“Nothing,” she said carefully. “You were shouting. It woke me.” She stopped talking and folded her arms across her chest. Looking uncomfortable, she shifted restlessly from foot to foot. “Do you hear them too?”
Narrowing my eyes, I stared up at her. “Hear what?”
She swallowed hard and bit down on her bottom lip, saying nothing as she continued to shift from foot to foot.
“Spit it out,” I growled.
“The voices,” she whispered, her eyes going wide. As if her own revelation shocked her.
The vulture I’d eaten earlier congealed in my stomach. How could she know?
“Sometimes it’s my dad,” she said, frantically twisting her fingers in the hem of her shirt. “Mostly it’s my dad, but sometimes they’re just voices, so many of them. I don’t know what they’re saying, they just sort of ... buzz. And you get so angry sometimes, for no reason. I just thought—”
“Stop thinking,” I said. “Thinking will get you nowhere good in a place like this. You don’t think, you just do. You survive.”
“I know how to survive!” she snapped at me, her eyes sparking to life.
I pushed myself to a sitting position, barked out a dry laugh, and shook my head. “No, you fucking don’t. Out there in the wild you did, but in here you don’t know shit. You’re like a newborn baby who can’t go two fucking seconds without getting yourself into trouble. You don’t know how to act; you can’t even walk by yourself. You don’t know how to do a goddamn thing! You’re—”
“Who’s Jenny?”
My eyes flared wide while my entire body tensed to the point of pain.No. No, no, no.She didn’t get to say her name. Not when I could just barely say it myself.
“What the fuck did you just say?” I demanded.
Autumn took a small step backward, and the spark in her eyes dimmed. “You said her name while you were sleeping,” she mumbled. “You said—”
Temporary insanity swept over me. I had it often—a blackout, a lapse in rational thought, a moment of pure, unfiltered rage coursing through my body, using my skin as its puppet. I couldn’t control it; had never figured out how to. Had never before wanted to.
“Eagle,” Autumn rasped. “E, s-s-stop ...”
I blinked. Autumn was lifted off her feet, her body pinned against the wall next to the door frame. I had her by both arms, my hands gripping her forearms with knuckle-aching strength. I released her instantly and spun away as she thudded to the floor. Dropping my head into my hands, I gripped handfuls of my hair and yanked hard.
“Get out!” I bellowed. “Get the fuck out of here!”
Several tiny gasps followed by the slapping of bare feet signaled her departure. Clenching my teeth, I stormed across the room and ripped back the blanket covering the window.
One step forward, three steps back, the voice sang.
Placing my hands on two of the bars, I squeezed the steel in my grip, squeezed until my knuckles turned an unhealthy shade of white and I could feel the pain radiating up both my arms.
“Get out of my head.” I dropped my forehead against the bars. “Get the fuck out of my head.”
You’re the one keeping me here, it answered.You’re the one who won’t let me go.
Locking my jaw, I bounced my forehead off the steel. “Get out of my head.”
Adler ...
“Get out of my head!” I yelled, and this time I slammed my forehead against the bars.
The voice only laughed.
“Get the fuck out of my head!” I bellowed.
Rearing back, I brought my head crashing into the bars. There was a moment of pure pain, gripping and all consuming as it rattled through my skull. Then my body fell away from me like sand slipping through my fingers, and there was nothing.
• • •
