back of Sebastian’s neck, and Sebastian screeched a horrible, inhumane sound. His whole body twisted and jerked. Tucker held on around his neck and brought the blade down again and again.
Just before Leon could get to them, a pair of arms wrapped around his knees from behind, and he crashed to the ground.
Sebastian’s body hit the floor. Blood poured out of it. The eyes that stared back at Leon were wide and lifeless.
“Sebastian!” Leon kicked out at his attacker and tried to drag himself closer to the body.
Then he froze in some instinctual, petrified horror as a huge, white, segmented creature almost the length of his forearm skittered around over the top of Sebastian’s head, down his face, and onto the floor. Its dozens of legs down the side of its body raced around, and its body twisted this way and that.
“Get it!” Tucker stomped his heavy combat boot just inches from the worm, and the worm recoiled and twisted around on itself to get away. “Get it! Get it!”
The man still on his feet ran past Leon toward the worm and stomped at it. The worm twisted around again and raced away, only to be cut off by Tucker’s frantic attacks.
Sebastian.
Sebastian couldn’t breathe.
They wanted to crush Sebastian under their boots.
Leon roared and lunged for them.
Chapter Ten
Sebastian felt warm.
A sort of cocooning warmth surrounded him and made him feel like a small child tucked away somewhere dark and calm. He burrowed into that feeling. He never got to be anywhere dark and calm—everything was always flashing lights and yelling people.
He never got to just sit.
He shifted and realized with a little confusion that his claws were mostly free. Just a few of them were anchored into the most crucial parts of his brain stem. Had he disconnected himself? He would never have—
The memory of Tucker’s knife searing into his flesh flashed before him. The blinding horror of feeling himself cut free of his body, the scramble on the ground, suffocating, blind, dying—
A consciousness brushed across his, and Sebastian anchored all his claws into place with a vicious suddenness. This was his body. He braced his claws to tear through the consciousness that had touched him. This was his. His-his-his—
“Sebastian, wait!”
Sebastian froze. His claws started to shake. That voice felt so familiar, even in his head. The feel of the mind next to his, reaching out for his…
“H…Hess?”
“Hey.”
Oh god, what had he done? Sebastian pulled his barbs free in horror, curling them into himself, but many wouldn’t be disengaged that easily, and he felt the hands and arms of his body pull into his chest. No, Hess’s hands and arms, Hess’s chest. Sebastian had taken Hess’s body. He was plugged into Hess’s brain.
Oh god, oh god, what had he done? How did he undo this? How did he get out?
“Hey, hey, calm down.”
He could just cut himself out; he could just leave. Hess was still here, he hadn’t crushed him, but he’d almost crushed him! He’d almost snuffed out Hess’s entire existence with one panicked move. Why had he—
