Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 480
A low dark shape appeared as they rounded the far side
of the desal. The horse was still on its feet, but only because its
legs were locked. Its back was swayed and its belly hung low
and trembled like a drop of dew about to fall from a leaf.
Tamsin and Jordan slowed to a walk as they approached it.
Tamsin made a clucking sound, which normally would
have made it prick up its ears. Jordan wasn’t sure which end
was which, because it must have lowered its head; in any case,
he saw no sign that it had heard her.
He stopped three meters away, when he realized that
neither end of the creature had a head any longer.
Tamsin stopped too, and her hand crept to her face as she
began to swear, quiet and urgently.
There was a withered thing hanging down one end of it,
and a smaller withered thing on the other end. One of those
might once have been its neck and head, but all flesh and liquid
had been drained from it to fill the swelling belly. The skin
had split in a dozen places there, and blood dripped steadily
onto the sand under it.
Blood... Jordan raised his hands, and in the strange
auroral light saw that they were smeared with dark stains. He
sniffed his palms.
"Oh, shit." He grabbed Tamsin’s shoulder. "Run.
Now!"
As she turned away, the belly of what had once been a
horse split like an overripe fruit. In a gush of blood and halfdigested
organs, two newborn morphs slid to the ground.
The four locked legs of the horse now held up nothing
but an empty bag of skin, like some bizarre tent over the
coughing morphs. One after the other they crawled out of the
entrails and steaming offal, and opened new eyes that hunted
the darkness until they found Jordan.