Stranger Stories 3

First They Incite the Violence

Raven's senses returned to her slowly, almost as if she were hesitant to return from the dead. Black smoke seemed to clear from her eyes and body as she regained her sight. Not enough of her was back for her to move, but enough for her to see that Cody had gotten up from where he had fallen. Someone had moved her from her original position. It had probably been Cody, panicking. Thinking she was dead and gone. She heard a female voice say "... what the hell?"

Not Eve. farther away than she would have been.

Deeper than Eve's voice, anyway.

Back to the problems at hand.

She blinked, doing her best to get up and find out where Cody had gone. Seo-Jun was in the right place. That meant he was awake. Probably making some kind of rash decision.

Two blurs fell down onto a more level area on the roof, both covered in blood. Raven immediately identified Cody, but she couldn't tell who the hell the bloodstained girl who was bleeding out on the snow next to him was.

Then it occurred to her.

Cody had probably panicked when he saw Raven's corpse, and when he saw Eve, the first thing he thought to do almost certainly involved heavy blood loss.

That dying woman was, without any doubt, Eve.

Raven stepped over her body, towards Cody. something was happening to him. He grabbed her arm, tightening his fingers around her, almost as if he was using her as an anchor to reality. "Raven?"

"Yeah?"

"You were dead."

Raven shook her head, smiling. "I got better."

He laughed, but it eventually devolved into coughing. She thought she saw blood spatter his hand, but she couldn't tell. He was covered in it anyway. "I'm going to go now, okay? Just to make sure Eve's dead and not coming back." she said, having to continually remind herself that just because Cody looked bad didn't mean he was dying. She pried his hand off of her arm, shuffling over to Eve. she was still struggling to breathe through a tear in her throat. Seeing her there, dying, made Raven think about the pain that she was put through when she was dying. She didn't want to help her, but that was one of the differences between Eve and everyone else Sammy had brought.

Everyone else had mercy.

Raven shut Eve's eyes, muttering the spell of painless death. She went limp, her breathing slowing until it stopped.