Shifted Fate (Amy) novel Chapter 486

The bees swarmed me. I was the new threat. They would kill me first and then move on to Rick. Or so they thought. I kept swinging. The hive was still paper thin, so each swing took out a section. But I was taking sting after sting.

My body was on fire. I felt like my skin was melting from my bones. Each sting was a new ember on the pyre that was my broken, exhausted body. But still I kept swinging. I heard howls off in the distance, but it was the screams that would haunt me for years to come. I thought it was the wolves at first, but then I realized whose screams ripped through the air.

They were my screams.

The buzzing from the bees had morphed into a windstorm, but it was my screams that shook the trees. My screams that darkened the sky. My screams that sounded like the humans idea of hell. My screams echoed around the forest, and bounced off the trees back to me, creating this echoing chamber of terror and desperation.

I was being tortured, but I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, Rick died. And I couldn’t let down his little girl. Her face was the only thing that kept me swinging. Tiny larva were falling like acorns around me as I attacked the hive. Their tiny bodies hitting the ground sounded like a soft rain. The bees kept stinging; I kept swinging until I saw her.

The queen.

She was three times the size of her drones, and her stinger looked to be as long as my middle finger. Her wings looked too weak to hold her up, thank the goddess. She vibrated angrily at me as I took aim. I swung the stick, and I was stung ten times at once. I dropped to my knees. My blood had turned to molten metal in my veins.

I screamed so loud my jaw cracked. The burning pain was blinding, but the energy that came with it was like a match. It ignited the surrounding air. My body, my magic, my life had whittled down to the white hot pain. My skin must have burned away, leaving the muscle open because every breeze felt like knives.