Page 34 of Guarded By the Nightmare

“Good morning, my queen,”said a masculine voice when I woke up. It was daylight outside, I could see stripes of light between the blinds, but I couldn’t tell where Sylas was.

“Hey,” I said back, and wiped the sleep from my eyes. It was too early for conversation—and in hindsight, I was lucky to be alive, because after all the sleep aids I’d taken last night, it was a miracle I hadn’t wrecked my car at any point after we’d left to go find Brad.

When I remembered what we’d done to him, I took a moment to check in with myself, letting everything that’d happened sink in.

We’d murdered two people...and I felt surprisingly okay with that fact.

Then I remembered Sylas’s and my last topic of conversation. “Ella?” I asked, moving to sit up.

Sylas coalesced at once, standing at the foot of my bed—but the daylight still filtered through him. “You only have to take me to the place where they keep her. I will handle the rest.”

Suddenly my heart was in my throat. I was excited, elated—and scared. “We can’t murder anyone there, though, Sylas. Promise me.”

“What if they deserve it?” he asked, darkening, beginning to cast a shadow.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, with a headshake.

“Hmph. Then who does?”

“Nolan Baxter.” I picked up my phone, and started looking for local news. “He’ll be next—he’s the reason I bought a gun.”

“Before all this?” Sylas asked, growing more solid by the minute. I noted that, then went back to skimming one news site and then another.

“Yeah. For my own protection. Back when I was still committed to the whole living thing, but after I knew exactly what these guys were capable of.”

Local news was a bust, so I went onto the local boards for my college on Reddit.

Nothing.

“No one’s talking about it,” I muttered—and suddenly Sylas was very nearly in the bed with me, looking over my shoulder. “Back off,” I said with a frown, but then held my phone out further so he could see the screen. “Not a peep about Logan being missing, or a weird human-meat pile being found in someone’s yard.” I glanced at the time on my phone. It was almost noon. “Someone should’ve noticed by now. Then again—he skips half his classes anyways, and they don’t sweep that street for a few days.” I got out of bed—I’d managed to put on PJs at least, before drooling into my pillow with fry-breath for eight hours. “So let’s go see Ella.”

I turned my back on the last place I’d seen Sylas, paused, and then decided not to care if hedidsee me some while changing, seeing ashe’d probably seen approximately eleven-bajillion boobs over the course of his lifetime.

Whereas with the limited time I left, I’d never see a dick again, unless I was cutting it off of someone.

RRP had a lot to answer for.

“You’re not going to want to change your mind after you see her, are you?” Sylas asked, from behind me at least.

“Nope,” I said, hopping into last night’s jeans and buttoning them up. “Not unless she wakes up and tells me to stop,” I continued, then giving him a look—he was still sitting on my bed. “But I’d be okay with that.”

“I’d still get to kill you, you know.”

“I’d be okay with that, too.” As long as Ella wasreallyalive again—not whatever sad half-life thing that was happening to her now—it’d be worth it.

Because the reason she was in the skilled nursing facility to begin with was all my fault.

27

MINA

The Past

May 26th, 2:15 a.m.

I almost felloff the trellis four separate times. My hands were blistering, I was covered in sap and old spiderwebs and my feet hurt so bad—but I had to keep climbing down. I needed to figure out what the wolves of Rho Rho Pi had done with her.

When I made it to the ground, I didn’t put my heels back on—I kept one in each hand like a weapon. The cold mud felt good on my feet anyhow, it helped to numb the pain. And it’d stopped raining long enough for a sliver of moon to come out and light my way.

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