Chapter 6 – Ava Jade #2
Corvus’ eyes seemed to glow in the dark as he watched me, not with a hungry passion, but with something far more sinister.
What…
Somewhere, the sound of something dripping reached my ears and each little slap of water sent my heart into a faster rhythm.
Something wasn’t right.
“Grey?”
I struggled to pull my arms free.
“Grey, let me go.”
My pulse pounded in my ears.
“Rook?”
“Corvus?”
I glanced between them, between their shadows.
They were the monsters in the dark again, but this time I didn’t want them to chase me. Had no desire for them to catch me.
“Step into the light,” I shouted at them, needing to see their faces. Needing to make sure it was them.
That it wasn’t…
Corvus moved first, taking two strong steps into the light.
I frowned, trying to make sense of the pained expression on his face. At the rage in his eyes, barely contained.
“What happe?—”
I gasped, seeing the blooming rose of fresh blood turning his gray shirt a wet red just above his waistline. Blood poured from the wound, darkening the denim of his jeans, draining all the color from his face.
“C-Corvus?”
His upper lip curled into a sneer, and when he tried to take another step forward, he nearly collapsed, catching himself on the thick branch of a tree to hold himself up.
No.
Rook emerged from the dark and into the moonlight like the ghost he named me for, his face pale.
But on his second step, he fell to one knee, a sort of anger I’d never seen from him before shaping his face into someone I couldn’t recognize.
He held my gaze, radiating hate as I began to notice the wounds in his leg.
The gaping bullet holes, leaking blood so black it couldn’t have been human.
“He’ll never walk right again,” Corvus rasped, looking so faint it made my heart nearly stop.
Something warm dripped on my shoulder, and I jerked my head away from Grey, twisting my neck until I could see him. See the garish wound where his eye used to be. The blood dripping down his perfect face, carving lines of darkest crimson against the pale skin of his cheek.
I screamed, the adrenaline in my veins giving me the feral strength I needed to pull out of his grasp. “No!”
I fell onto my front in the dirt, my chin and breasts scraping against the rough ground.
“No, no, no,” I muttered, scrambling to get to my feet.
“Yes, Sparrow ,” Corvus hissed, his nickname for me a poisonous threat on his lips as he shoved me back down until I tasted dirt.
“Your fault,” Grey added, and a booted foot collided with my rib cage, stealing all the breath from my lungs.
“Your fault!” Another kick and I coughed, seeing stars.
“ Your fault.”
A great stabbing pain in my back made me scream, and the rush of blood leaking from the wound made me lightheaded.
I tried to stand, but something solid as a rock collided with my jaw, sending me back down, making my vision go dark. Making sound come to me slower. Muffled.
A gun cocked.
Through double vision, I watched him lift the gun. Watched The Bone Man’s jaw clench until he looked like the skeleton I first fell in love with. Before I knew who he was.
“I won’t let you hurt us anymore,” he promised me, and I closed my eyes when he pressed the barrel of the gun to my forehead.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “Do it. I’m ready.”
My darkness swirled, but I pushed her down.
Hush.
It’s us or them.
“Goodbye, Sparrow.”
“I’m sorry.”
A loud bang! rang in my ears, and I tried to make sense of my surroundings.
Not a dark forest.
Bright. So fucking bright.
Heaven?
I groaned, rolling over to vomit onto the cold cement floor, my head spinning as my lungs struggled to fill enough to eradicate the fog shrouding my thoughts.
My eyes adjusted to the light, and I stared at my naked tits, my lips parting as I struggled to make sense of them. Make sense of anything.
My skin tingled everywhere it touched the floor, and everywhere it didn’t. My throat burned with bile, but I managed to keep the next bout of nausea from turning up anything more I didn’t have to give to the floor.
The hollowness in my stomach felt like an expanding universe. A black hole that would consume me if I didn’t try to fill it.
Not heaven.
Hell.
I was in hell.
I scraped myself to a seated position against the wall, swiping the back of my hand over my lips only for my arm to fall back heavily to my lap. The drugs in my system not allowing me more than the tiniest of movements without a massive amount of effort.
Blinking, I noticed the bandage wrapped around my leg and willed myself to feel the pain of the wound there, but there was nothing.
Numb.
I was numb and utterly naked save for that bandage.
My eyes burned and my lips tightened, but I would not fucking cry. The bastard that stuck me in this cell didn’t deserve to see that.
Vivid imagery from what my mind cooked up in my sleep assaulted me. How good it felt to have them. To touch them. To be touched by them.
How those touches soured. Turned violent. How it hurt.
How badly it fucking hurt .
I rolled my head to the left, finding the door to my cell.
It looked different, and I felt my brows try to furrow. Twitch instead.
It looked different because it was different. Drake had replaced the old door with a new one. One with a small plate glass window in the top so he could look in. And a slot near the bottom.
Things rested against the spotless cement floor there. A saturated paper bowl filled with something gray that I thought was porridge. Wedges of peeled orange on another paper plate, partially dried up from sitting too long. A paper cup.
My stomach ached at the sight, and I squeezed my eyes tight, ignoring the pain.
I couldn’t eat that.
Who fucking knew what he put in it.
But…
Much longer without any food or water and I’d be useless no matter what.
And eventually… eventually I wouldn’t be here at all.
I dragged myself over to the food, lifting a piece of orange to my nose, trying to smell the presence of drugs like Rook could.
I smelled only the pithy scent of orange peel and the juice waiting beneath. The porridge would be easy to spike. So would the small cup of water. But the oranges?
It was the best bet.
That’s what I kept telling myself as I stuffed each sliver into my mouth, one after another, until they were all gone and I was licking the remnants of their juice from my fingertips.
I became aware of the drip dripping sound somewhere outside the cell again, and heat spread across my back, fizzling out under the pressure of the drugs in my system before annoyance could turn to rage.
I threw the bowl of porridge at the door.
The congealed mixture ran down the stainless steel in clumps.
“ Shut up ,” I hollered, pressing my palms to my ears, the back of my head against the floor.
My skin tightened with gooseflesh against the cold concrete and I tried harder than I ever tried anything not to think about the fact that I’ve been naked in this room for fuck knew how long.
Not just naked, but passed out. Drugged.
Everything looked the same, but that didn’t mean he didn’t touch me.
My stomach rebelled against the orange slices, and I swallowed hard to keep them down.
I gasped, removing my hands from my ears at the sound of something else. Something new.
The dripping was still there, but.
“Hello?” I called tentatively, dragging my half numb ass closer to the door. “Is someone out there?”
I pressed my ear to a spot not coated in porridge, waiting.
Nothing.
I banged the side of my fist against the door. “Hey!”
A whisper, too close, filled my ears. Indeterminate. A string of word-like sounds that my sluggish mind couldn’t make sense of.
“No.”
I shook my head, pulling my knees to my chest to hug them close, pressing my head between them. There wasn’t anyone outside.
It’s just the drugs, I told myself when another indistinct whisper filled my ears despite them being firmly cut off by my knees. Not real.
I was not going crazy.
I wasn’t.