Page 50 of Guarded By the Nightmare

“Where are we?” he blubbered with his bleeding lips, looking around in panic.

“It doesn’t matter. Tell me everything I need to know. Begin from the beginning, or I will press in one of your eyes and start scraping answers out of your skull,” I said, showing him a hand full of claws.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this—everything was supposed to be easy for me!”

And this phase of torture wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. When all else failed, people often tried a total abdication of reality.

“Easy?” I probed. “How?”

“Money—women—my life, man, my whole life!” he shouted, then showed his right hand to me with all its bitten down fingers. “What the fuck! This was supposed to be impossible!”

“And the only thing you had to trade for all your good health and luck was...the blonde woman?”

“Yeah!” He shook his head. “Of course! She was a fucking nobody! Trent said so!”

“Hmm.” And I wondered just where this Trent rated on Mina’s kill-list. “And what did you do to Mina?” I asked, and watched him grow pale, as though he had an even larger wound somewhere else that all his blood was seeping out of.

“She’s fucking crazy man. Everyone knows it!” he tried, and then his eyes focused on me. “I’ll pay you—more than whatever she’s paying you. I can double it—triple it—just cut this out and save me!”

It was finally my turn to laugh. “If you knew what she was paying me with, you wouldn’t agree to that so easily.”

Then I felt something twinge. It was an uncomfortable sensation from the center of my chest, like a pinch. It happened again, and it felt like a sting. I assembled myself and looked down, remembering my cord.

“Mina,” I whispered, and disappeared.

36

MINA

I ranacross the football field in full flight, aiming for the cave-like entrance where teams came out for gametime. I threw myself inside, and then kept running—into a wall—and knocked the wind out of myself, plus probably gained a concussion. I landed on my ass with a grunt, feeling brained, and then tried to get up, while the shouting got closer behind me—I trailed my hand on the wall for balance and stumbled away as fast as I could.

I couldn’t get trapped again.

I wouldn’t survive it.

I would rather die—hadn’t I already made that patently clear?

I passed locked doors and padlocked gym cages and there was no place in here that was safe, everything that’d already happened to me once was going to happen to me again—was I in hell? Because it felt like it—especially once the men chasing me started shouting, “Clear! Clear!” to each other as they worked tosystematically to hunt me down.

I found myself inside a room full of cement benches and the stench of old sweat, with a dry erase board on one wall laying out a final play—but I had none, because the next doors were locked, and there was nowhere else to go. My mind was unravelling, and I was going to let it. I did not want to be here.

“Mina!” I heard someone call, but I wasn’t sure who it was—then I heard angry shouting.

I curled into a ball and locked my arms around my knees. I knew I should’ve brought my gun, but I thought with Sylas it was safe to leave it home—little did I know that my Nightmare would abandon me, just like everyone else in my life had, and right now I knew I didn’t have enoughmeleft to rebuild myself after any more bad things, okay? I wasn’t strong enough for that. I’d done everything I could already—I’d sold my soul, and eventhathadn’t been enough.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

Why was everything so hard?

Why didn’t anyone ever, ever care?

“MINA!” The shout was louder now, closer too, and then I heard sounds like entire bags of popcorn popping, first tearing sounds and then a spatter, like a sprinkler going over a window, over and over again.

“Mina,” someone said from in front of me, and I braced because I knew exactly what was coming next.

I was lost, and after this time, I knew no one would ever be able to find me.

37

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