Page 12 of Run Like the Devil

The necklace felt oddly warm in my palm still, and when I pulled it from my pocket, I got a good look at it for the first time. It looked like a crystal, and I rubbed my thumb over the top.

Why would Kylie risk so much for something so small? Coming here had been risky enough but taking this had caused the real problems. Her words came back to me, when she’d said it was because she needed a reminder of who she had been.

I wanted to push that away as stupid, but I couldn’t quite do it. I wasn’t nearly as old as she was, hadn’t lost as much, yet I could sort of understand. I recalled going back to Earth, seeing Kylie for the first time after so many years.

That reminder from my past had hit me hard, made me feel less lost. It had been like a punch from a life that had ended for me, and it had meant something to me.

Was that how Kylie felt? Had she been adrift until she’d held this? Lost in a world that wasn’t hers, with everything moving around her but nothing to hold on to?

There was still so much I didn’t understand about Kylie, like her connection to Hubis, but I knew better than to pry into it. She’d done more for me than I had a right to ask her for already.

I could have chucked the necklace, but that felt wrong. Instead, I kneeled and cleared the leaves away from a spot on the ground. Once I made a neat little circle, I carefully placed the necklace in the center. Even if it wasn’t exactly real, even if Kylie couldn’t keep it, this mattered to her. It deserved that respect.

After setting it there, I rose to my feet and took a few steps backward. This would help prevent any more issues with the possessions of humans, which bought us time. Kylie had sacrificed this for us, for our plan, and I wouldn’t let that go to waste.

I took a deep breath, then turned to leave. There was nothing else for me to do here, nothing but watching the echo of a dead world. It was like staring at a corpse and it only made me consider my own future, the future of my own world. If we overthrew Hubis, what would that mean? Someone else would take his position, but would our world eventually end up just another cave here?

I stepped out of the cavern, but before I turned to head back toward the entrance, a light farther down caught my attention. It was so dim I wasn’t sure I even saw it at first.

I couldn’t make sense of it. Kylie had explained that only the places we wanted to go would appear, and I was pretty fucking sure I didn’t want to go anywhere else but Kylie’s world.

Then again, I often didn’t think I wanted to drink water, but once I did, I realized I was one dehydrated bitch. Was that the case here?

Before I’d even come up with whatever reasoning I’d use to convince myself that heading for some weird light in the Forgotten Caves of hell was a good idea, my feet already took me in that direction. The light was farther away than I would have thought, given the light that spilled from the doorway was usually so muted.

It took a good five minutes of walking to get to it—I’d stopped expecting hell to make any sense. Just like before, only a general light spilled from the doorway, not showing me what occurred past there.

“Sure,” I said to myself, the sound of my voice making me feel as if I weren’t alone. “Go into the creepy cavern that appeared out of nowhere when you’re all alone. What could possibly go wrong with that?” Even as I chided myself, I drew my hands into fists and stepped through the doorway.

Hubis and Kylie’s world had been impossibly bright, making me squint against the sun. That was a far cry from what I now found.

Instead, the entire landscape was bathed in darkness, so even the colors that did appear were deep and saturated. The ground was rocky and uneven, with sharp edges jutting out and cliffs everywhere. The sky was black, making the Chasm seem cheerful in comparison.

In fact, this world seemed more hellish than even the Chasm.

In the distance, things moved in the darkness. They were spindly, elongated and moving with a fluidity that unnerved me. It was like everything in my body said, ‘fuck this nonsense’ on an instinctual level.

A snap to my left had me twisting to find a huge creature, something that dwarfed me and reminded me of an ancient gnarled tree. It was black with deep red streaks and violet eyes.

I felt like I’d seen those eyes before, but I would have remembered the fuck out of something like that. It was a nightmare creature, something someone thought up on some bad acid trip.

It didn’t look at me—thank fuck—but instead at a smaller creature that scurried along the ground like an unreasonably large spider.

The large creature reached out with a hand that looked more like branches than the limbs of a living thing. Everything started to short out, as if the world melted around me. Sound popped and clicked, like static on a bad television channel.

I knew I’d experienced this before. It had been outside of that pharmacist’s house. My heart pounded hard as I put it together, as I experienced the same fear I’d felt back then.

No, that can’t be it.

I forced my legs to move, backing away from the thing, from the truth that was so obvious all of a sudden.

The power he had. The way he didn’t fit in. How he knew so much more than he should have.

I wanted nothing more than to get out of here, than to rush back to somewhere safe, than to forget everything I’d seen here even if I feared the sight had tattooed itself onto my brain so deeply I couldn’t ever rid myself of it.

I bumped into something, stopping my retreat and making me spin in a panicked rush.

“So you know the truth.” Yazmor smiled down at me with that grin with too many teeth, as he blocked my escape path.

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