Wait. What?
Dylan is dead?
Sitting up, I slide away from under her and get to my feet. “I’m still dreaming,” I say, pacing in front of the bed as Sable sits up, her naked chest on full display. “I’m dreaming. I must be!”
She shakes her head. “Please don’t yell. You’ll wake the kids up.”
My legs stop moving, my eyes flicking to her. “Kids?”
“Are you feeling okay, Lynx?”
There’s a faint cry, a baby’s cry, from down the hallway. I rush out, ignoring Sable telling me not to be too noisy, to stop running, but I’m already following the quiet sobs until I stop at a red door.
Red.
All the doors are dark oak.
Why is this one red?
“Lynx! Help me!” Dylan’s voice travels through the door, filled with desperation. “Lynx!”
My shoulder smashes against the wood repeatedly, but I pay no attention to the pain radiating down my side. One last hit, and the door bursts open. Blood coats the walls, soaks thefloor, and Sable stands over my brother’s body with a blade in her hand.
She turns slowly, a grin on her face, growing wider.
“Lynx.”
Her lips aren’t moving, but I can hear a voice.
“Focus on me.”
Lifting my brother’s head by his golden hair, she takes a step toward me, and I fall back, tripping over my own feet as I land on the ground, the ceiling now filled with crawling flames.
A panicked Sable crouches down beside me, no blood in sight. “Hey. Are you okay?” The back of her hand presses to my forehead. “You have a fever again. Can you stand?”
“Get away… from me.”
“No. I’m trying to help you.”
“Lynx.”
“Wake up, Lynx.”
A blade buries itself in my chest, Sable’s face deadly close to my own as she yells my name.
“Lynx!”
Large hands grab at my face, but I can’t see who they belong to through the blood pooling in my eyes. Pain. Fire. Heat. Screams. Torture. Horror. It’s all I can think about as I hear my name being called once more. My head is being shaken intensely.
“I got you,” the voice says. “Breathe, man. Try to follow my voice. Come on.”
Dylan runs at me, his smile wider than normal, his eyes those of a psychopath, and I’m fully prepared to take one last blow and give in. But just as he reaches me, my knees connect with the ground, and my brother vanishes into dust before morphing into Tony.
His eyes are equally as wild, yet filled with worry, his lips moving erratically, but I can’t hear him. He shakes me again, his hands still on the sides of my face.
Too zoned out to tell him someone is behind him, I feel the heaviness of something dropping on my head the same time it happens to Tony—then the flames burn out, the world ceases to exist, and all I see is black.
The shackles cutinto my skin, my wrists nearly snapping from how tightly the chains keep me in place.
