And I hold her tighter.Knowing the truth I’ll never say aloud.I didn’t just mark her.
She marked me back.
Chapter 32
Becki
The sweat is cold when I wake, not warm, not human.It slicks my skin like I crawled out of a river full of hands.My lungs seize, refusing air, and for a moment, I can’t tell if I’m still dreaming or drowning.
My wrist aches where the chain sat.My heartbeat is too loud, thud-thud-thud, like something inside me is trying to punch its way out.
The dream clings like wet cobwebs.
Something hunted me in the dark.
Not Royal.Not the men who chained me.Not just here in the clubhouse.But ever chained me.Not the Reverend or his sermons sharpened into knives.
No.
This thing was older.Hungrier.With limbs too long and shadows stitched to its skin.
Eyes burning like coals.
Breath that smelled like incense and rot.
It chased me across the cemetery, leaping between graves like it belonged there like it was born from the stones.
Right when it knocked me down, right when its weight pressed into my ribs, right when it lowered its face to my throat and I felt the heat of its breath…
It whispered.
Not Becki.
My real name.
Rebecca.
Only the Reverend calls me that.
Only he spits it like a curse.
Under the grotesque silhouette, under the wings and the claws, there is something familiar.The angle of the shoulders.The slow drag of one foot.A small limp from an old injury that pulls right before the step.I have seen that walk before, in the long hallway beneath Pearly Gates, where my daddy kept his most loyal follower hidden from the congregation.Brother Martin.Quiet, unreadable Martin, who moved like smoke and stared like he was waiting for God to speak through blood.
The nightmare shifts.The wings spread wider, too wide for a man.The creature bends backward with a crack that rattles my bones.Something skitters along the window frame.Two shadows overlap on the wall.
One human.
One not.
I wake again gasping, the sheets twisted in my fists, and I can’t tell if the monster in my dream is real, or not.
And Royal’s not in bed
I curl into myself, wrapping my arms around my knees so tight my joints scream.I’ve had nightmares before, religion does that to you, abuse too, but nothing like this.This one tasted real.Metallic.Like the air in the basement under Pearly Gates.
Like truth.
I glance at the vent.
