I curve my body to edge around Stein, but I feel his fingernail as he drags it along the inside of my wrist when I pass by, a silent, unseen warning.
Von reaches for me, and I crumple against him.
My tears soak his shirt as I press my face to his chest, his hands gripping my elbows.
But I wonder if I leave here… will Sullen be alive when I am able to come back down?
Stein promised I’d watch him die, but how close will he bring him to the other side before he drags me in?
I tense in Von’s arms.
Is this a dream? A nightmare? Can I wake up now?
I straighten, pulling back and tipping my chin up, looking into my friend’s gaze. I open my mouth, to tell him I need his help. To beg him to save Sullen.
But before I can get anything out, a strange sound floods the room at my back.
It’s mechanical and electronic at once, a clicking noise. Then a sliding, like… a door opening.
A gate, maybe.
One for a fence with a security system; I know that sound. I belong to Writhe, after all.
Von’s fingers tighten on my elbows.
He is looking past me.
There is a slithering, scuttling sound over the noise of the door opening.
And it must be that. A door.
The one that kept me from Sullen.
A smile stretches my lips, my bottom one stinging from where I bit it.
There is the flare of a great flame beyond Von, but then it’s gone.
The fire goes out and the scent of smoke grows thicker.
Tingles slip down my spine.
And I hear Sullen say, perhaps to Von, maybe to his father, “I saiddon’t fucking touch her.”
Chapter 10
Sullen
Alight flickers on in the room beyond my hell, illuminating this malaise of a crypt.
It doesn’t matter.
In fact, it’s preferable.
As I wrap the silver necklace with the purple vial around Stein’s throat, jerking him back into me, it’s beautiful to watch his fingers reach up to struggle, attempting to get the metal away from his strangulation.
I rotate my own hands, digging the chain in deeper. No sound leaves his mouth, but a groan of agony comes from my own.
The pain along my abdomen is indescribable.
