The Majors, Rebuild and Reunite (Book 3)

Chapter 8: Visited

TW: slightly graphic gore

~Scott~

A ringing of sirens filled my ears louder than the silence that had closed in. Darker than the black pressed against my eyes, fuzzy and spinning. 

Shouting. Someone was shouting. Or was it quiet? I felt things and hands grabbing at my arms, throwing me back and forth, up and down, yet all was still, I was alone. A high-pitched nothing pierced the silence, filling my ears with a static so quiet but so loud that I couldn't tell if it was coming from everywhere or nowhere. 

I was stationary but I was falling, there was no ground, and my stomach was dropping but at the same time I was sprawled across a cold, cold surface that also felt boiling, my cheek and palms seared to no extent.

"SCOTT!"

I knew that voice. I had heard that scream before. I had heard it. Panic and fear and adrenaline all laced into one and woven by fingers of distress. Followed by the worst and last moments of my life. 

Then I opened my eyes. And another pair was staring at me.

Muted blue eyes bore into my own, wide with alarm, small strings of red threading within the irises and circling their pupil. 

White and brown hair tangled in a matted mess hung in strands, pointed ears just barely visible, wildly hanging around their shoulders like linked and broken chains, damp and sticky with sweat.

Their lips were moving, they were speaking loudly, I could hear their voice. A mix of a hoarse and wretched breaths and a gritty tone. But I couldn't make out a word of what they were saying, a buzz of nothing but noise.

In a blur and swing of colors, pain exploded on the left of my face, my vision sparking with the darkness that engulfed us. 

I was jerked forward a moment later, the same hand that had struck me grabbing to the collar of my shirt and yanking me closer to their face. "SCOTT LISTEN TO ME."

Suddenly, all their features came into sharp focus, their voice loud and clear with a streak of violent hysteria. 

My sister stood in front of me, hands tangled in my shirt to pull me down to her level. Her expression was feral, little trickles of blood seeping out from beneath the scales littering her face, like her skin, that was discolored, patched with a colorless grey, could no longer contain it. 

With lips chapped and scarred she panted, chest heaving with a crackle of her ribcage. Burns laced up her shoulder, shriveling her skin to wrinkled and smoking ash that smelt of fire and destroyed cities, her mangled and shredded wings hanging down her back like weights. 

Twists of the darkness encircled her arms and legs mingling with the red strands of power, trying to pull her back, tug her to what was hidden by the loud nothingness, but her body was tense, she resisted, clutching onto me.

Every couple of seconds her image would...flicker. Her elbows would stick out so sharply I could see bone, the side of her cheek gaping open to reveal rows of bloody and cracked teeth peeking through swollen gums, nose crooked and eyes bloodshot. But then it would return to normal...or as normal as it was, to the pale, injured girl.

"Erin?" I breathed, the name leaving my lips in a horrified whisper. The strange, strange world we were stood on seemed to stop, we were falling, wind whistled by my ears, all the air was snatched from my lungs, I couldn't breathe. But then all was still, and I was being dragged forward again.

"Well duh." Erin sneered; her teeth gritted. "Who else would it be?"

"But you're—"

"Dead? Sort of." She shrugged, another creak of her body causing me to flinch. "So are you, you fucking idiot."