EXCERPT - ROCHELLE MAYA COLLEN

 (Just have to say I love this cover! it's just gorgeous!)

Excerpt

Jade

            The girl’s glassy, dead eyes stare into me, through me, pierce me with a fierce urgency, with a wicked accusation. The blood is still on my hands.

            Red hair, blue eyes, a constellation of freckles on pale skin. She was fragile and innocent, a lovely thing. That is what I think until I see the gashes on her wrists and throat. With her blood spilling out, she looks delicious. She’s mine. Possessiveness shocks me, stabs into me. I run, tearing away from a craving I don't understand.

            Breathless, I grit my teeth and run harder, faster.

             

            My feet pound against the earth, away from the lifeless body and toward the lights of the city lingering on the horizon. Rot and death linger in my nostrils. Unscarred skin stretches taut over my freezing bones. Echoes of an empty memory reverberate in my mind, taunting me. The ice chases me, clutches me, and bites at my heels, sending shivers up my spine. The ice wants me back, but I run forward, toward the lights, toward the heat, toward a world that burns me, because I have no other choice.

            The lights are so close. Heat scalds my skin.

            Images race through my mind, paralyzing me. I skid to a stop, my boots digging into the mud. The vision’s blurred edges materialize into solid shapes.

             I gasp.

            A new horror rakes my insides. Desperation propels me forward; the pictures nagging at my seams threaten to tear me apart.

            Scorching fire licks over my skin. In my vision, I contort like a vile, ugly creature, eyes as black as decay. My frame hunches over the small, dead girl, like a demon looming over a defenseless child. Her blood drips from my mouth.

            I lick my lips and taste only salty sweat.

            I run, desperate to trample the vision under my feet, to crush it deep into the ground.

            I refuse to believe the image, refuse to acknowledge the monster within me demanding to be unleashed—and the possibility it has already been unbound. An unrelenting tide of fear washes over me. Past the denial, the fear, and the hope, I think I can still taste her.

            The cold stillness inside me cracks open just as the lights of the city slam into me.