Page 59 of The World Undone

My vision blurred as I stifled another sob. I recognized a face in the pile. One of the patients—her eyes were dark and soft, staring back at me, lifeless in the macabre gore. I didn’t remember her name, Lilith, maybe? She was a werewolf, a few years older than me. One of the demons we’d rescued from Headquarters.

Bile rose up my throat. Rescued, just for her to reach this violent end. Her head was removed from her body, and I noticed strips of skin were missing from her face.

In fact, skin was missing from most of the corpses that were stashed down here.

I scanned the remaining faces—all of them lifeless, all of them familiar—hoping like hell I wouldn’t find Seamus’s in the pile.

His chains were abandoned on the floor, the metal soaked in blood and bits of fleshy-looking things I didn’t want to even think about.

But no Seamus. He wasn’t here.

It had been no more than a few seconds since Greta had unlocked the door, yet it felt like a lifetime as I tried to process the situation.

The room had been locked. There were no windows. What the fuck was going on? I closed my eyes, hoping like hell I was maybe caught in some strange dream, that the awful wrongness of this whole night was just another nightmare, that I’d wake curled up next to Atlas, or Declan—hell, I’d even settle for another surprise plunge wake-up call in the lake.

Something sharp punctured the back of my neck, then my back and my left thigh. I looked down and found a small dart. I ripped it from my leg, suppressing the urge to vomit, and craned my neck, my muscles growing stiff as another series of stabs hit my body.

They’re dead. They’re all dead. This is wrong. Something’s very, very wrong.

My words were slow, stilted, as I thought them. Everything in my body felt impossibly slow, like I was swimming in a pool full of jello. I tried to speak, to turn back to Greta, to warn her away from whoever was down here, to do—something…anything. But I couldn’t.

Max? What’s going on? I can feel you, but we can’t make out your words.

The light flickered on, the bulb dangling above me and lighting the entire scene. I almost wished the room was bathed in darkness again. I could stomach the scene in the segments and sections my hellfire lit up. Almost. But this, all at once—it was too much.

I threw up, gagging in horror when I realized that I’d emptied my stomach on someone’s corpse. Part of one, anyway.

“I didn’t expect to find you so quickly,” Greta’s voice was like a whisper. Her face morphed into something dark as she tilted her head and bent towards me. She pulled out a syringe, then crouched down next to me, grunting, “Old crickety bones, I wish he’d saved me something better to steal, selfish prick,” she plunged the syringe into my neck, her face swimming before me, “they always are.” My eyes slid to hers, but even that movement felt impossible. Her face carved into a grin that made her almost completely unrecognizable to me. “Should’ve known it’d take all I had to put you down. Now to take care of those fucking meatheads you brought. Perhaps I’ll use one of their shells next.”

I couldn’t pull a full breath of air in, couldn’t scream, couldn’t even think properly.

I’d experienced this once before. In Hell. The girl who’d tried eating mine and Eli’s skin had used this poison. But she hadn’t used this much, and I hadn’t felt the effects this quickly.

I used all of my remaining focus and strength to push my thoughts to them. They were in danger. She wanted them. I didn’t understand why or how, but Greta was the enemy.

Poison. Like in hell. Greta.

What?

Who?

I heard the boys in my head, felt their panic, but I couldn’t manage a response. I’d used all of my strength on those words.

“Max?” Wade yelled my name, muffled and scared as their loud, pounding footsteps took the stairs at an alarming pace. “What the fuck’s going on? Are you and Greta okay?”

Greta rolled her eyes, the gesture strange and unfamiliar on her face. This wasn’t Greta.

I’d sensed that something was off with her from the moment she’d opened her door. Why hadn’t I trusted my instincts?

I heard Wade ram into the door, the wood splintering and creaking at his strength.

For a moment, Greta—or the demon controlling her like a puppet—looked startled, surprised.

With quick movements, she pulled back the plunger of the syringe still poking into my neck, siphoning my blood into the small glass cylinder.

“Mine,” she mumbled, her fingers manipulating the syringe in clunky movements, like she didn’t quite have full control over Greta’s body just yet.

I blinked, the process slow and difficult, my eyes almost refusing to reopen, whether from the paralyzed musculature due to the poison, or because I couldn’t process seeing the greedy panic on Greta’s face. But when my eyes finally opened again, Darius was standing there, just behind Greta, expression lethal and wild.

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