Page 29 of Cardinal House

My head feels fuzzy, floaty and light, but the pain in it is heavy, pounding in time with the hammering pulse in the side of my neck. The corridor beyond the door is dark, and I can’t make much out with the strain in my eyes, but the walls are light coloured, the wallpaper one of those textured ones with foamy swirls.

My hands propel me along the wall, my body slumping heavy into it, shoulder dragging as I claw my way forwards. Exhaustion rolls through me like a spell of death, and I don’t know why I was in the box.

Coffin.

Blinking hard, my eyelids heavy, I come to a wide opening, stopping to catch my breath, I peer down the corridor, a vast open archway at the very end of the hall with a soft flickering glow cast across the carpet.

My feet welcome the softer surface as I stumble towards the next wall, my toes curled, bleeding. I can feel splinters in the bottoms of my feet, blood running down my hands, and my head spins again, a tightening in my belly. It feels like my organs rearrange themselves inside my gut as my head spins, my stomach dropping.

Suddenly, the hallway seems so long, the soft orange flicker of light stretching further and further away from me. I swipe a hand over my face, dislodging tangles of black hair away from my cheek, shoving it from my lashes. The thick, straight lengths hang down to my lower spine, brushing over my hip bones where long strands slip forward, curtaining my face as my head hangs low.

Still clawing at the wall to keep myself up, I stare at my bloody feet the whole way towards the light. Sagging with relief when my toes touch the circular glow cast out over the carpet, the flickering orange spilling across the wide archway.

Through the overwhelming dizziness, I lift my head just enough to roll my eyes up to the top of their lids, staring ahead with pain in my temples as I strain my eyes.

The room is large, rows of chairs separated by a long aisle I find myself standing at the end of. Ahead of me, at the front of the room is a table, dressed with a white table cloth, a large gold cross standing in the centre of it. There are candles on either side of me, the source of the light, white pillar candles nestled beside flower arrangements that have wilted and died, petals limp and rotting, their leaves curled and dry.

My nose twitches against the smell, and I slowly move forwards, my feet shuffling almost silently across the carpet. I cling to the backs of the seats as I make my way down the aisle. Ankles rolling and elbows bowing with my weight as I finally make my way to the front seats.

Breath ragged, my chest aching and pulling, the dizziness like a black veil starting to drop over my vision like the final curtain call, I choke back a sob. Fear lacing through my veins again like liquid poison as my head rocks.

There’s a man that I couldn’t see before, sitting in the centre of the front right row of chairs. His knees spread wide, his broad back bare, warm, sun-kissed, olive skin dark in the shadows. Silently, I move closer, my mouth working to speak, to call out, to ask for help, but nothing comes. My head spins, white sparks exploding across my vision.

I focus on the man, his eyes closed, chin-length, black hair draping across his face where he hangs it forward. His muscles bunch in his arm as he suddenly throws his head back, eyes creased tight as he lifts a bottle of amber-coloured liquid to his mouth. Lips suctioning over the top, bubbles drawing upwards in the liquid, Adam’s apple bobbing in his stubble speckled throat, he gulps the liquid down. His cheeks hollowing with each pull of the alcohol, before he stops, the bottle clenched precariously between his thick fingers. He’s gasping for breath, spluttering with a dry cough, and that’s when he opens his eyes.

Vision aimed at the ceiling, he leans his large body back in the chair, the wood creaking as he rests back. The button of his black jeans popped open, zipper lowered, the bottoms hanging low on his carved hips. He blinks hard, letting the bottle between his fingers thud softly to the carpet. With a swipe of his hand over his mouth, he rubs the back of his wrist across his eyes, sniffing hard as he holds his forearm there.

Licking my dry lips, I breathe hard, my vision blurring in and out of focus. Pain pulsing through my pelvis, my lower spine stabbing, I wince, a tiny, animal-like, whimper escaping my teeth like a hiss.

The man whips his head in my direction, throwing himself out of the chair, his bare foot kicks the bottle, knocking it over, the liquid splashing out onto the carpet. His mouth hangs open, his jaw and cheeks covered in a light layer of black stubble, his eyes glowing like kindling embers in the shadows.

He steps towards me, and I don’t flinch, I don’t try to dodge him when he dives forward, catching me in the hooks of his large arms as my knees finally give out. The man crashes to the floor with me, cradling me in his arms. And a sob escapes me at the same time it does him.

His warmth sinks into me, my eyes too heavy to keep open, I’m limp in the cradle of his body, and despite not knowing him, the stranger holds me tight and all I feel with the foreign feeling touch is safe.

Chapter 13

Wolf

Disbelief wars with logic inside my head.

She was dead. When I pulled her from that water, she was dead, her chest wasn’t moving, I couldn’t get a pulse. I can’t understand it.

“Maybe her vitals were just so weak you couldn’t get a read on them,” Archer suggests with an awed whisper, threading a needle into Luna’s inner arm. “You were sobbing, it was raining, thunder. You couldn’t think straight. There was a lot going on.”

His hands are so much steadier than mine right now, I wanted to do this myself, but I can’t stop shaking. He was outside in a car. Despite my earlier instruction of leaving me alone, my brothers thought it best one of them stay close by. It only took him three minutes to run inside when I called.

“The water pressure probably helped slow the bleeding,” he says absently, a crease between his brows as he too finds this whole thing hard to believe.

“I thought I was seeing a ghost,” I whisper numbly, trying not to disturb the girl I almost suffocated inside a coffin I couldn’t bring myself to cremate.

It felt too final, too soon to say goodbye when I’d only just found her.

I cleaned her up, laid her inside the casket, covered her with a blanket.

I close the lid.

Hiding her face. All that perfect, ice-white skin bloomed with marks and bruises swaddled in a blanket of mine. The polished wooden top gleams under the harsh white light, my hands sliding over it, running across the wood.

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