Prologue
Iwake up screaming.
I’m in pitch blackness. It takes me a moment to conquer my panic and remember.
The knock on the front door. Opening it without thinking, expecting to see Damien.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.Damien wouldn’t knock. Damienneverknocks. He doesn’t need to. He’s so used to everything belonging to him—including me.
By the time I’d realized my mistake, it was too late. A rag was clamped to my face, a bitter taste in my nose and mouth, and a moment later I saw stars.
I came to in the cold, lying on a wet surface, and as my eyesight focused, I saw their faces. Aaron, Noel, Gabriel, Elias.Angel.
Only Lazarus was missing. He was Gabriel’s little brother, and Damien had killed him to save me.
As I stared up at their faces, I was aware of how royally screwed I was. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned these past few months, first as an unwilling captive and then as a willing one, it’s that vengeance means everything to the two organizations I’ve somehow found myself in the middle of.
There’s an honor code, and violating it means war.
Well, the war had begun, and I was going to be its first victim.
They made me kneel, naked and bound, and a gun was pressed to my head. Before me stretched a gaping hole, about the size of a coffin, and I noticed a wooden casket behind me, just before they made me turn toward the hole.
I closed my eyes, struggling to accept my fate, trying to wrap my head around the thought that before long, I would be nothing. That the love which had sunk its claws into my heart would soon be obliterated.
But the detonation never came. Instead, Gabriel spoke, and his words were a thousand times worse than any bullet to the brain could be.
“We won’t give her a quick death. Lower her into the coffin. Bury that bitch alive.”
__
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
I’m in a coffin. That’s where I am. In a coffin, and the more I scream, the quicker I will die.
I try to slow my breathing, try to make each breath count, try to suck in only a tiny bit of oxygen at a time. Even though I know it’s pointless. Might as well die quickly, since I’m bound to die.
It’s that damn survival instinct. It just won’t let me alone. It’s the reason I’m still going, after twenty-one years of pain that might have killed a much stronger person than me.
The thing is, I’m not strong. I’m more like… a jellyfish. A transparent, go-with-the-flow creature that can survive 66 million years.
When the immortal jellyfish dies, it sinks to the ocean floor and starts to disintegrate. Then its cells reaggregate, and it begins its lifecycle again…
I think back to one of the numerous articles I’ve read about that creature, a creature I feel more kinship toward than anything or anyone else on this Earth.
Somehow, the thought of starting over fills me with moredread than death itself does. Having to begin again, to experience the same kind of pain that has colored my life with cold, bleary haze… it’s too much.
I gulp down a shudder as a single tear slides down my face.It’s not fair.I wonder how long it takes to die in a coffin. I wonder what that kind of death feels like. Silent and sweet, like the arrival of sleep? Or terrible, nauseating, my body racked with a pain that my trapped limbs can’t even attempt to alleviate?
Knowing my luck, it will definitely be the latter.
I try to relax my body, try to accept the inevitable, but it’s impossible. Before I know it, I’m screaming again, banging my fists against the top of the coffin, trying to move it, but all I manage to do is dislodge clouds of dirt that rain down on me, nearly suffocating me.
Groaning, I close my eyes and try to accept my fate.
1
Damien
