It died a gurgling death in her throat, then fell to the pit of her belly.She put a hand to her mouth to keep it from returning, felt the gore smear her face, and yanked the hand away.The whites of Ying’s eyes, shot through with blood trails, refracted the moonlight like shattered alabaster. Her bluish lips hung slightly open. Purple bruises stained her jaw.Tia’s own blood pounded in her fingertips, her forehead. All her fears, conscious and unconscious, clotted together in her mind, a foul mass of self-accusation.Ying’s robe had been torn away from her splayed legs. One thigh was deeply sliced, the ripped flesh and tendons spread to reveal bone, like a split merchant’s sack spilling its treasures.The dead scream in her belly turned rancid, turned her insides rotten, turned against her and tried to rise. She skittered backward from the body and retched. Once, twice. Three times. She clutched at her distended stomach. Tears tracked her face and chilled in the night air.Behind her an eerie moan matched the wind in the trees but came from the ground.
