Pain sears through me as my head feels like it’s about to explode. My vision goes black for a second, and I stagger, barely remaining upright, when I see the men from the crossing. Rose’s scream fills the air, and I growl, but quickly stop myself.
“We can’t shift; they are human,” Kora shrieks in warning when one pulls a blade.
“Fuck that,” I tell her, not giving a damn when the blade is suddenly at Rose’s throat.
“Stay back bitch!” the man’s voice says as he clutches her hair. I watch the other two men circle around behind me, and Rose elbows the guy that is holding her in the stomach. He grunts and lets her hair go as she stumbles forward drunkenly.
I reach for her when the man suddenly punches her, knocking her out cold, and she is left sprawled on the concrete. Kora presses forward, and I scream at her to shift. A growl rips out of me, but my aura has no effect on humans. I feel my bones start snapping when one of them speaks.
“What the fuck?” he yells when the other two lunge at me at the same time. I scream and swing at one. Shit, they don’t give me enough time to shift.
“Your gloves, your gloves,” Kora shrieks as we try to remember our training.
The concept was drilled into us at a young age, yet I could never train with the rest of the students. It is far different from learning techniques. Meanwhile, a foot connects with my stomach, and it winds me. I cough, hitting the concrete, and gasp for breath. I see the other man yanking at Rose’s dress out of the corner of my eye and it turns my blood to ice in my veins.
The two men laugh and I growl, peeling off my gloves, when one of them grabs my hair, ripping my head back. One glove off, I reach back, gripping his hand, and he gasps. His hand lets go, and I look over my shoulder at him. The other man stares at his friend, grabbing his arms.
“What is it?” he shrieks as the man chokes, black tendrils licking up his arms as he tries to breathe before he starts pawing at his throat as if invisible hands strangle him. Then, he suddenly crashes to the ground. The other man looks at him, then looks at me, his lips pull back in a snarl.
“What did you do? What did you do?” he screams as he tries to swing at me.
I duck before coming up and palming him in the chest, the motion lifts him with a force that shouldn’t be possible as he is sent into the bricks of the building. His body becomes impaled on a piece of pipe that stabs through his chest.
Black mist rushes out of me and seeps along the ground, something I have never seen before or knew I could do. I can feel the darkness wrap around me like a blanket. Feel it seep through my veins.
“Pull it back, pull it back, don’t let it touch Rose!” Kora screams, yanking on the power I didn’t realize I possessed, not at this magnitude anyway. My heart is thundering as I try to focus on reining it in.
The mist evaporates, and the man stands up, his mouth agape at his two friends that are now dead. Rose’s panties are in his hands and I feel the darkness envelop me. I feel it searing hot and burning with a wave of anger so violent I black out.
“Enough, enough!” Kora cries out to me, and I try to find her in the darkness.
I have no idea what happens or how long I am out, but I feel it consume me before suddenly, I am back in the street. Rose lays unconscious a few feet away from me, and I glance around, trying to figure out what happened. Then, I look down.
My hands shake, and I can hear my phone ring in my pocket when I notice my hands are coated in blood. My clothes drenched like I bathed in it. The man’s face is caved in, his brains splattered on the pavement around him. He is completely unrecognizable, his facial features no longer exist. Terror, like never before encompasses me and I shudder. I did this…
“What have I done?” I whisper. Kora tries to soothe me, but I can feel her fear. She fears me, fears us.
“We need to get out of here,” she stutters in my head as her fear mirrors mine.
“I killed them!” I gasp, falling on my butt and scrambling away from the man’s mutilated body.
“We need to get Rose out of here, Marabella,” Kora stammers, her shock making mine just as bad. “Marabella!” Kora roars in my head, as I continue to stare at the man’s corpse. I nod, my hands shake as I fumble for my phone to call someone.
“Ring dad, or Jonah, they will fix it!” Kora whimpers. “They will make it go away,” she sobs.
I try to unlock my phone, but my hands are drenched in blood, and the shaking makes my fingers slip over the screen. I wipe my hand on my pants and sniffle, managing to unlock my phone.
“I’m going to jail. Everyone will know,” I sob as I start going through my contacts when I hesitate, coming across his number. My heart thunders as I stare at the phone.
“Call him, call him. He will know what to do. He handles this sort of stuff,” Kora urges, and my finger hovers over the screen before I hit the call button.
I don’t know who else to call, the fear of what everyone will think, what mom and dad might think… They told me not to remove my gloves. What have I done? I glance at Rose, her chest falls and rises in a steady rhythm. I wipe my face with my hand, listening to the phone ring. Each ring sounds deafening. Tears trek down my cheeks, and I shake uncontrollably.
“Where are you?” Kyan asks, his voice a growl through the phone. I sputter, unable to speak through my crying. “Ella, where are you? Tell me, I will come to get you,” Kyan says, and I can hear the sound of his car’s engine in the background. Please find me.
“I’ll find you; I can feel you’re not far. Just stay on the phone with me,” he says.
“Kyan, I.. I.. I did something bad; I killed them.” I manage to choke out as I look at the men’s bodies, lives I took… As I look down at my hands, the sheer level of what I have done hits me like a freight train.