“With pleasure.” Derek, a friend of John’s and a hulking lump of a guy who looked like he should have bolts sticking out the sides of his neck, lurched toward me. A silver blade flickered in the air as he raised a beefy arm.
Jesus fuck! They weren’t kidding.
Shifting my right foot back, I slid the glass shard out of my sleeve and pressed it between my knuckles. If Derek thought he was getting anywhere near me with that knife, he had another thing coming.
Ayaz stepped in front of me, glaring at Derek. “Put that down, man. She’ll wear the blindfold.”
“No, I won’t.”
Ayaz squeezed my arm. “We all did, Hazel. It’ll be safe. I’ll be beside you the whole way there. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
I wanted to yank my arm back. You’ve already let bad things happen to me. But I didn’t have a choice. Greg and Andre were already wearing theirs, and students snaked up the narrow stone path, leading them into the forest. I pulled the black scarf over my head and let Courtney tighten it. She pulled the knot so hard I swear it pushed my eyeballs back into my head.
In the darkness, my other senses pricked, parsing every scuff of a shoe, every murmur, every crash of the waves against the rocks for danger. Ayaz rested my hand on his elbow, covering my fingers with the warmth of his palm. “I’m here, Hazel.”
Once again, as much as I fucking hated to trust anyone, I found myself leaning against Ayaz, allowing myself to take cues from the movement of his body to feel my way over the uneven ground. His fingers on mine felt warm and solid, guiding me true.
Part of me almost wanted him to betray me, so I wouldn’t feel so conflicted about what I had to do. The other part of me – the part that was all fire and madness – didn’t want him to ever unlace his fingers from mine.
Hands shoved me forward. “After you.” Courtney’s mocking voice cried in my ear.
Ayaz gripped me as I struggled up the steps. My fingers scrabbled for the edges of the steps, feeling my way up the path. Behind me, someone kicked my calves as I struggled. “Walk faster,” John Hyde-Jones growled. My body stiffened as I caught the menace in his words.
Finally, I felt the ground even out, the rock beneath my feet give way to dirt and twisted tree roots. The air warmed as the trees sheltered us from the worst of the wild ocean wind. I hated how much I leaned on Ayaz as my feet slipped over the uneven ground, but I didn’t pull away.
We walked for miles. I called out to Greg and Andre, but club members shushed me. Apparently, we weren’t allowed to communicate. My feet ached from tripping on roots and scuffing on rocks, my shoulders strained from the tension of not being able to see. Every step I took I expected to topple over a ravine or walk onto the tip of a sharpened sword.
We stopped twice, briefly, while the students recited an incantation in a creepy guttural language and banged a drum in that uncanny rhythm that was impossible to follow. Ayaz whispered to me that Greg and Andre had both been dropped at their positions. Mine would be the last, the furthest from the school.
How sporting.
I counted my steps as we walked, attempting to make a rough guess at how far we’d come. We must’ve been right at the very edge of the school grounds, close to the sigils that kept the students trapped inside, when Courtney called out for us to stop. Fingernails scraped my face as the blindfold was torn away. “You’re up, gutter whore,” Courtney hissed.
Bright torchlight blinded me. Ghoulish faces pressed in all around, spinning me in a circle as they chanted their curses. Ayaz’s hand was torn from mine and I lost all the guys in the frenzy. Tree limbs, faces, rocky crags… they all sped past so fast I couldn’t focus on a landmark. The infernal drum beat in my ears, further disorienting my senses.
White hot pain seared my leg. I screamed, my body collapsing in on itself as the pain built like a cresting wave, blinding me until all I saw was the inside of my skull. The world faded into a single point, and I could no longer hear or register anything except the pain.
Adrift in an ocean of agony, I thrashed like a stranded beast, desperate to free myself of its grip. But there was no escape – only a cold resolve that once my body stopped being on fire I would burn every one of those motherfuckers down.
Inside my head, the god screamed, its shriek the sound of the universe tearing asunder. The ground beneath my feet rumbled in protest, but I was so disoriented I had no way of knowing if it really was shaking or if it was a product of my pain-filled mind.
Dimly, I understood what had happened. Courtney burned the back of my calf with her torch. The bitch.
“Go back where you came from, gutter whore.” Thick, lumpy hands groped my breasts, then shoved me. I toppled backward. The white lights blinked out as I was swallowed by stygian gloom. I flung out my hands to break my fall, but all I grasped was foul air.
The darkness swallowed my scream as the pain engulfed my body, and I was lost to the void.
Chapter Eleven
I fell forever, until it felt as though I were no longer falling at all but suspended in the darkness, a puppet waiting for her strings to be jerked by a cruel master.
But, eventually, gravity won. I landed hard on my back. Pain sliced down my spine, momentarily competing with the needles stabbing into my leg. I gasped for air in my crushed lungs. The god screamed inside my head and flung an assault of waking nightmares into my mind.
I don’t know how long I lay there, wallowing in the agony of the fall and the foul images the god visited on me, before my mind was able to cut through the pain and remind me there was a ticking clock on my own personal sword of Damocles.
I reached down between my legs and felt around for the survival kit I stashed on my thigh. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding as my fingers closed around the candle in its tiny holder and the lighter. It took me four tries with my trembling hands to get the candle to light. When the flame flared up, it did little to penetrate the gloom of my prison. Far above my head, I could just make out a pinprick of light from the moon. The hole they’d thrown me into was so high that the moonlight didn’t even penetrate into the cave. No way would I be able to climb back out that way.
I set the candle down on the rock beside me and focused on standing up. Every movement caused fresh pain to shoot up my leg. I touched my hands to the red mark on my calf and nearly threw up. My stockings had melted against my skin. Yup, definitely a burn.
I turned over and slowly, slowly, pulled myself to my feet. The pain seared up my spine and exploded in my head, fighting with the god’s visions for top billing. My eyes watered, and I had to stop to take several shaky breaths. Based on my estimation of the distance, it would take me well over an hour to get back to the school from my current location, provided I could even make it out of the cave. But that was with two functioning legs, which I definitely did not possess. Walking on the burn was going to take much longer, if I could even do it.
Courtney had broken the rules, but she’d also all but ensured I’d fail the initiation.
No.
The tears burned my cheeks. I wiped them away. Courtney doesn’t get to win that easily. I will make it back to the school on time, even if I lose my leg in the process.
I’m going to be god-food at the end of this year, anyway. This isn’t about me – it’s about protecting Greg and Andre.
In the darkness, my fingers sought another burn – the scar from a fire that had hurt me much deeper than Courtney ever could.
I can do this.
First, I thought over what little I knew about first aid. The fact that the burn hurt was a good sign – it likely meant it wasn’t as serious as it could have been. I took off my shoes and peeled the stockings off in a wave of pain so intense I had to roll over and throw up. That done, I slid down to the pool of water and plunged my leg under the surface, hoping like hell there wasn’t anything living in there.
While my leg soaked, I tried to force out the god’s pain screaming between my ears. I pulled out the sma
ll first aid kit Ayaz had insisted I bring. I took one of the clear dressings and peeled off the backing. I pulled my leg out, patted the area dry with my balled-up stockings, then applied the dressing and shoved my boot back on. It still smarted like hell but that was all I could do until I got back to school.
If I get back to school.
Gritting my teeth and holding the candle in my hand, I made my way slowly around the cavern. With every step, my leg screamed. By the time I finished a circuit, my face was slick with sweat and tears, but at least I knew what I was dealing with.
The rocks formed a series of steps leading down toward a tunnel on the other side of a small pool of black water. Toward the top of the steps on the opposite side of the cavern were two further caves, both leading off in different directions. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the sickly phosphorescence of those otherworldly veins – not as many as in the caves nearer the school, but they were definitely present. I held the light up to the walls, searching for a sigil. Ayaz had taught me that Parris had drawn sigils in many of the caves to seal his rituals and as maps of the property and the cave networks. All I faced was bare rock.
If I could find one of his sigils, I could tell which path to take. Instead, I had to pull out some old-fashioned MacGyver shit.
As we’d walked to my current location, I’d noted the terrain had sloped downward. My guess was that we’d headed west down the peninsula, in the direction of Arkham. I pulled a compass out of my bra and held it against my chest, trying to line up the arrow. It spun wildly, refusing to settle on one direction.
Great. Just great. Something in the cave – some magnetic rock, most likely – was fucking with the needle. I needed another way to choose which direction to take.
Trying to ignore the god’s protests and the glint of the veins, I hobbled down to the edge of the pool again and held up the candle, as near the entrance to the tunnel as I could reach. The light didn’t even flicker. Instead, the darkness seemed to swallow it. An oppressive presence slid from the entrance. Good. I didn’t want to go that way.
I clambered up to the next entrance and did the same thing. The flame bent over. I’d found a breeze. Ayaz had told me any breeze was likely coming from the surface. I leaned inside the cave and swung my candle around. The cave seemed to head in a general upwards direction. I slapped my palm against the damp wall, leaving a deep impression of my hand in the mud and silt that I could use to find my way back if required. I hoped it wasn’t required.
I stepped into the cave and scrambled between the rocks as fast as I could move with the candle in one hand and my leg howling with pain. Every few feet I slapped my hand into the wall.
After an indeterminate amount of scrambling, the cave ended in another, smaller cavern. The sides were steep rock, curving outward. The breeze came from another hole in the roof. I might have been able to climb up there with two good legs, but in my current state it was impossible. Courtney was counting on that.
I groaned in frustration, kicking a small stone down into a small puddle, splashing cold water over my already freezing legs. But there was nothing I could do. I backtracked to the first cavern and tried my candle on the third tunnel. The flame bent again, although not as far as it had before. It was my only choice, so I gritted my teeth against the pain and forced myself onward.
By now I was so cold that except for the faint pulse of pain from the burn I could barely feel my legs. My teeth clattered together; my mind swam with nausea and a sickening sense that something was behind me. As the sensation crawled up my spine, I spun around, casting my light around the tunnel, but I could see nothing.
The sensation of being watched continued as I struggled up an incline, dragging my injured leg over craggy rocks. My heart pounded in my ears, and underneath it, a terrifying wet sound, like someone trying to breathe with water in their lungs. At first, I thought I was imagining it, but the wheezing gargle grew louder until I could no longer ignore it. I sped up, my leg screaming as I put too much weight on it in my mad scramble to escape. But the wet breathing kept following me, closer and closer…
The tunnel opened out, the ground evening out into a slick, smooth surface with a water trench hollowed out along the center. I swept my candle around the space. On the far wall, I noticed a pattern of dark lines inside a circle on the wall, too regular and even to be natural.
A sigil!
I lurched myself up the slope. My boots slipped on the slick surface. Behind me, a dark presence loomed from the shadows. It’s right there. It’s almost got me.
I cried out as I slid backward. My nails scraped the rocky wall. I rested far too much weight on my burned leg and propelled myself up, screaming as I scrambled a few feet before my foot slid out from beneath me again and I landed flat on my face.
Inside my head, the god screamed.
My candle flew from my hand. It flickered once against the rock before going out, leaving me alone in the cloying darkness with something breathing wet, fetid air against the back of my neck.
Chapter Twelve
Panic rose in my chest. I churned my legs and arms, no longer certain what I was doing, only that I had to get away.
Something slimy slid over my ankle. I jerked my leg back, pitching myself forward. My cheek grazed cold, sharp rock, and pain seared my skull. I gripped the wall with one hand and wrenched my body forward, just as the creature reached out another slimy hand to touch my foot.
Get away from me!
Heat flared in my hands, burning down my arms like lava flowing through my veins. In the darkness, a shape seemed to glow from the other end of the tunnel – a burning ring of fire.
The sigil.
I only registered its shape for the briefest of moments. The heat in my hands exploded, rolling along my skin like a wave. I slipped on the rocks, my arms useless as the fire danced along my skin, burning up bone and flesh and sinew. I was my mother, then Dante, burning in a pyre of my own making, while the god raged inside my head.
Light flared through the tunnel, blinding me. The familiar roar and crackle of flames tore at my eardrums. Something screamed – it took me a moment to realize it was me. Fire consumed my body. I was a ball of radiant flame, burning bright and long and hot, so hot.
The heat rolled off me, crawling over the walls and floor of the tunnel, seeking out its prey. I rolled on my back, throwing my hands up to protect my face, trying to see through the fierce light. Through the roar of the flames and the screech of the god’s screams, I made out the faintest howl as the creature slunk back into the darkness, its wet body sliding back down the tunnel to escape the heat.
And another sound. Footsteps squelching. Someone beating at my body with something soft. A harsh female voice calling through the flames.
“Stop, stop, you’ll kill us both.” A shadow dropped down over me, waving its hands in my face.
“Stop what?” I yelled.
“Stop the fire!”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she sounded afraid. Heat burned across my cheeks. I raised my hands to my cheeks. Please, don’t let anyone else die in a fire. Not again.
A coolness rolled down my arms. The cold settled over my stomach, creeping to my legs and my face. The light faded, and I could begin to make out the shape of a woman, a few years older than me, with long dark hair and eyes like black diamonds, covering my body with a large jacket.
I sat up, my eyes adjusting to the dimmer light cast from small pockets of flame dancing across the rocks, sending off showers of sparks that sizzled when they hit the damp surfaces.
Where did the fire come from? How can there even be a fire in a cave? There’s nothing to burn.
Except me. I could burn. I was burning. So why do I feel fine?
The woman rolled away from me. She wore skintight black leggings with hiking boots. One of her legs was on fire, the flames licking the edge of her wool socks. She shrieked as she thrust her leg into the stream of brackish water running along the middle of the tunnel.
Her face twisted in relief as the flames sizzled out. She withdrew her dripping leg and peeled back the fabric. Unlike my calf, hers was unharmed.
“Praise Allah for small miracles,” she muttered under her breath as she crawled back over to me. She looked familiar, but I was positive I’d never seen her before in my life. “Are you injured? Can you stand by yourself?”
“Who are you?” I demanded, ignoring her question. “Are you a teacher at the school?”
She snorted. “That’s unlikely.”
“Then what are you doing here? Why’d you set the cave on fire?”
She rolled her eyes. “You hit your head when you went down or something? That’s just what I need – if you’ve got amnesia than Allah is truly cruel. Look, I didn’t set the cave on fire, you did.”
“I didn’t make the fire!” My palms blazed with heat. Every part of my glowed with residual warmth. I shuddered at the sensation I’d felt only a few times before in my life. It can’t be true. Not again. Please. “That creature attacked me. The fire must’ve—”
“Nope,” she shoved a hand under my shoulder and tried to yank me upright. All she managed to do was scrape my burned leg over the rock. I yelled, and she dropped me. “It was you. Now get up.”
“I can’t just make fire…” I gasped as a fresh wave of pain ravaged my body.
“Fine. Believe it was me if that’ll make you move faster. You’ve got to get up. We’re leaving. That creature has a family who’ll be none-too-happy when they see what you’ve done to it.”
“How do I know you’re not a friend of Courtney’s, leading me into a trap?”
The woman rolled her eyes toward the stalactites, losing patience. “Because I just put out the fire that was about to burn you up? If all I get for my trouble is the third degree, I’ll just leave you here and you can try your luck with the creature’s mother.”
“No.” I used the craggy wall to pull myself to my feet. I’d like to think I knew a gift horse when I saw one. “I’m up. I’m coming with you.”
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