HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty Three

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't see.

But I could hear... and what I heard was the wind.

Gales strong enough to throw my body into the sky like a piece of paper or peel the skin from my bones howled in my ears, drowning out my voice so thoroughly that not even I could hear it. And yet, all I could think about as I lay there amidst the rubble of the house, holding that screaming, crying, terrified young woman, were the kids who'd been in the kitchen.

I couldn't hear Adam or Tommy. Hell, I could barely hear Kat screeching at the top of her lungs even though she was right next to my ear. I had no idea where Kim had gone, but I prayed it was the basement. She, unlike her brother, knew when to be obedient.

Sometimes.

I let out a cry of pain as another pile of rubble fell on top of us, struggling to cover Kat's body with my own. My back was killing me and I was pretty sure it was blood blinding my vision. I pressed my face against her dark hair, wishing everything away, wishing it would stop.

I wanted it to stop! I wanted it to all just stop!

But it wasn't going to, this was a force of nature and it didn't fucking care who was caught in it.

I wheezed as something extremely heavy smashed into my back and choked, mouth coming open in shock as I was crushed further beneath the rubble that had once been the side of the house. I fought to breathe, fearing my back was broken, and retaliated on insitnct.

With a primal heave, I forced whatever was on top of me to rise and the pressure crushing my lungs vanished as I was suffused with superhuman strength. I struggled, wriggling, kicking the leg not draped protectively over Kat's to try and get us free of the shaking wooden prison.

Lightning lanced the house with a bang, and Kat screamed in my face, staring up at the sky with puffy eyes and a face full of terror. I twisted, groaning as I finally kicked the wooden beam that had pinned us off our bodies and rolled on top of her, cupping her cheeks. She looked at me, shaking like a leaf, hyperventilating so fast I was amazed she was conscious.

I'd never, not once in my entire life, seen this kind of fear in somebody's face.

It was raw.

Animal.

This girl really believed she was going to die.

"You're okay," I said, even though I knew she couldn't hear me, staring at her eyes through cracked sunglasses. "You're gonna be okay. Don't worry."

Her mouth moved, but I couldn't hear her.

I turned my head after a second, feeling debris and the horrible gales catching on my wig, trying to figure out how to get the two of us out of the house. I balked when I fully realized what had happened to her home and I quickly took note of where we were. The house, like the barn I'd seen before the main storm had smashed into us, had rolled. The whole thing was literally upside down in a gnarled heap, groaning as if alive with agony.

All around us, the walls of the collapsed building were still crumbling away into splinters. Kat screamed when one such wall bearing two wrangled windows abruptly gave out. The ceiling, which had actually been the floor only a few minutes ago, crashed down with a horrible, juddering bang.

Kat screeched, clawing at my front and flailing before burying her face in my shirt, waist-length hair whipping towards the angry black maw. The pink polka-dotted wallpaper lining her mother's living room shredded itself apart and I tensed, huddling down as planks hit me.