Destined (Desolation #3) by Ali Cross Page A

looks crazy. Crazy as all get out. She wears some sort of Victorian gown with a corset and the whole bit, but she is not beautiful. She looks like a vampire. She looks like death.
    “You’re not dead,” she says in this weird snake-like voice. She slithers toward Horonius, sliding around to the side so she’s pressed against his arm. She peers at me. Licks her lips. “You’re not dead,” she says again, this time stretching the words out twice as long as normal and adding a little tune to them.
    Holy crap, she really is crazy. 
    And crazy is a million shades of scary.
    “Back away,” Horonius growls. “I do not wish to harm you.”
    The woman doesn’t even bother to look at him. She just smiles, all scary teeth and freaky eyes. “Shhhh,” she says, whether to me or Horonius I don’t know. Without any warning, everything changes. 
    The rocks fly off the walls and throw themselves at Horonius. He’s forced to spin away, morphing into his razor-backed dog-self. I have a flash of memory and recognize the rock-like creatures that had fought against us that day eight months ago when Desi tried to start the Apocalypse. Genies or something like that. They doggy-pile on Horonius but I lose track of him because I have my own problem to deal with.
    The woman presses herself against me, her body waving up and down mine like some ghetto whore at a dance club. She pulls up the cuff of my jacket and licks my wrist.
    I thrust outward, “What the hell?” I try to scrabble out of the way, but the rock wall has come alive, wrapping stone fingers around my arms, my legs. She grabs me harder, her nails digging into me. I swear she’s drawn blood. And licked it off.
    “Get off me, you crazy bitch!” I try to shove and push with what movement I’ve got, but she won’t budge. She puts her hands all over me, and I mean all over me. “Screw this,” I finally say.
    When she leans in toward my neck, a holy-this-place-will-stop-at-nothing-to-turn-me-into-a-vampire fear drives into me and I head-butt her so hard pops of light flash before my eyes. She spins back and hits the wall. 
    She falls into a heap, her skirts billowing up around her. The rocks let me go and I jump away from them. Standing in the middle of the hall I rake my hands through my hair. A few yards away I spot a dark, shifting mass that has to be Horonius and his attackers. 
    “Horonius?” I take a few steps forward. I can’t tell whose winning and my feet become lead slippers as fear takes hold of me again. What if he’s already dead? There’s no way I can stop those blasted things.
    But I take another step forward anyway. “Horonius!” I hear a growl that has to be his. I take two or three more steps when I feel a sharp pinprick of pain in my side and look down to find the woman’s hand wrapped around my waist, her fingernails digging through my shirt and into my skin. I whirl around, trying to pry her hand off of me, but the crazy chick only laughs and wraps herself around me more tightly.
    “What are you doing?” I screech-yell. 
    “Oh, you have no idea pretty boy. But I will show you. You want me to show you, don’t you?” She pushes me backward until I crash against the wall again, making me hiss with pain as the sharp points cut into my skin. I hear whispered scrapings as the cold rocky hands take hold of me.
    Then I really start to panic. I freak out. I don’t know what I say, don’t know what I do, but I know I can’t stop moving, can’t stop screaming until my body is covered in sweat again despite the frigid temperature and my voice can only manage a whisper, it’s so hoarse.
    And when I don’t have anything left, the bitch opens her mouth wide. Wide and wide until it’s half her face and I can see every one of her way-too-many sharp-as-needles teeth. For the second time since I’ve been in this hell-on-crack place, someone wants to eat me.
    She drags a razor sharp nail down my neck, whispering weird things like, “Oh so