Page 596 of Rage

It sounded like…likeme.Was I talking to myself? Was I going mad?

I stretched my neck and shook my head. Unease flooded me at hearing this voice disembodied. Not that it was strange to hear the voice without seeing a face to go with it; more like it was strange to hear this voice outside of myself. Even in the chamber, the sound of it didn’t reverberate off the stone the way mine did. It sounded both within me and outside of me; simultaneously the sound of my voice and not.

“Are you what took us?” I asked.

“You know that I am not,” it said.

Its voice changed; the timbre dipping deeper, the smoothness fraying into a rumble.

“What are you?” I asked.

“A guardian,” it–he–said. “You know this as well.”

That void came closer and it shrank. I almost had the feeling it–he–knelt before me. My heart was still pounding, but the rhythm remained stable. It didn’t fumble or falter. It was the same steady thrum I felt when my marks were under my knife. A sort of intrepid purpose that steadied my hand while the men beneath me wept and soiled their trousers.

I’d always assumed it was my resolve. My intuition.

“My sweet carver, my blessed render of flesh, my priestess of carrion. Are you ready to become?” he asked. A hand curled around my still-numb leg. It was too large to be human, wrapping itself fully around the lower half of my calf. A single pointed nail on his thumb drew a line up my stocking. I heard the sharpness of it catch the delicate fabric and tear; felt a popped thread run all the way up my inner thigh to where the clip of my garter kept it in place.

An unfamiliar heat built in my lower belly. “What are you talking about?”

Another hand, large and warm, cupped the side of my face. No, not just my face. My entire head. One large finger curled a lock of my hair around its sharp talon of a nail. It made the skin on my scalp tingle. I leaned into the touch, finding it strangely comforting even though I knew I should be afraid.

Shouldn’t I have been afraid?

“Too long they have ripped and shredded with greedy claws. Too long have they bound, beaten, and berated when they were created to protect andcherish.”

He said the last word with the tenderness of a doting lover, his large thumb brushing the side of my cheek with covetous sweetness. “They have forgotten that they spring from very well they are poisoning.”

“That’s a lot of poetry and I’m a simple girl,” I said.

I could almost hear the grin in his voice. “Themen,” he said. “They stole your shiny Penny, but first they shattered her, didn’t they, sweet carver?”

Shiny Penny? I hadn’t heard that nickname in…years.I’d had no reason to speak it. “How do you know about my sister?” I sneered through gritted teeth.

“You cried for me then,” he cooed. “Called out for a bargain, asked to bring her back. She was so pretty. You always told her so. That she was prettier than you even though you wore the same face–shared the same womb.”

His large thumb brushed away the hot tears that ran down my face.

“I’m sorry. I was sorry then, too. I could not give you what you wanted. I could not mend the broken threads of a life cut short. I could only give you the means to avenge it. For that is Her dominion. Retribution, wrath.”

I knew he didn’t mean Penny. I could hear the reverence in his voice.

I blinked in the darkness as that large hand settled at the base of my throat. His palm covered my decollete with the weight of a jewel encrusted bib necklace.

“What are you, exactly?”

“A servant to Her,” he said. “The Forgotten One.”

“The Forgotten One?” I balked, recognizing the name that was shared with a cult making headlines lately. “The Forgotten One is aman. And one whose followers think they can help themselves to whatever bride or body theyplease.”

I could hear his smile again as the weight of his hand slowly faded from my shoulders. Panic rose as I realized he wasvanishing. The nothingness in front of me faded before my eyes. “That is what they think, isn’t it?” he asked.

The growl of stone dragging against stone tore through the tiny chamber and light spilled into it, blinding me and waking the other women. There was a chorus of panicked chattering and whimpers. Cassandre’s limp body went rigid and she clawed at my dress as if she were a child fleeing to her mother.

I faced our host and forced my eyes to focus, taking in the figure rimmed in golden light that bounced off the damp walls of the cavern and lit the planes of his face ghoulishly. He looked a phantom in garish cultist robes that would have been funny if the situation wasn’t so dire.

“Ladies, ladies,” the familiar voice said, his smile ominous as his eyes fell on me. “No need to be upset, girls. In a few short hours you will know the peace of submission, the cradle ofobedience.”

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