Chapter 4
Location Unknown
Sabrina woke slowly and felt like she was swimming through Lowcountry muck after a hurricane. Nothing felt firm. Nothing felt real. Everything was soft, quiet…
Except for the pain that thumped mercilessly inside her head.
Her skull was too small. Or maybe her brain was too big?
She also had a crick in her neck like she’d slept with her head bent at a ninety-degree angle.
And what the hell is wrong with my tongue?
Why was it coated with something fuzzy?
She tried to swallow, but her throat was as dry as parchment paper left out in the sun.
She needed water. And Tylenol. And more water. And probably some more Tylenol. But the thought of moving made her break out in a cold sweat.
She shivered.
And that hurt too.
Everything hurt.
Why does everything hurt?
Screw it, she thought. If everything hurt, there was nothing to do but grit her teeth and do what was needed.
Tylenol.
Water.
In that order.
Girding herself, she opened her eyes. Or…she tried to. They didn’t cooperate. Her eyelids were sandbags soaked with rain. It took everything she had to pry them apart the barest crack. Just enough for her to make out a soft, gray light.
She tried to focus. Tried to get her bearings. But her vision floated, and her head spun as terrible nausea churned in her belly. And Jesus! The throb inside her skull was worse with her eyes open.
Did someone spike my drink at the bar? Was I roofied?
She lifted a hand to press it against her forehead, to massage away the fog and the pain.
No, she didn’t.
She tried to. She couldn’t.
Her arm was leaden, immobile.
Am I lying on it?
Nope. She wasn’t lying at all. She was upright. Sitting.
But why was she sitting? Where was she sitting?
Panic slid into her cognizance like smoke under a door. The haze inside her head was no longer soft and quiet. There was a heat to it now. A burn that spread down her neck and chest to smolder in her belly.
Where am I?
She blinked and tried to clear her vision as scraps of memory bubbled up through the soup of her semi-consciousness.
I was driving, wasn’t I?
Yes. I was driving and thinking about Hew. Thinking about Martin. Thinking about my future and then—
She remembered bright lights. Remembered the crunching sound of metal. Remembered a scream.
My scream?
Yes. Definitely hers. And then there was fishtailing. Sliding. Trees. She definitely remembered trees.
I crashed!
Her breath caught at the memory of the big oak looming in front of her car’s hood and her helplessness in avoiding it. But why had she crashed? Had she hydroplaned? Had a deer run into the road and—
No.
A black van. There’d been a black van. It had surged up behind her, advancing, swerving, clipping her rear bumper.
She’d fought to keep control of the Prius. She could still feel the wheel in her hands, that first list sideways as her wheels lost traction with the roadway, the fear that gripped her as she careened toward the trees.
Except…she hadn’t crashed.
Or, she had crashed, but not really. It’d been more like a fender bender with the big oak. Her airbag hadn’t even deployed. But the silence that followed had sickened her. Sickened her and terrorized her, because when she’d tried to move, she couldn’t. Her seat belt had seized up.
Her fingers had been as useless as wet spaghetti noodles when she fought with the buckle. But then…finally…freedom!
She’d pushed open the door, shoved out of the vehicle into the soft, misty rain, and turned to run, but—
The woman.
Sweet baby Jesus, the woman!
Dressed in black, platinum hair streaming behind her like a banshee.
Sabrina had barely had time to register the blonde’s intent before she sprang forward and landed on Sabrina.
Sabrina had opened her mouth to scream again, but the cry had died in her throat when she felt the sharp pinch in her neck. A pinch and then warmth and then…
Nothing.
Just blackness. Just a void of sight and sound and memory.
Now, the blackness was fading. And abject terror rushed in to fill the space it left behind.
She tried moving her hands and couldn’t. Tried moving her feet and couldn’t. She was bound to a chair, ankles secured to the legs, wrists cinched tight behind her back.
She willed her eyes open further, and the light drove into her brain like a spear. All she wanted was to close her lids and return to the void, to the soft nothingness.
But she couldn’t.
She had to take stock.
She had to think.
Being careful not to bring too much attention to herself, she glanced around and realized the space she was in was enormous. Hollow. Old.
An abandoned warehouse, maybe?
No, she decided. Some sort of factory or plant.
Hulking, rusting machinery sat like mechanical dinosaurs on the rough, concrete floor. She didn’t have a clue what the beasts might have done back in the day. Now, they rotted with the passing of time.
The soft light of a new dawn painted the filth in pale streaks of gray and grit. Brick walls, stained and crumbling, wept with mildew. The multipaned windows were now just jagged teeth where rocks, wind, or the steady march of years had shattered the glass.
The air was fetid with the smell of neglect and—
Sabrina saw her then.
The woman. The blonde. The Banshee.
The bitch who dosed me with who knows what?
She stood in the shadows at the edge of a shaft of light, a specter pulled from some terrible nightmare. Her black clothes fitted her frame like armor. Her platinum hair was slicked back from a face sharper and crueler than any Sabrina had ever seen.
But it was also…beautiful.
Beautiful like an oleander is beautiful. Like a poison dart frog is beautiful. Allure mixed with venom, she thought.
Breath catching, pulse thundering, Sabrina knew she’d been here before.
Not here, here. But in a situation like this one. Where the person standing before her smiled as they approached.
But it wasn’t a smile of kindness. It was a smile of malice.
A smile that said they looked forward to hearing her scream.