Work In Progress: Screechers, Chapter 6

Echo is lost

Pain. Throbbing, burning pain, like staring into the sun, yet somehow inside Echo’s body.

My neck is on fire.

Someone screamed. It was the sound of inescapable torture. Then she realized it was her scream, her throat. Her vocal cords ripped, a distant ache, so dull compared with the circle of flames on her neck.

Then the fire broke off, and for a few heartbeats of infinity, Echo could do nothing but heave in air. Air tainted with smoking skin.

Then someone else’s cries ripped into her mind, and Echo forced her eyelids to slide back.

She was on the hard dry earth. The sky overhead was starry and calm. Beside her were metallic voices. She dragged her eyes right and saw the gleam of a black helmet, bowed over something on the ground.

Echo gritted her teeth and willed her head to move. It hurt like the Four Hells—something was wrong with her neck. The skin felt as flimsy as shredded paper. She kept pushing all the same, and she pushed until she could see.

And what she saw was bad. Gandri writhed…