Another bloodcurdling scream ripped from my throat. I looked up at Vidar. No, the shadow of him. It wasn’t Vidar at all and the longer I looked, the more I wondered how I could have been fooled in the first place. Winding appendages rose up behind him, coiling like snakes toward me and ripping at the fabric of my blouse until my breasts were exposed.
“Lyla, help me!” I wailed, wheezing every time the shadowy creature forced itself into me. “Please.”
A wicked smile spread across her lips, exposing those sharp, lethal teeth of hers. My body felt as if it was being ripped apart from the inside. There was no part of me that was untouched. I could not breathe. I could not move.
“P—please,” I begged. “This is wrong.”
Her smile remained. Her stare stayed true. But as the shadows took everything, carving out a canyon in my soul, I swore her smile faded. Even if just a bit.
A low, haunting chuckle moved about the room and as I fought for air, the darkness finally swallowed me, turning the cabin to ashes. Like the ocean was refilling a chasm, water from all sides slammed against my body, forcing me deep into the dense, cold depths where silence reigned and shadows fled in fear of what was darker.
They asked what he would do for her and he said “anything.”
And that is why the devil fears him.
~ Unknown
Meridan’s voice when she called my name from the treehouse was like a knife straight to my chest. I jumped up and sprinted toward the cabin, racing through the door to find her kneeling on the bed beside a convulsing Dahlia. I rushed to her side, grabbing hold of her shoulders.
“Dahlia, wake,” I demanded.
She was deaf to me. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, her breath coming in frenzied gasps. I brushed the hair from her face to find her skin clammy and cold and tears wetting her cheeks.
“Dahlia, wake!”
“Her sister,” Meridan said. “What if this is something to do with her?”
“Why would it?”
“I have heard stories of some who can build dreams. I—"
I growled, launching myself out the door again and toward Lyla’s cage. Addison was sleeping close by, but James was doingas I asked, watching our prisoner with his pistol propped on his knee. He straightened when I arrived, eyes wide with concern.
“Did you let her sleep?”
“No.”
I gripped the bars, peering into the cage to find her slumped against the side of her confines, staring out into the trees, her gaze as empty as ever.
“Are you doing this?” I snarled.
She said nothing. She didn’t even move to indicate that she heard me.
“Look at me!”
Nothing. I narrowed my eyes at her, stepping around to reach through the bars. As soon as I grabbed her arm, her body collapsed to the ground, limp. Unconscious.
“She sleeps,” I hissed. “With her fucking eyes open.”
I ripped my belt out of my belt loops, wound it through the bars and around her slender neck, and pulled. Instantly, she jolted awake, thrashing like a fish on a line.
“Wake up, you fucking witch.”
I buckled her to the bars in a most uncomfortable position, securing her neck to the cage until all I could hear from her were the short, clipped sounds of her strained gasps.
“Stay awake or I’ll fucking gut you.” I rose again, pointing at James and the now awake and alert Addison. “If she stops moving, you cut off a finger, you hear me?”
“I…” he trailed off, his face going ghostly white.
