Page 30 of Fervent

Brock and Vinnie herded me out of the room amidst Rafe’s smothered protests. Hysteria rose in my chest, refused to release. I squeezed my eyes shut as they hauled me down the hall, toes dragging the ground.

“C’mon, use your feet,” one of them said, hoisting me up. “Almost there.”

I lifted my lids, and the tunnel spanned before me in a line of hazy crimson. Blood dripped from the pipes like a leaky faucet, forming puddles where the walls met the floor. That liquid death expanded, stalked in a furtive slither. I was going mad. That was the only explanation because logically, I knew the blood wasn’t really there, but the deep red tore through my mind in a cacophony of whispers. I glanced at my forearms and gasped. Sticky red poured from the slashes as if the wounds had never healed.

“Make it stop!” My breath caught in my lungs, and I fought the grip of their fingers. “Get the blood off of me! It’s not real! Not real…not real…not real…”

Lucas’ minions shook me, propelling me forward. A door creaked open, and the haze of red morphed to black as I hurtled to the dirt. I scratched at my wrists, as if I could remove the blood with my fingernails.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Fuck if I know. The bitch is going batshit crazy.”

The light from the hall cast their figures in an otherworldly blur. My eyes burned with too many emotions that boiled, writhed, cut through me. I wanted to cry and sob and scream, but I couldn’t.

I needed tohurt.

As Vinnie attached my leash to the hook in the floor, I dragged my nails down my arms hard, sucked in shallow breaths, and dug deeper.

“I think she was broken long before we got to her.”

“Rafe…” Even saying his name incinerated me.

“Your boyfriend isn’t comin’.”

So much blood.

Pumping from Rafe’s neck in thick spurts.

No! They hadn’t killed him. My mind was only playing tricks on me, editing the continuous loop of knife to flesh slashing through my sense of reality.

Blond hair.

I grasped that piece of truth, because Rafe’s hair was beautifully dark, just like his soul. My mother’s face flickered in my mind, and I jerked my head back and forth, my thoughts overflowing with chaos, with bloody water and a bathtub full of dead mothers and lost hope.

Five in—

Can’t breathe.

I screamed, though the wail didn’t come from me. A wild animal thrashed inside my being, screeching its pain.

Someone hefted me up and sent a hard smack to my cheek. “Snap out of it!”

Gulping air, I returned Brock’s wide-eyed stare.

“You’re gonna sit on that bed and calm the fuck down. Do you understand me?”

I nodded, mouth trembling, and stumbled toward the bed. My legs gave out, and I plopped onto the cot’s thin mattress, ass flaming from the welts. Rather than fight the burn, I embraced it, wrapped myself in its blessed relief.

Brock pivoted, running a hand over his shaved head, and he and Vinnie left. The door shut with a quiet click, as if it didn’t want to ignite the screaming again.

I rocked back and forth on the bed, nails clawing my skin. I couldn’t wash away the blood. I was bathing in it, reliving it. Those fucking tears needed to burst from my eyes and drench my face. Ineededto cry, but I was a brimming cactus in the middle of a desert, and nothing could extract my despair.

Someone inserted a key into the lock, and I jumped. I could have lost minutes or hours—I had no way of knowing. Lucas stood in the doorway holding the handle of a lantern. He set it on the floor before picking up a bucket he’d left outside the entrance. The door slammed behind him, and a soft glow filled the space. So did the malevolent shadow of his form. He came toward me with purposeful steps.

“Now you know what I’m capable of,” he said, bending to set the bucket on the floor. “I have no problem killing Mason. You have the power to keep him alive.”

“You want to fuck me,” I said, voice as dead as I felt on the inside.

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