Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, #11)

by Jim Butcher

Lara Raith’s eyes were bright with an insane rage and a terrible hunger as she snaked her bruised, swollen left arm around Madeline’s wind-pipe, and tightened it with a horrible strength. Madeline cried out as her head was jerked back sharply—and then she made no sound at all as the wind was trapped inside her lungs. The burned, blackened corpse that was Lara Raith dug one fire-ruined hip into Madeline’s upper back, using Madeline’s own spine as a fulcrum against her. Lara spoke, and her voice was something straight from Hell. It was lower, smokier, but every bit as lovely as it ever was. “Madeline,” she purred, “I’ve wanted to do this with you since we were little girls.” Lara’s burned black right hand, withered, it seemed, down to bones and sinew, reached slowly, sensually around Madeline’s straining abdomen. Slowly, very slowly, Lara sunk her fingertips into flesh, just beneath the floating rib on Madeline’s left flank. Madeline’s face contorted and she tried to scream. Lara shuddered. Her shoulders twisted. And she ripped an open furrow as wide as her four fingers across Madeline’s stomach, pale flesh parting, as wet red and grey things slithered out. Lara’s tongue emerged from her mouth, bright pink, and touched Madeline’s earlobe. “Listen to me,” she hissed. Her burned hand continued pulling things out of Madeline’s body, a hideous intimacy. “Listen to me.” Power shuddered in those words. I felt an insane desire to rush toward Lara’s ruined flesh and give her my ears...