Page 19 of All the Devils are Here

Water burned in my throat as it came up, salty, and far, far too much of it. I retched over the side of whatever I was lying on, puking up what felt like an entire bathtub’s worth of water.

It just kept coming until finally I could take a breath.

That wasn’t easy either. My lungs felt weak, and my body felt like I’d spent too much time in a hot tubanda sauna. Waterlogged, and yet dry and itchy.

Rolling onto my back, I gasped for more breath, seeing nothing but a damp, rocky ceiling above me.

The last thing I remembered…

I rolled and threw up again, but this time it wasn’t water. The last thing I remembered wasdrowning. The boat had gone down, and I was under the waves with no way out. Was I dead?

Somehow, I hadn’t thought the afterlife would be a cave, but honestly, it could be weirder.

Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I tried to look around. Everything hurt, and the more I woke up, the more wrung out and exhausted I felt.

Raising my hand to my throat, I felt salt crusted on my skin. It was all over my chest too, under this blanket. The blanket was warm and soft and felt good on my battered body.

Then it hit me—I could feel the blanket onallmy skin. I was naked, and no idea how I’d gotten that way.

Okay, Meg. Figure out what the hell is going on.

Breathing slowly, I turned my head to look at the small room I was in. It was definitely a cave, rocky and damp, with some candles that looked melted into the walls. The color of the flames was… off. Like they held more color than a flame should. It painted the stone in rich oranges and yellows that reflected off the wet stone. A small depression in the stone looked like a fountain, with water trickling down the stone to form a small pool, and a window that showed me some greenery but gave me no hint about where I was.

Other than that, there wasn’t anything else in the room but the bed I lay on. Which appeared to be some kind of soft fur on top of the stone shelf, along with the blanket.

The sight of water made thirst explode in my throat. Need, sudden and painful, nothing I could resist. I held the blanket around me and sat up, bones creaking. Even after some of the hardest training days I’d ever been through, my body had never felt like this.

Sharp, fiery pain stabbed through my legs as I tried to stand and make my way around the puddle of water I’d thrown up.

But there was no strength in my limbs, and the second I made it upright, I stumbled and fell. The only thing I could do was close my eyes and prepare for the further pain of hitting stone, but it never came. I fell against something soft and warm that kept me from smacking my head.

I opened my eyes and couldn’t make sense of what I saw. A puddle of darkness was beneath me and the scrunched up blanket. What—

The patch of void moved, slowly pulling out from beneath me and lowering me to the ground. I slid down, landing where I leaned against the small fountain, and the cloud of darkness resolved itself into a… cat?

Holy shit.

Not just a cat. A panther. Big yellow eyes shining as he looked at me, and a strong, steady purr that rose in the silence. It sat back on its haunches and watched me with a gaze that seemed like nothing like an animal.

“Thank you,” I said, my throat feeling like I had the worst flu in the history of everything.

I needed the water.

Trying to reach it was harder than I wanted, but I stretched, barely able to make my lips meet the surface of the small pool.

A hand appeared in front of me, lifting water to my lips. Ahumanhand. I jerked back to find there was no more panther in front of me. There was a man. A man?

His eyes were still the eyes of a panther, but his face was that of a man, with short, dark hair. The same soft black fur curled over his shoulders and arms, and as I looked further down, curled around his ribs and legs. But the rest of his body was entirely male, and every part of him was breathtaking.

The purr in his chest was more distinct now, and he reached out, gently turning my face with one finger back to where he was holding the water for me. “Drink.”

His voice was low and smooth as velvet, but raw in a way that reminded me of the wild animal he shared a form with.

Cool, sweet wetness across my tongue, soothing the aching burn in my mouth and throat. He held another cupped handful to my mouth, and I drank it down, savoring the relief it brought me before I looked at him again.

Thank fuck I already knew monsters existed, because if I didn’t, this would be so much worse. Imagining waking up after drowning, not knowing that magical creatures existed and suddenly being confronted by one? I would probably believe I was dead.

Frankly, I still wasn’t convinced I was alive.

---