The Wicked We Have Done by Sarah Harian Read Free Book Online

adjusted enough to see the darkness splattered across Jace’s shirt. Blood. Something juts from her shoulder.
    “Please,” Jace cries.
    “This is the only way I can escape,” Erity says.
    With a fallen branch, Erity swings at Jace’s head, the contact
cracking
in the hollow night. Jace slumps to the ground on her back.
    “If you want to die, you keep moving!” Casey hisses.
    I fall limp, knowing he might be right, but also knowing that any more fighting is completely useless.
    With the branch, Erity rushes to scratch a haphazard circle on the ground. Throwing the stick to the side, she picks up Jace’s legs and drags her to the center.
    The video on the train had shown Erity as a member of a secret coven that believed they could extract power from human sacrifices.
    Casey’s hand slips from my mouth.
    “She’s going to sacrifice Jace if we don’t stop her!”
    For how small she is, Erity’s strength is phenomenal. I recognize the object jutting from Jace’s chest as a knife handle.
    “We have to do something!” I whisper.
    “Let me think, let me think!”
    There’s no time to think. A howl picks up in the distance, tortured screams filling the air. Even the trees quake in fear, the rustle of leaves surrounding us. Wind whips violently back and forth.
    Erity sinks to her knees by Jace, her face lit in excitement. She mutters something I can’t hear; the shrieking now deafens me. I scream along with the noise until Casey covers my mouth again.
    Erity is casting a spell.
    Tendrils of black smoke swarm into the clearing. She stretches out her arms. “I’m ready!”
    She waits to be filled with Jace’s soul.
    Suddenly the smoke separates into thousands of black pellets—like oil hit by water. Erity’s expression shifts from joy to horror, and her scream joins those that lace the air. All at once, the smoke rushes forward, slamming into her. She seizes until every pellet has found its way inside her skin.
    And then she explodes.
    Her body rips into a million pieces. For a second I swear the flecks of her hover in the air, bits of flesh and bone and organ tissue, before they spray all over the forest, all over Jace.
    All over me.
    Casey releases me in a fit of curses. I race into the blood-soaked field and drop to my knees near Jace. She’s coated in a red, chunky mixture of Erity’s insides. I’m so packed full of adrenaline that I don’t even think twice when I drag the coil of intestine off her chest and press my ear to her soaked shirt, blood squelching beneath my head.
    The beat of her heart is solid.
    “Casey!” I scream. He isn’t budging. With the help of the full moon, I’ve adjusted to the night. He stands still, gaping at the clearing, running his fingers over his cheeks to clean away chunks of our former fellow inmate.
    The knife penetrates Jace to the hilt. There’s no telling if I’ll hurt her more trying to remove it. I take a moment to trace the bone-white handle.
    “Dammit,
help me
, Casey
!
”
    Casey snaps out of it and joins me, kneeling by Jace’s head. He lifts up her shoulders so I can slide her pack off.
    “I saw the moon reflecting a little farther that way.” Casey points.
    “On water?”
    “A lake, I think.”
    “Can you carry her?”
    He nods, determined, though his entire body shakes.
    “I can’t tell how much she’s bleeding. I don’t know if the blade hit anything,” I say as he staggers to his feet with Jace in his arms. I gently peel Jace’s sticky hair off her face. Her cheeks are cold. She won’t be conscious any time soon.
    If I can put all of my effort into saving this girl, then I can dull the memory of what just happened.
    I wonder if Casey’s thinking the same thing.
    As we walk through the woods, a green light illuminates the night for a split second before disappearing.
    “Lightning?” Casey asks.
    “I don’t know,” I respond, hoping it’s not the beginning of another horror. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
    ***
    The sun is