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But he gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and visibly steeled hiht even be fatally wrong

"Breeze," he said gri off I want you to follow theo But this leaves us with, like, no one playing defense Orc’s off on a drunk, Sa out sick all over the place, and Drake er at her "Don’t take risks, don’t be your usual reckless, stupid self: cooing"

Brianna executed aas he was acknowledging her bravery-- and loped off at an easy sixty miles an hour to catch up with the swarm

"Don’t sweat it, Edilio," she called over her shoulder "The Breeze is all over these bugs"

Orc was running dry He stared balefully at the bottle in his hand Shouldn’t he be dead by no much booze did it take before you just died already?

His mind labored to work out solutions to the problem Probably still a couple bottles back at the house, if kids hadn’t looted the walk and he wasn’t really in theould sober hi his brain in booze again when he thoughtlessly walked past the stop sign

No body lay cruht be in the wrong place Or that uely recalled running into Howard and Howard pros

So now the little boy’s body would be rotting in an unused house Probably not the only body lying around Probably

Orc took a drink He was shaky in body and mind He was used to booze, but even by his standards he had punished his body in the last day His stoht down an urge to run and run and run until

Until what?

Run where?

They would figure it out, sooner or later That he had slammed that little boy, that little boy who never hurt Orc or probably anyone else Just some sick kid

Someone would have seen it happen, or one of the sure it out And he wouldn’t even be given a chance to explain They would o live outside town, like they had Hunter

But he wasn’t Hunter He couldn’t live out there Out there here the coyotes were

Orc remembered the coyotes He reuts and ripped and torn his insides out

That’s when it had started That’s when the ripped-up flesh had turned into gravel and the rocky, pebbly, rown to take over his whole body

No They couldn’t h; she had made them up and that’s what they would do, push hio away and die, you freak

Yeah, well, Charles Merriman was inside this monster He was not an orc He was Charles Merriman

He had to talk to Astrid She’d always been nice to him The only one who’d been nice to hiure out soue thought sloshing around in his brain, Orc stomped off toward Astrid’s hoe So strange he thought he ht, that was for sure

There was a cloud Up in the sky As he gaped up at it the sun started to slide behind it