Page 89 of The Last Sanctuary
Dekker bent over her, leaned in close. Above his looming form, lightning clawed the sky. The white pulse sharpened his cheekbones to blades, hollowed his eyes to deep black pits.
“You killed my brother.” He seized a handful of her hair and yanked her head painfully. A jolt like a live wire zipped up her neck. His fleshy lips touched her ear. “For that, you’re going to die.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Raven awoke to a darkness so complete that for several dreadful seconds, she thought she was dead. She didn’t know where she was or why she wasn’t safe in her comfortable bed. Why the bonobos weren’t calling to each other in the distance. Why her father wasn’t snoring down the hall.
Reality crashed into her with the force of a charging bull. With the horrific memories slamming into her brain came the fresh assault of pain—and the fear.
Raven gasped. The hurt radiated from every muscle and bone in her body. The sweet release of unconsciousness faded quickly. The pain took center stage.
The pain was immense. Everything ached. Her right ribs throbbed. The sickening pain pulsed like a second ragged heartbeat. She wasn’t sure if it was cracked or broken or simply deeply bruised. It hurt, and badly.
At least she had saved Luna. At least the wolves were free.
Forcing her head to clear, she took careful stock of her surroundings. She opened her eyes wide and blinked. Wherever she was, it was nearly pitch black. She lay on something hard, unforgiving.
Somewhere above her, thunder rumbled ominously. Rain pelted the metal roof. Tree branches scraped against the exterior walls like fingernails.
Lightning pulsed and flickered, wavering across slick steel walls. Painfully, Raven turned her head. She lay on a concrete floor inside a square concrete box.
Another pulse of lightning flared through an open service door a few feet to her right. The bars in the sliding gate glimmered faintly. The sliding gate led to another gate with a reinforced mesh screen. Beyond that lay the animal enclosure.
A creeping dread stole over her. She knew where she was: the tiger house.
The gates were closed, locked, and chained.
The Headhunters had locked her inside. She was caged like an animal.
They’d trapped her in here until they decided to kill her, or perhaps they would torture her some more, play with her the way a cat plays with its dinner.
Dekker wanted her to suffer. He’d promised that in the end, she would be the one begging them for death.
Sheer animal panic rose within her like a deep, dark sea, threatening to consume her, to swallow her whole. She’d asked for this. She’d put herself at risk. This was her fault.
Raven fought down the rising terror. If she had any chance of getting out of this alive, she needed to think, to be smart. Stretching her arms out, she patted down her body, searching for her weapons.
Her backpack was gone. Her tranquilizer gun was gone. But the little whittling knife stuffed deep in her cargo pocket—it was still there. They hadn’t searched her as thoroughly as they should have. She was just a nuisance to them. A pretty prize.
Little good the tiny blade would do her now.
A strange scraping sound to her left drew her attention.
Outside the tiger house gates, the shadows shifted, coalesced into a thick dark shape. A monstrous thing loomed above her. A terrible demon. A monster more dangerous than any tiger.
Her lungs constricted in fear. The walls of the small square room blurred. She blinked rapidly. The shadows solidified into the shape of a man.
Damien.
No. The dark shape was too bulky, too huge to be Damien. The dark figure leaned forward to peer at her. She caught the gleam of the whites of his eyes. She smelled smoke and the burned stench of charred meat.
Outside, lightning streaked the sky. The pulse of light highlighted the hard planes of his face, the square stubbled jaw. The tattoo snaking up his thick neck. The shine of his teeth.
Vaughn smiled that cruel, familiar smile. “It doesn’t have to be this way, you know.”
She wanted to hurt him. To smash in his smug evil face with a brick. To stab him in the throat with the whittling knife hidden in her pocket.
But she was caught in a cage. Helpless, trapped, impotent. She could do nothing, and he knew it.
