A Torment of Savages (The Reanimation Files Book 4) by A. J. Locke Page A

do anything I wouldn’t do. Or maybe you should.” He turned away from the game to wiggle his eyebrows at me. I rolled my eyes.
    Once I finished up breakfast, I noticed Luna was doing her “I want to go outside” prance.
    “Did Ethan take Luna for a walk before he left?”
    “Nope, he fed her, but said he didn’t have time to walk her. I would have done it, but I was rune-less.”
    “I’ll just let her out into the yard. I’m already monstrously late. Tielle wanted me to meet her at nine-thirty.”
    Kyo gave a bark of laughter. “How have you managed to keep jobs, woman?”
    “My winning personality. And cleavage. Kidding about the cleavage part.”
    “I’ll bet,” Kyo said wryly.
    I hustled Luna to the backdoor so I could let her outside. I thought about leaving her and asking Kyo to bring her back inside, but the way he was absorbed in that game, it was likely that he would forget her out there. I opened the door and Luna prepared to launch herself out, but before she could take a single leap I bent down and snatched her back, staring with wide eyes at what she had just been about to run out into.
    Birds. Dead birds. They were everywhere, all kinds: pigeons, brown birds, sparrows, even a crow or two. Their stiff corpses were scattered all around the yard. And there were squirrels and rats too. All dead, lying like a macabre taxidermy scene. Except these animals weren’t stuffed, and it wouldn’t be long before they became a rotting, maggot infested mess in my yard.
    I stumbled back from the open door, clutching Luna, who was not happy about me dangling freedom only to take it away. I couldn’t stop staring at the scene before my eyes. I was confused and a little scared. This wasn’t the first time I found corpses in my small yard. It was a far cry from digging up a little girl’s body, but it was disturbing nevertheless.
    I found my voice. “Kyo!”
    There was no answering reply, but seconds later Kyo was at my side. He opened his mouth to speak, but I just pointed and he turned his head to take it in.
    “What the fuck is going on?” I whispered. I had my face half buried in Luna’s fur. She was calmer now, and I needed the comfort. “Is something killing off animals? Some disease going around?” I held Luna tighter. I didn’t want to think about finding her corpse. I had already lost her and reanimated her once. That was enough.
    Kyo said nothing, his face stoic. He slowly moved forward until he stood just outside the door.
    “This was not done by any kind of disease,” he said, looking over his shoulder at me. When I looked into his eyes I felt as though he knew something I didn’t. Something I probably didn’t want to know.
    “Then what did this?” I asked, swallowing past the dryness in my throat. Kyo turned back to the yard and shook his head.
    “Darkness,” I heard him say. “This is a sign. Darkness has risen. Darkness is here.”
    “What do you mean?” My voice was a shaky whisper. The tone of his voice made me more anxious than I would have felt over dead animals in my yard. I walked up to stand next to him.
    “Look at the ground,” he said. That intense expression was still on his face. I looked out and saw what I had missed since the initial shock of seeing all those corpses had overwhelmed me. But beneath the corpses I saw that the ground, while it certainly hadn’t been luscious green grass since it was still winter, was definitely different than it should be. Where there should be icy, hard dirt, there was black, scorched ground. That had not been how my yard looked before these animals died in it. And now that I had calmed down a little, I picked up on a dark energy that filled my yard. It felt uncomfortable, like a thousand pins were sticking me all at once. I had never felt energy like this before. Not even from Magda.
    “What the hell is this?” I was trembling, and it wasn’t because of the icy wind that was blowing against my face. Luna’s shivers were from the