Page 60 of Cry for Help

This can’t be happening.

My mouth was dry. It hurt to swallow. I knew the sensation well.

The scream.

At least the Sídhe was dead now. Whatever lay on the veil's other side was better than the hell she had been dealt.

Then it hit me.

The scream.

In Behem’s mansion.

My eyes flew open. Bare concrete greeted me, seamless in construction but scored with nail marks. The fourth wall in the room was made up entirely of iron bars. A prison.

Metal clanged in the distance, echoing through the empty cell. I pulled myself up, sitting against the wall and hugging my knees.

Where was Murmur? Malphas?Caim?

It was the same as before. Sandy Village Correctional Facility. Minus the oppressive Nevada heat and the barked shouts of other inmates.

I’d only been in the SHU once. Solitary confinement.

Someone had tried to take a muffin from my meal tray. Itwas tasteless, brown, but not chocolate. But it was mine. I didn’t get comissery. I washed with unbranded, unscented soap and tasteless toothpaste—provided by the prison. Muffins were rare. Some bonus treats from a prisoner cooking course.

She’d claimed she was diabetic. That she needed my muffin.

And I snapped.

I smashed my tray over her head.

I screamed, but it wasn’t the death shriek. Just a regular human scream.

And I got two days in the SHU.

Never again.

I couldn’t breathe.

There was a difference between being alone and being inisolation.

Behem was a gluttony demon. There was a genuine possibility that I was being kept in a cell until he decided to eat me. A chill settled into my body through skin, blood, and bone.

Eat me.

The poor women on the table flashed through my mind again.

I’d sooner die than fill that demon’s belly.

I hadn’t even seen the thing. My scream had knocked me clean out the moment the Sídhe woman had died. I knew the moment my teeth had unlocked that we were screwed. Murmur’s face had said it all—my demons couldn’t protect me. Not from Behem. They’d lost their connection to Hell, and while they were demons, it was in name only.

I was going to die.

There wasn’t a single thing in my cell. No shoe laces on my prison-issue sneakers. No waist-string on my jeans. I could strip my T-shirt, but my clothes were demon-made. They wouldn’t rip. I was screwed.

I’d thought about killing myself in the beginning. When I’d been freshly eighteen, sentenced and transferred to my forever home in the prison cell in Nevada. I’d thought about killing myself every time someone nudged my shoulder or kicked my feet out from under me. Or threatened to kill me for looking at them the wrong way.

I’d spent ten years behind bars, and when I’d come to the Red City, I’d told myself that I wouldn’t spend a minute more in prison. And I’d meant it.

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