At something behind me.
Her brown eyes widen. “No, don’t!”
I start to turn, but an arm wraps around my neck. A man’s arm, his elbow bending. Squeezing, choking, until black spots fill my vision.
He holds me against his chest, so I can’t see him.
His arm cinches tighter, and my lungs start to burn. My chest feels like it’s going to explode. I pull at his arm, but my vision blurs.
In an instant, the world goes dark.
46
I wake in increments, first aware of the cold on my arms, then the smell of dank, sour air. When my eyes open, I think I’m still asleep, seeing nothing around me but darkness. Pure dark. Total black.
“What happened?” My throat feels sore when I speak, and clarity is lost in the haze. My mind can’t translate the signals I’m receiving. I blink as if that will clear my vision, but the blindness remains.
I try to wipe my eyes, but my hand is fixed. I can’t lift my arm. Am I strapped down?
The image triggers an avalanche of memories, starting with my stealthy trip through the attic, to Luci crying, to her eyes widening. And finally, a man’s arm around my neck.
Despite the dark, I’m fully awake now, terror ripping through my body and setting off alarms.
The dark, the cold, the smell.
I’m in the catacombs.
And I’m strapped down.
The hard material at my back is wood, like the table described in the journal.
I know exactly where I am. A hundred feet below ground, behind the door with the Marteau symbol.
In the room where people are drained of blood.
Terror pumps in my bloodstream like poison. My vision changes colors, turning a deep crimson. I yank my arms and kick my legs, but I only rub my skin raw beneath the straps.
Eventually, I tire and release a keening cry. Desperate. Terrified.
Who brought me here? When will they return? What will they do?
I know the answer to the last, but my subconscious blocks the reality. The truth is buried deep in my psyche, lost, hidden—beneath a terror like I’ve never known.
My chest rises with each frantic breath, a harsh sound echoing in the chamber. The frenzied rasps of an animal caught in a trap.
As I lie in the dark, the table seems to open up beneath me. Like I’m sinking into a void, being swallowed by a hollow space in the earth.
Searching for anything to ground me in the here and now, I flail my hand around the wood. Rough, weathered, splintered. Made of one solid slab, not planks.
My fingers slip into a groove, and my stomach lurches.That can’t be what I think it is. Please, please.
Stretching my hand as far as I can, I follow the indentation until it curves toward the edge of the table. And a sob is wrenched from my chest.
A channel, scored into the wood.
A trench to direct the flow of blood.
I feel my mind crack, and I slide to the edge of insanity.
