Chapter 118

I stiffened my arms and legs and braced them against the ceiling as if to sink into it and hide. But it didn't help.

The ghosts turned corporeal as soon as they neared me. They bit and tore at my flesh, their black eyes piercing to the back of my skull. Bloody fingertips wormed into my mouth and pried my jaw open, demanding entrance to all of them at once.

"Come in," I begged.

Their faces twisted together in a whorl of black smoke and filtered inside my mouth, digging, clawing to the back of my throat and beyond. I gagged at the death inside me, then inhaled sharply, trying to draw them in.

But I couldn't. They ripped out of my mouth, spun into a physical form, and screamed at my face.

I wouldn't survive this. A glance down my body revealed dripping gashes. And the cylinder of consumectalons still down the front of my corset, open and leaking.