Page 89 of Jagged Souls
Varius peels the snake off him. He’s still thirty feet away.
He launches the anaconda at me, and I watch as it sails through the air.
But it’s too late.
Rudy pulls me out of his shadows.
Twenty-Four
HER
The light of a new world explodes all around me.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trapping in my urge to scream.
My chest heaves.
My body shakes.
Varius was so fucking close to reaching me…
I don’t know what the snake was for, but I know he had a plan to get me out. I was so close to going home.
Gods-fucking-dammit!
A sob of frustration rises in my throat, but I swallow it down, then kick it to death with my will to survive. I can’t focus on close calls, on the hope dying inside of me, on the vortex of despair that just wants to drag me down. I have to block out Varius’ scream. His twisted voice of pain. How he ran so frantically, so desperately across the black landscape, trying to reach me. Trying to take me home.
My lips tremble.
I can’t focus on green grass when I’ve just been pushed back into hel. So I take a deep breath and open my eyes into a squint, the light hurting my brain.
It takes me a second to register what is in front of me…
Then I’m jerking back, my heart hammering, a horrified scream ripping out of my throat. I lunge forward in the next second, rage shoving down my disgust and pain, and I slam into the bars of the cage. “You fucking bastards!”
Everything inside of me is boiling hot, burning away even the pain of my injuries.
I can’t feel anything but a need to kill, to punish these sick fucks. “I’m going to kill you!”
Rudy is lying on the concrete floor, still ripped in half, with his intestines hanging out of his waist and with his legs not far from him. His eyes are wide and panicked, so heavy with guilt and sadness as he looks at me.
But I understand why he pulled me out of his shadows so quickly.
Why he’s already so fucking compliant.
Because they tortured other innocents to get him to break. The garage is full of severed parts and blood trails as they tried to drag themselves to safety. So much pain. So much fear...
“I’m sorry,” Rudy signs, shaking with grief as I finally look at him. “I tried to kill myself…”
But his magic wouldn’t let him.
My heart twists in my stomach as he turns his attention back to Antonio.
“Let her go,” he signs.
So optimistic even with all the nightmares he sees.
Perhaps he has to be in order to survive.
