'It was how much of it that you liked doing?' The worst thing about it wasn’t what he forced you to do, was it? said the man. He was already gray, the color of stone, but the gray drained out of his face, and he faltered. Afraid I’m going to get inside your head like he did?

They pushed in through his eyelids and nostrils. He reached out one hand and dozens of squirming black lines flew from his fingers. But beneath the fabric, his exposed skin knitted itself back together smoothly. Our blades went right through him, cutting his clothes. I conjured myself another blade, this one a bit longer, and I scrambled to my feet. Logan ran for the man who looked like me and began slashing at him with the knife. The cut-off pieces uncoiled from my wrists and dissolved into green sludge, the way anything from beyond the breach did when it was destroyed. The strings recoiled, hissing, as if electricity was coursing through them or as if they were alive. He seized the weapon and slashed through the strands holding me. Logan! I said, shaking the hand holding the knife at him. I closed my eyes and reached out into the ether and summoned a knife. I’d watched that other scribbly thing, the one claiming to be Reid’s father, levitate the two of them, and I wasn’t the least bit interested in floating around. The scribbly thing smiled at me, and suddenly I was levitating off the bed.

He yanked on them, but they didn’t break. Logan grabbed at the strings above my wrists. I struggled against the strings that were tightening around my limbs.

Asking him to let me go had less than zero percent chances of working, but I couldn’t help it. Since they were made up of tons of wriggling threads, it was impossible to kill them. But bullets were pointless against the scribbly things. He usually used a gun with tricked-out interdimensional bullets against creatures from the other side of the breaches. He-Logan-had shot to his feet at the sight of the scribbly thing, but he wasn’t sure what to do. Let’s just say it was not shaping up to be the best day ever.Įspecially since I had been in the middle of a conversation with Logan that I really wanted to have, because I had it kind of bad for the very attractive gargoyle. One of those scribbly creatures had just appeared, solidified into a human shape, called me sis, said I was going to fix some mess and then wrapped his squirmy little black threads around my wrists and ankles. I was lying on a bed in the healing wing at Ravenridge College, recovering from nearly bleeding to death.

Witch and Moan by Val St. Crowe