Morgan gaped angrily at her empty hand, which had contained a gun a moment earlier, and Lucas had to pull himself away from the edge of the pit when he realized my body was no longer falling, but rather back on solid ground. He looked equal parts stunned and relieved.
Past-me, the one living through this, had scrambled away and was sobbing. I couldn’t blame her. Me.
Secret yanked Morgan’s ankle, sending the woman crashing to the ground with such force she didn’t have time to brace herself, and her face smashed into the carpet. I had a lot of trouble feeling any pity for her.
“You fucked with the wrong goddamn pack. You’re going to wish you stayed in Siberia,” Secret snarled at Morgan.
Lucas, who was trying to help Secret back onto solid ground, said, “ Secret, stop. We don’t have time for this.”
But Secret had that crazy look in her eyes she gets sometimes. The one that said, bitch, I’m going to kill you. And it was fixed right on Morgan.
Fire and smoke inched closer to us, and I saw Secret’s expression soften as she relented to Lucas’s assistance. Once she was up, she gave Morgan a kick, and made a beeline for my huddled body on the floor. “We have to go.”
When I looked up, both memory Secret and real me gasped in unison.
Past me, the one who had just been saved from certain death, had eyes glowing bright ember red.
“No,” I whispered to myself. This couldn’t be right. I didn’t remember any of this. Surely someone was just projecting these memories on me.
“Incendemus te,” Past-Genie said. “Propter peccata vestra.”
“Is that Latin?” Lucas asked Secret.
I didn’t speak Latin.
“Yeah,” Secret said, and judging from the way her complexion had paled, she wasn’t too excited to hear me speaking it.
Past-Genie’s hands had started glowing red. I swallowed hard. I’d seen what happened when they did that, when my power seemed to act for me, and used my body as a vessel. It had happened back in Franklinton when I’d needed to break myself free of captivity.
I thought that had been the first time.
Now I knew how wrong I was.
Lucas looked terrified of the girl on the floor, the same one he’d just been so desperate to save. “Secret, run,” he instructed.
“I’m not leaving without her.”
Go, you dummy, I thought.
He pushed a bag into her hands and said, “Go.” It was easy to understand why he’d once been the werewolf king. I wanted to listen to him now, his voice was so commanding.
The version of me on the floor was hunched over like a Gollum, a sick grin twisting my lips, and my glowing red eyes totally focused on the woman still lying on the carpet.
A sick knot twisted in my guts.
I didn’t want to watch this.
Past-Genie gave a faint, chilling laugh, then said, “Ustulo.”
Morgan, who hadn’t even been able to sit up, was suddenly engulfed with flame. She started screaming, and the agonized sound of it speared into my heart. I looked away, my hand going to my mouth, and bile rising in the back of my throat.
No, no, no.
This wasn’t real. It was a bad dream.
I couldn’t have done what I just witnessed. To do that to someone? Even someone who had tried to kill me first? No.
Morgan continued shrieking, and against my better judgment I looked back at the scene. Her skin had peeled off, exposing melting fat and bone. Charred flesh.