The Moon's Fangs | 1

16 | pink shady

Time slowed.

My vision edged with black and my body tingled into cold numbness as if my soul prepared to flee the moment I made contact with the ground. Every one of my senses began to detach themselves with every lost inch.

I heard the guard's head audibly smack the edge before losing visual of the rooftop.

Both of my hands were outstretched for something - anything to grab onto. Empty air rushed through my fingers.

The distance between me and the rooftop grew further apart.

~Not good, not good!~ Nox hissed as a strange, dull pain burned the sides of my neck, stemming down my shoulders like a slow fire. I opened my mouth to scream, but I couldn't breathe. ~Taking action for the highest chance of survival—~

Nox was cut off when my body suddenly jerked from a jarring halt. My jaw clamped together so hard, bright bursts of stars blinded my sight. Blood instantly rushed to the very top of my head, and my arms whipped upwards from the forced halt in movement.

I gasped on what felt like choked air, and the strange fire of pain Nox sent down my neck and shoulder dwindled down into nothing.

"Fates... it's like she has a death wish." Reks said breathlessly.

It took a second for the disorientation and stars to recede. When I could see again, the dark alley was upside down. No. I dangled upside down.

My fingers were mere inches away from touching the ground. My heart plopped into my throat. The ends of my hair grazed the amber-lit stone.

Reks hung out of a balcony with a white-knuckled grip around a tendril protruding from his own wrist. The end of it wrapped tightly around one of my ankles like a living lasso. The tip of it worked on another loop around my leg.

Shock rolled through me as I picked out the discrete shape of a snake's head, and black-slitted eyes focused on its loops around my ankle.

It was the same thing that restrained me in the lab. The same thing that stopped Nolan from shooting Reks. The living snake-whip had somehow totaled the gun. It had crushed it. And now it coiled around my leg.

"What the hell is that?" the question shook past my lips, barely over a whisper.

He exhaled a slow, controlled breath. "I'm going to lower you to the ground. Hold still." The veins in his forearm protruded, muscles swelling as he gave slack to the tendril.

My hands reached the ground first. When my legs finally touched, the lump in my throat shrunk. I closed my eyes and breathed. My heart pounded so hard, I couldn't think straight.

~For the record... I planned to do something equally cool and heroic. I merely allowed Reks Arlen to slide into the spotlight.~

Above Reks, a slight tinge of red stained the edge of the rooftop where the emerald guard must have hit his head. Some of his curls hung over the edge, but that was all I could see of him.

~He is alive.~ Nox addressed my rising concern before I had the chance to process it myself. ~Unconscious with a head injury. But will be fine, all the same. He'll be knocked out for about twenty minutes, give or take.~

Reks jumped down from the balcony and landed next to me. He was so light on his feet, his boots barely made a sound when hitting the slab of smoothed rock.

I should have thanked him, but the second his strange tendril loosened from my ankle, I scrambled back, away from it and him. Just like in the pod, it retracted back into his body. This time I noticed the bulge in his veins rescind as whatever it was settled back into his tightly compact muscles.