Chapter 23 · Something Knocks Back

Carson hit the tile hard enough to crack it.

One second he was standing beside me, breathing like he'd just run ten miles with a knife in his lung. The next, his knees gave out and his shoulder slammed into the old transit station wall.

The black mark on his wrist split open.

Not like skin.

Like somebody had drawn a mouth there and it was trying to bite its way free.

"Carson." I dropped beside him, grabbing his forearm before he could tuck it against his chest. "Hey. Look at me."

His eyes were wrong again. Too much gold around the pupils. His canines had pushed down, not all the way, but enough to make my stomach knot.

"Don't touch it," he said.

"That is literally the least useful thing you could say right now."

The mark pulsed under my fingers.

A cold shock crawled up my arm. Not winter cold. Basement cold. Graveyard dirt cold. The kind that got under your nails and stayed there no matter how hard you scrubbed.

Carson sucked in a breath through his teeth.

"Mia."

"I'm here."

"Move."

"No."

His jaw flexed. "If it pulls you in—"

"It already tried that once tonight."