This was too much for her. She didn’t know what to do, she was out of her depths. Whatever was happening to him was something that she couldn’t fight. Nothing to be stabbed or fought. That was why she stood still, watching him with wide eyes full of concern, before she found the strength to move to him.
“Leo. It’s okay, I’m right here.” The lie left a bad taste in her mouth, partly because it was so easy to say. Did she really believe it was going to be okay? Yes. She had to, she had to believe it. For herself and Leo and the kid. One hand on his back, she held the other out for him. “Come on, let’s get you up. We’re going to need to get ready.”
Even if she had hope, she knew that it would get worse first.
He howled as her hand touched his back. In his mind’s eye it felt nothing like the gentle reassuring gesture she had hoped for. It was a taloned vice digging into his flesh. Cold. Sharp.
The room was a forest of eyes. No longer were they figments of the darkness beneath his lids, but of the reality around him. She had a grin that stretched beyond the borders of human visage, streaked in black. “Not real…not real…”
