Novel & Cerita Beautiful Carnage

I took a deep breath. It smelled like metal and blood and death. The red tint that was threatening the edges of my vision had fully taken over. Everything was a rose tinted masterpiece. Around me were bodies of my carnage. They dropped like flies in the path of flamethrower. It felt so good. All of them were dead. The threat was over. Looking up from the massacre, I saw a few wolves starting to make their way out of the buildings.

This temporary assignment had become a catastrophe of gore and brutality. The earth beneath them was a river of blood, a sucking, crimson mire. Some bodies were so mutilated, so utterly destroyed, there was no way to identify them. I had never seen such carnage. I had read about it in histories from a time before my father, but I had never witnessed it. A Tainted hadn’t been seen in over two thousand years.

*****CARA'S POV**** The battlefield had become a living nightmare, a chaotic storm of blood, smoke, and death. Wolves tore through the ranks of soldiers, fangs flashing, claws raking armor and flesh alike. Moonshine struggled at the center of the carnage, surrounded by Lord Thane’s most vicious lieutenants, and my chest tightened as a wave of fear and rage collided inside me. Every scream of pain, every howl of despair, every strike of steel against steel stoked the fire in my veins.

Reality one The world snapped into focus—a scene painted in carnage. River soldiers lay scattered, lifeless, blood pooling on the cracked ground. The sky was a sickening crimson. Slowly, Hound turned, his breath shallow as his eyes locked onto a single horrifying sight: Argent. Her head impaled on a spear-like weapon, her expression frozen in betrayal. His heart raced. His breathing grew uneven. The darkness reclaimed him. Reality Two

Screams pierced the air, mingling with the clash of steel and the wet rip of flesh tearing, causing her heart to pound in feigned terror, eyes widening to saucers as she pressed a hand to her mouth. "Oh, the horror," she thought with inward glee, but outwardly, she was a picture of fragile innocence. Kael, drenched in the carnage, caught sight of her immediately. His frame was slick with gore-crimson streaks matting his dark hair, and splattered all over his body, rivulets tracing down his arms from the fresh kills. His axe haft was sticky and his face smeared with enemy blood that made his eyes burn like coals in the torchlight.

Johnny clutched at the rail, then climbed the steps towards hell. Butchery and bullet holes. The carnage that was the front galley had him pausing to suck in a breath. Bloodshed and gore were part of the job. Seeing it, living it, stopping it, causing it—wiping out terrorist cells. Death was a familiar friend. But this was different. Personal. Surreal. A brunette lay mangled on the floor, her pooled blood drying in the sticky heat. Someone’s daughter. His eyes ran over the sightless expression of terror, the smudged cherry-painted lips frozen in yawning death. The portion of her scalp above her left eye was hacked off.

Lucien smiled faintly. “Then let the blood decide.” Their hands tightened together. A surge of light erupted red, white, and black intertwined—obliterating everything in its path.

One moment, the tension rang like a tuning fork in the dusk; the next, the world atomized into gunpowder and teeth. Carolina didn’t think. She let the wolf muscle take over, all snapping limbs and flayed knuckles. She saw Marcus go down, saw Lyra’s knife bloom red at the hollow of an enemy’s throat, saw Sybil’s smile leap from her face as Carolina’s fist broke it wide. The world narrowed to a tunnel, and at its far end, the city howled for closure. At last, in the static hush after the carnage, Carolina pinned Sybil to the ground. Blood slicked the stone under her knees; it was hard to say if it was hers or Sybil’s or the city’s own.

“You’ll want to watch closely, Nalani. It concerns someone very dear to you.” Bianca lingered near the door, arms crossed, expression unreadable. The screen flickered to life. A live feed. Nighttime in a dense forest clearing near the border of what I could tell was Caspian’s territory. Torches and floodlights illuminated a brutal scene. Bodies littered the ground… some in wolf form, some human, blood soaking the earth. Caspian’s warriors, recognizable by their colors, fought desperately against a larger force wearing Damian’s black-and-crimson insignia. The air was thick with snarls, screams, and the clash of claws on steel.