Daughter of Gods and Shadows by Jayde Brooks Page A

barely slept. This was it. She knew it. This was what Rose and Khale had been telling her about all these years. It was real. The Demon was real, and this so-called plague was no plague at all. Her gut told her that all of this was a part of the prophecy that had been drilled into her for as long as she could remember.
    Eden stared out of the window, blinking back tears. All of the people on this bus were running, just like her, hoping to find a place to hide until all of this shit blew over.
    â€œWhen the Demon returns, Eden, his army will rise up and your world will be in jeopardy of falling under his rule, like our world had been,” Khale had warned. “You are the only one who can stop him. You with the power of the Omens can save the human race from annihilation.”
    Is that what was happening? Annihilation? Rose and Khale expected her to stop this and to save the world, which had been turned upside down and inside out. People were dying and being resurrected into monsters. No one could fix this, especially not her.
    â€œWhat’s that?” someone in the back of the bus asked. “Did you see that?”
    Eden pulled back her hoodie and sat up in her seat, glancing anxiously out of the windows. She felt them before she could see them. But what were they?
    â€œWhat?” someone else asked.
    Her heart raced, and she fought back the urge to scream, to cry. Was it another dream, a nightmare? Wake up, Eden, she willed herself.
    â€œWhat are they doing, man?”
    â€œMommy?” the toddler sat up in his mother’s lap and looked at her.
    â€œShhhhh, baby,” she said, holding on tighter to him.
    â€œShit!” someone shouted. “Oh shit!”
    Eden looked out of the window at the back of the bus and saw a large cargo truck bearing down on them. Moments later, sound closed in on itself and time seemed to almost stand still as Eden felt her body jerk against itself and saw the chaos of other passengers floating in midair. Mouths gaped open, releasing screams into the air. Eyes bulged wide in disbelief. Glass shattered and then fell like rain inside the bus. It wasn’t until her body folded and twisted over one of the seats that she realized she’d been airborne. Excruciating pain raked across her back, and loose luggage fell on top of her, pinning her in place.
    The scent of smoke and gasoline filled the cabin, and as suddenly as it had begun, it ended, with broken bodies piled on top of each other. The deafening sound of metal scraping against metal and asphalt and screams blended together creating a chorus of terror. Eden smelled blood and tasted it in her mouth.
    Everything stopped. She looked for the pregnant woman and her toddler. Eden slowly turned her head to where she believed the driver should be, and through blurred vision saw that the whole front windshield was missing. And then she saw them, people—at least they looked like people, but something about them was different. Their movements were sporadic and unnatural. They were raging, crawling through broken glass and peeling back the door at the front of the bus.
    Sakarabru’s army. The words came to her all of a sudden: The Brood.
    â€œNoooooo!” The terror in a woman’s voice made Eden’s skin crawl, and two of them crept through a busted-out window and grabbed her.
    Eden watched in horror as they bit into the woman and dragged her back out of window they’d come through. The woman stretched out her arm to the other passengers. “Help meeeeee!”
    It didn’t take long for others to come in and start to take more passengers. Eden stared frozen in her own fear and disbelief in what was happening—what was actually happening—as passenger after passenger was attacked, torn, and ripped apart by people who looked like them, but didn’t—weren’t—like them.
    Fight! The word kicked her hard in the stomach, nearly taking her breath away. They were killing