Page 128 of House of Lilith

For a second, there’s silence.

Then, the surface of the water being disturbed by some unseen fight, followed by streaks of blood lifting from down below.

Fuck, I curse with gritted teeth, even before there’s that flash of light where the girl fell through, meaning she’s been taken out of the Game.

But now… now everyone else seems to be getting a move on, including Romanov, her brother, the asshole prince and Ricky.

And some of them are leaping into the water and some wading into it, but they all seem to be choosing the underwater monsters instead of the unknown danger that is the bridge.

I watch Romanov start wading in, my mind buzzing as it tries to come up with as many possible scenarios.

It could be all manner of creatures, but for some reason…

I don’t think it’s anything other than what’s already been in there, all this time.

I agree,I hear my fox say in a tense voice.These have to be mermaids.

A shiver runs down my spine at the very thought.

I think you better try going over,my fox says.

And I can’t say I don’t agree. We’re not water creatures, my fox and I. And if it comes to it, we’ll get in, but if we don’t have to…

So instead of following the others, I walk up to the bridge, I take a deep breath and I start walking.

*

I literally feel it, when the fog starts seeping into my brain. Like neurons starting to fire in all the wrong ways.

All of a sudden, when I look up into the sky, I can’t figure out whether it’s daytime or nighttime. When I look down at my shoes, I can’t tell how far away they are from me. And when my mind scrambles for an explanation, of what I’m supposed to do, of where I even am, it finds…

Nothing. A big black hole of nothing.

And I think I’m still walking, but now there are these things coming at me. Like apparitions.

There’s a small boy, so small, it makes my heart ache, and he’s withering somehow, I can see it, but I can’t do anything about it.

Then there are these men, strange, evil men, and they have me in the palms of their hands and I know I’m going to lose because it’s written in the stars.

And then,thenthere's this girl, and she’s more like a ball of light, but if you saw her shadow, you’d see she has fangs and those fangs are about to rip into my throat and leave me lying on the ground, forever aching.

It’s all making me want to scream at the top of my lungs, my mind scrambling to find a way out of it.

And just as the terror reaches a point I don’t think I’ll be able to bear for long, I feel a light breeze on my skin and I findonething to hold onto.

The water. There is the water below me and somehow I know it’ll make all this stop.

Desperate for relief, I move to throw myself into it.

But then there’s this snarl that seems to come from both within and outside me, of an animal that feels so familiar and strange at the same time.

And then there’s an image that makes me stop, of red mixing with blue-green, like blood with water.

So instead of jumping in, I sit down, I take a lungful of air and I let my body slide inside.

And just like that, the fog clears and I find myself underwater, my eyes adjusting to the near darkness and silence so total, it makes blood curdle in my veins.

*

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