Page 41 of The Nightmare's Kiss

She shakes her head. Her calm mask, always in place, is starting to crack, and that scares me more than anything.

“Do you have a weapon in here? Or another way out?” I ask.

She lets out a small, hollow laugh in response.

I bite my lip. “Okay, okay… Well… It’s distracted, at least,” I say, trying to think through the haze of panic over my thoughts. “It knows we’re in here, so we should move while we can. Is there somewhere else we can go? Somewhere safer?” I consider the question myself. “Can we get to the control room, and out the back door?”

Dr. Wright scrubs a hand over her face and regains a hint of her composure. “Yes,” she says. “I have clearance.” Then her expression crumples. “If we can make it. That thing… It cut through the security team in minutes, it…”

“This is our only shot,” I say, before she can spiral. “We have to take it. It’s that or sit here and wait to die.”

She swallows, nods curtly. “Yes. You’re right.” She brushes a trembling hand over the front of her silk shirt. “Let’s go, then.”

After a moment’s hesitation, I hold out a hand. She stares at it for a moment and then reaches over and tangles her fingers with mine. Her other hand reaches for the door handle. She holds my gaze and mouths:Three… two… one,and opens the door. I grimace at the creak of metal, and we peer through the crack into the hallway outside.

There is nothing moving out there. Only bright splashes of blood—and bodies, strewn in pieces. I swallow back bile and follow as Dr. Wright slips through the door. I ease it shut behind us, and we both stand with our backs pressed to it, staring at the scene in front of us.

I must be going into shock, because I feel numb as I look around, taking in the terrible sights in bits and pieces. A dismembered arm with teeth marks. Blank staring eyes, open mouths, a radio still crackling with static. The hallway is quiet otherwise…but not silent. I can hear a sound from around the corner. An animalistic snuffling, followed by a wet tear and horrible chewing.

My stomach lurches. But Dr. Wright grips my hand and tugs me forward. I follow, taking an effort not to step on any of the body parts. This is all my fault, I realize. I freed the monster that did this. Yet I can’t bring myself to feel guilty. Maybe that will come later, but right now, I feel angry. And I cannot help but tell myself that I am not really to blame.

It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the director moved the Nightmare from his usual room, the room he knew I would go to, and placed such a dangerous creature inside. Maybe he didn’t anticipate this exact scenario happening, but I suspect he knew I would try to do something. I’m sure he hoped it would be me that ended up being torn to pieces and snacked on. Part of me spitefully thinks it’ll grate on him to know that he got his own men killed instead…but given what I know of the director, I doubt he’ll care.

Dr. Wright and I sneak as quietly as we can down the hallway, and further into the building. It feels like I’m backing myself into a corner, going farther from the entrance, but I have no choice but to place my trust in Calliope now. We’re in this together. And I’m especially glad for it as we reach a door that requires a passcode.

I keep an eye on the hallway behind us. It’s only when I strain to listen that I realize the horrible munching sounds of the Minotaur have gone silent. Instead, it’s replaced with an even worse sound: the slow clop of its hooves, coming this way.

And coming from another branch of the hallway: the sound of singing, growing louder.

“Dr. Wright,” I whisper, the word barely more than a breath. My eyes twitch between the corners of the two hallways, dread billowing in my stomach.

“Not now,” she mutters, inputting a password one slow number at a time, her movements precise and careful.

“Calliope—”

Her hand goes still as one gigantic hoof rounds the corner. It is followed by a hairy leg, thick with muscle, then the matted and gore-stained torso, and finally, that horrible face. Its nose twitches, and its beady eyes fix on us.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I chant under my breath, my voice going thin and reedy. I glance at Dr. Wright, who refuses to look at the Minotaur as she continues inputting a ridiculously long passcode. Finally, she finishes, and swipes her security card. The machine lets out a sharp beep.

But it doesn’t sound like the good kind of beep. It sounds like a wrong answer. And a quick glance at Dr. Wright’s face shows pure shock written across her face.

“What—” She breathes, and then, softer, “thatfucker.”

The Minotaur huffs out a breath and scrapes one hoof against the tile.

I tug on Dr. Wright’s hand and sprint away, further down the hallway and toward the sound of singing.

25

Chapter Twenty-Five

I round the corner and skid to a stop at the sight of an approaching figure. Dr. Wright comes to a halt behind me, swears, and begins to back away, only to stop as the Minotaur’s clopping hooves round the corner behind us. The creature stops and scents the air, seeming confused. But Dr. Wright and I are far from safe, trapped between one monster and another.

Ahead of us is the Siren. She’s stopped singing, and instead, regards us with wide-set eyes, her pupils slit like a reptile’s and her gaze flat. Even after catching a glimpse of her on a video feed, she is still a shocking sight, at least six feet tall, covered in metallic silver-blue scales that shine and shift as she moves. Her fingers and bare toes are joined with thin webbing, but aside from that and the scales, she looks mostly human. Yet still, there is an unearthly quality to her beautiful face; it is a little too symmetrical, her features a little too far apart, giving her an alien allure that is somehow both magnetizing and frightening.

I once heard a theory that the existence of the uncanny valley implies that humans once had reason to fear creatures that look almost, but notquite, like them. Looking at the Siren now, my gut screams that this is it. This is the reason. Especially with blood smeared across her full lips and dripping from her clawed hands.

But the fur-matted, blood-drenched Minotaur behind us is no better. I have the feeling that either of these creatures easily could and gladly would rip us to shreds.

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