Page 58 of Crimson Moon Falling

We found them twenty yards down the eastern branch. The corridor had collapsed in one section, timbers and concrete debris heaped across the floor. In a wider junction where the corridor opened into some kind of storage room, Cora sat slumped against the wall.

When I saw Malcolm, I started praying. No, please god, no.

Chapter 17

Riley

Malcolm lay on his back in a spreading pool of blood so dark it looked black in the dim light. His chest was a ruin of flesh torn open by shrapnel and metal fragments. His shirt was shredded, and one jagged piece of metal jutted from his abdomen, just below his ribcage, the edges gleaming wet.

Cora’s face was ashen, streaked with dust and blood from a cut across her forehead and an injury on her shoulder. “It was a trip wire,” she managed, her voice thin and shocked. “I didn’t see it. He shoved me out of the way.”

Malcolm’s body was trying to shift to his wolf form. I could see it happening, the muscles beneath his skin rippling and bunching as his wolf fought to surface and heal him. But the wounds were too catastrophic. His breath came in wet, rattling gasps.

“No, no, no,” I heard myself, the words coming out like a chant as I dropped to my knees beside him. Parker was already there, his hands pressing down on the worst of the wounds, but there were too many. Blood welled between his fingers, warm and slick.

Malcolm’s eyes found mine. They were shockingly green, even here in the dust and the dark. They held mine with an intensity that cut through the chaos and dust. His mouth moved, shaping words I couldn’t hear over the ringing in my ears and the thunder of my own heart.

I leaned over him, my eyes wide. “Red, oh god.”

“Dinnae grieve, lass. Tell… Sawyer…” His body shuddered as bones cracked, trying to realign. A sound escaped him, not quite human, the raw vocalization of a wolf in agony. I grabbed his hand and squeezed hard.

Parker swore, low and vicious, and pressed harder. But the blood kept coming, and Malcolm’s breathing grew weaker, each inhalation shallower than the last.

His eyes never left mine. I sucked back tears and gazed back, watching his vitality leave him, replaced by stillness. His grip tightened for a second, then went limp. The terrible, wet sound of his breathing stopped, and the pool of blood beneath him slowed its spread.

“No,” I whispered again, my voice strange in my own ears. “Noooo!” I wailed, knowing he was gone.

A coldness spread from the base of my neck, down my spine, and into my limbs. It wasn’t shock. I knew what going into shock felt like. This was deliberate and clinical, the implant activating to keep me functioning. Freda knelt beside me and took my hand from Malcolm’s bloody one.

“He’s gone, Riley.”

A wail rose in my chest, then crashed against something implacable and cold. Emotion didn’t disappear. It was still there, a vast, howling void. But the implant had erected a barrier against the raging grief, like a sheet of ice between my hand and a flame.

I became distantly aware that my cheeks were wet and Parker was saying my name. But all of it reached me through that barrier, muted and strange, as if I were hearing it from another room. I looked down at Malcolm’s dead body, his green eyes dull, his red hair dark with dust and blood.

The coldness settled into my bones. The implant worked to catalog what had happened with brutal clarity. Deceased. Cause: massive hemorrhaging secondary to explosive trauma. Next steps: evacuation, preservation of evidence, notification of next of kin.

I reached out and closed his eyes, my hands steady. Perfectly, horrifyingly steady.

“Riley.” Parker’s voice cut through the fog. His hand closed on my shoulder, his grip hard enough to bruise. “Talk to me.”

I looked up at him. His face was streaked with dust and Malcolm’s blood, his eyes fierce. “I’m operational. The implant is blocking… everything.”

Parker’s jaw clenched. He knew what was happening. He’d seen it before.

Behind us, Freda and Bart were kneeling over Cora. Her eyes found Malcolm’s body, and something crumpled in her face.

“We need to pull back.” Parker’s voice was hard and controlled. “The explosion might have weakened this area. We can’t stay here.”

Freda nodded. “We’ve got Cora.”

Parker didn’t take his eyes off me. “Riley. Come back.”

But I was already gone, locked behind the ice, watching everything through a sheet of perfect, terrible clarity. Malcolm was dead because Sawyer sent him to help protect me. And I’d watched him bleed out and die.

Gray morning light filtered through the dust that still hung in the air. My cheek was pressed against the rough fabric of my backpack, and someone had draped a jacket over me during the night. My body ached, and my throat felt like I’d swallowed gravel.

Malcolm’s body lay ten feet away, wrapped in a dark green sleeping bag we’d taken from one of the dead guards. The fabric was stained dark in places where the blood had seeped through. We’d pulled back to the mouth of the entrance and slept in the dead guards’ quarters.