Eye of the Storm by Emmie Mears Read Free Book Online Page B

through the mist, and I can't tell how close I am to the source of the sound, but I know I'm getting closer.  
    Then I hear something else, a low rumble that cuts through the fog and the slow lightening of the coming morning.  
    "Help me!"  
    The voice somehow now sounds farther out still, and I take off running. I don't bother to holler backward at Asher — the cry is loud enough that she will have heard it. It hangs in the air now, that plaintive wail.  
    A snarl joins it, and a scream. My feet pound the asphalt. I leap over a corpse — one of the first I've seen — and my swords are out and in my hands.  
    The mist covers everything. I can't see what's around me, where the sounds are coming from, anything.  
    Another scream.  
    I target it like a homing missile sprinting toward it, jumping over cars instead of going around them. The clang and thuds of my feet hitting metal and fiberglass sound like drum beats.  
    I'm close enough now to hear the sounds of struggle, of someone hitting out against something, of snarls and of claws on glass.
    A final scream slices through the air. My feet skid to a halt, and the world goes suddenly silent again.
    I know that sound. I know the one that comes after it, that heavy plop of a body part hitting the asphalt, that splat of blood. The quieter spurt of arterial spray.
    I'm close enough to hear all of that. Still not close enough to see, but I don't have to be any closer to know that whoever screamed is now far past my help.
    I close my worthless eyes and listen.  
    Behind me, I think I hear the others running. In front, I hear the unseen demon eating. It sounds like only one. No glow, so not a jeeling. Maybe a slummoth or a markat. I'm mostly certain it's alone, but I'm not sure I can risk it.  
    I feel sick.  
    I turn and walk back northward, using the sounds of bare feet on the highway to guide me. When Evis materializes not twenty feet in front of me through the heavy, he has enough presence of mind not to ask anything. He stops, Mason and Jax behind him. I shake my head once, and their faces turn grim.  
    The first sign of life other than us and demons, and hell's turned it to death.  

    We wait an hour to move out, and then we pick our way south again.  
    The mist seems to mute everything, shifting the landscape like it's some sort of dreamworld. Or nightmare. Part of me feels certain that this morning will feature into my nightmares in the future. This hushed fog. Fighting through the fog only to be too late.  
    When we find what's left of the body, none of us look too close.  
    We all walk as silently as we can down the junkyard that is I-65 with only our footsteps, breathing, and the small clanks of Nana's cage to punctuate our passing. More corpses appear, more blood. None of us speak now, only pick our steps carefully and quickly, trying to close the distance between us and Nashville. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the mist begins to dissipate with the coming of day, lifting like a shroud to reveal a dead world.  
    Today we don't stop for lunch, by unspoken agreement pushing southward even though I think we ought to stop to allow Asher to rest. I think she'd refuse even if we tried to insist.  
    We keep going.  
    When the skyline of the city finally appears in the distance through the branches of winter-bared trees, I wish it gave me hope.  
    Mira and I exchange a look, but no words. None of us know what we'll find. My phone is dead now too. We have miles to walk, and the city looks like a model from here. No sign of thriving life, only a few lights in skyscraper offices that seem more accidental than anything.
    Did Carrick and Gryfflet make it to the Summit? Is anyone even alive here? For a moment, just for a moment as we pick through the thickening horde of abandoned vehicles, I want to just turn the other way and run back into the wilderness. Back to the cabin, or to one like it. Somewhere we can hole up and take crash positions until we see if the