W\\CKED

Prologue: The Eye of Fire

[Sanny]

I ran down down the dark sidewalk with only the light of dim street lamps to guide me. The pavement was slick beneath my black combat boots. The silence of the city in the hours before dawn was unnerving. Not a single damned car, no drunks stumbling home before dawn. 

Where was everyone?

I threw myself into a harder run, frantically searching for my father.

There—a broad-shouldered figure approaching Queensboro station, a duffel thrown over his shoulder. The figure disappeared down the steps. When I reached the entrance, I stumbled to a halt. It was pitch-black down those stairs, and silent as death. Where was the screech of the train? Where was the glow of lights below?

A sound rose out of the darkness, the keen of some inhuman thing.

"Dad?"

Two pinpricks of red stared up at me. The keening grew louder, fracturing into a thousand voices whispering and cackling and groaning as they reached out to consume me.

I ran. A gust of wind roared against my back. I tumbled onto the pavement! Instinct screamed at me to get up. I rolled onto my knees.

A figure stood before me, taller than anyone I knew. Their shape was obscured by a voluminous cloak and their face by darkness, but long, fine hair shone like tendrils of moonlight against their shoulder.

I rose to my feet, balling my scraped hands into fists to keep them from shaking, and looked the stranger defiantly in the eye—all five feet and twelve years of me. "What the hell do you want?!"

The figure moved forward sleek as a cobra, white hair fanning across both shoulders like a viperous hood. I jerked back—and slammed into a brick wall.

"What do I want?" The deep, heavy voice rolled over me like smoke, making me drowsy. Making me weak. "Your power is what I want, Sandra..."

How the hell did they know my name?

I struggled to speak. "Don't touch me."

They leaned in so close I could feel hot breath against my cheek. "Stop me."

A cold, sharp tip pressed into the skin beneath my ear. A vision flashed through my mind: my corpse laying on the ground, a switchblade having cut my throat open; my little brother standing on the dirty sidewalk next to Mama, both of them watching the blood slide down my cold skin...

I wasn't going to die here, some helpless victim murdered in a dark alley! I tried to shove my attacker away, but my hands pressed into hard, unyielding muscle. My palms began to tingle strangely with pinpricks of warmth and pain—and then an explosion of heat ripped through my fingers into the stranger's body!

My attacker screamed with the ferocity of a wounded animal. They leapt back—levitating straight up into the air. It terrified me, this figure hovering impossibly above the pavement, their eyes glowing red and their lips uttering noises more feral than human. It made me want to run as fast as I could back to Mama's warm, safe arms.

The stranger's hand drew away from their chest to reveal a strange mark bright and red where I'd touched them: the curved outline of an eye, with jagged lines of a flame drawn inside it.

I glanced at my hands. On my left palm, the same symbol burned as if it had been branded on my skin with a hot iron.

"Sandra," the stranger said, relishing my name. "Will you conquer me?"

A gust of wind slammed me into the wall, knocking my head so hard against the bricks that I passed out—!