Scythe Read online

  He didn’t know who he was. And now he didn’t know what he was either. An empty ache rose in his gut.

  Sly knelt on his bedroom floor and opened his duffel bag. All his belongings, two shelves and two boxes worth, encircled him. T-shirts, jeans, a few dirt bike magazines, a KTM manual he’d used to fix Vegan’s bike. Nothing significant. He could walk away from all of it and never miss a thing. He picked up the manual. He flipped the book open to a page-size note Vegan had scrawled in it. I told you I’d fix my bike myself, Douche-bag. And in the bottom corner in tiny letters it read, Thnx.

  What if he’d already put Vegan and Rev at risk? Made them targets like his parents made him a target?

  The image of his brother, clasping his wound, the man with the skull tattoo yanking the knife from Jake’s heart, flashed before him. I left him. Let them kill him. I have to protect Rev and Vegan.

  His insides burned, like poison surged through his heart. He clutched his chest and fell over, propping himself up. The pain subsided. He hauled himself off the floor and into the bathroom. He lifted his shirt. The black flare on his chest appeared darker, wider. The gap between the iris and the crescent scars looked smaller.

  He closed his eyes. The chanting and scrape of daggers echoed in his mind. Relief flooded his body, the same sensation he had the night they stabbed him, the knowledge that the running was over, the guilt for deserting his family, the exhaustion of day after day of meaningless actions, of staying alive for the sake of breathing, not living.

  Rev and Vegan laughed in the other room, and Sly’s relief vanished. “I can’t stay. I can’t risk them.” He grabbed a pile of shirts and tucked them in the bag.

  Rev slinked into Sly’s doorway, eyes closed, his hand over his nose and mouth. “Me and Vegan are going out. You’re coming with us, right?” He gulped a breath, sniffed the air, and opened his eyes. “Holy Merry Maid. It’s like an air freshener ad in here.” He hurried over to the bed. “New mattress?”

  “Yeah.”

  Rev flung himself on the bed and bounced. “When did you do this?”

  “I didn’t.” Sly turned back to his half-packed duffle bag. “It was one of them, I think.”

  “Them? You mean the creepy people?”

  Sly nodded and shoved his socks in the duffle.

  Rev stopped still. “You’re really leaving?”

  “I want to stay, but I can’t put you guys at risk.”

  Rev pouted. “At least you’re coming out with us tonight.”

  Sly stood. “I do owe you a mattress full of drinks.”

  Rev cheered.

  He fished the club ad from Violet Eyes out of his pocket. Devil’s Penthouse. Come get your sin on. “I know just the place to go.”

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for choosing to spend your time living in these pages. I hope you enjoyed this sample of Scythe: Legions of the Claimed. If you would like to continue reading and discover what happens with Sly and the Legions clicked here to purchase the book.

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  Blissful reading,

  Mercy Hollow

  MERCY HOLLOW was born in Florida, where she was terrorized by alligators, fire ants, rabid raccoons, sharks, drunken college students, 100% humidity, and mouse-ear-wearing, heat-loving tourists. She lived on three continents (four if you count the foreign realm of her imagination), and planted her feet in San Francisco. She has a love of hockey, motorcycles, and anything deemed weird. Visit her at www.mercyhollow.com to dive deeper into her mind’s eye, explore your own flights of fancy, and fall further into the world of the Claimed.