Chapter 48 #3
Duchy’s tears fall silently over her real face, and I feel something pass between them that I’m not supposed to see—the private language of two ride or dies arguing about who goes first.
I blink and look away to give them privacy, only to find the beast separating from the fire.
The Bandersnatch crosses the ruin in that unsettling, too-fast blur, and produces a small brown bottle from his heavy coat.
“Touching,” he says, shaking the bottle so it sloshes. His flat eyes sweep between me and Duchy. “Real sweet. Truly. But I can’t have you two scheming.” He nods at me. “Open up.”
“What, no!” Duchy yelps. “Grady, leave her alone!”
I jerk my head away, clamping my jaw. But the beast’s hands are fast. They’re calloused and reeking of sweat as he grabs my jaw, claws digging into my cheeks to force my mouth open.
Across from us, the dragon grabs Duchy by the hair, yanking her head back with a cruel fist. She cries out, and at the alcove, X’s entire body convulses against the ropes, a sound tearing out of him that’s more animal than human.
Try as I might, I can’t escape, and I’m forced against the gravestone, screaming and twisting in the beast’s grip. The bottle is cold against my lips and the liquor is bitter and burns, forcing my gag reflex to kick in when he’s done, but the beast clamps a hand over my mouth, pinching my nose.
“This is what you get for fucking Wilde enemies.” Rows of teeth gleam inches from my face as the beast growls, “Drink up, Troisgarde bitch.”
My senses home in on Duchy’s loud, panicked breathing, the pain radiating from where his claws dig into my face, and the thick burnt candy taste sliding down my throat.
“Don’t let her puke!” The rat calls.
“Don’t worry. She’ll either choke down this drink or choke down my cock. Won’t you, McKennon?”
I glare at him, but he just grins and keeps his hand over my mouth and nose until I’m forced to swallow. Then he slaps me hard enough to make me gulp and choke, but it all stays down.
“Hell yeah!” The rat cheers. “Just got two grand for her keeping liquid Pining down. Well done.”
The beast flickers to Grady as he steps back, smiling when I slump against my headstone.
“She’s about to be fucking rocked,” he snorts. “Go ahead and put me down for trying her out in the next few minutes. I ain’t waiting anymore.”
The second wave is instant, hitting fast and crashing over the high of the first. Heat floods under my skin, everything buzzes, my face goes numb, my vision fractures, the ruins dissolve and rebuild.
The headstones grow taller, leaning over me and whispering to each other in voices made of wind.
The Spanish moss reaches to caress my cheek with its long grey fingers, and the sky above the church steeple swirls like water going down a drain.
“I’m so sorry,” Duchy cries. “I’m so sorry—”
But her voice is already receding, pulled back through a tunnel, and the Wonderland rushes in to fill the space she leaves behind.
The minutes drag. Or hours. Days? Maybe? I can’t tell anymore.
The Duchess weeps beside me, her enormous head bowed, her oversized hands pulling uselessly at her ropes.
The dragon paces the perimeter, his tail carving grooves in the sand.
The beast tends the fire, looking on with thinly veiled hunger.
The rat scrolls and scrolls and scrolls, his reedy voice calling out numbers to the unblinking eyes in the trees.
“Now forty percent on the port. Sixteen on the bakery. Shit, four on the church.” He snickers. “Nobody’s betting on the church. Idiots. We have plenty of time for the boat.”
I look down at my dress. The blue has changed.
Red bleeds up from the hem like a drop of blood in water.
The white apron dissolves. The skirt darkens to crimson and stretches.
Heart shapes bloom across the fabric, faint at first, then bolder, stitching themselves into the weave like they’ve always been there, waiting for the blue to get out of the way.
I’m not Alice anymore. I don’t think.
Maybe not Lucy either.
I don’t know what I am yet.
Images flicker behind my eyes, unbidden.
Luna reaching for me across a garden of marble headstones, but her hand closing on nothing.
Brylie laughing, then gone—just gone, like a candle snuffed out.
Lafayette Cemetery rises up in front of me with its cracked marble and ironwork twisted with the grass and sand.
My father’s charming smile. My mother’s warmth, the way her perfume clung to me long after she’d let me go.
And Hatton.
His hands guiding and holding me beneath the moon. His voice in the dark making promises he retracted by morning. How he begged me not to give up again.
“You can’t leave like that. Please don’t do that to the world. Please don’t—Please don’t do that to me.”
What will he do when he comes back and I’m gone?
I don’t want to leave.
I’m scared.
Don’t make me go.
Save me.
But he’ll think I ran. He’ll think I left him the way I leave everything, vanishing without an explanation. He’ll stand on that dock, stare at the empty slip, and think “this is what she does.”
No one’s ever come for me before. Not really. Not when it counted. I’ve saved myself every time, and every time it cost me something I couldn’t get back. Now, now I’m so tired I could lie down on this cold ground and let the wind whisper the sand over me until I’m gone.
Because I’ve felt this before. My mind has been poisoned just like this, eating through all my hope like acid.
No one’s coming.
And yet… there’s still the whispered hope.
What if he does?
The dragon’s burning eyes sweep past me without interest. The beast flips a gun between its claws, the metal catching moonlight. The rat updates the odds. The Duchess weeps. The Executioner thrashes.
And the red keeps spreading across my dress, turning me into something else altogether.
The beast, Grady, tosses the gun from one clawed hand to the other and glances at us. His fur ripples in the firelight, and that wide, empty smile spreads across his muzzle.
“How much time do I have left until I can scope out the merchandise?” he asks.
“Erm… Ooo two minutes!” the rat announces.
The beast stalks toward me. Boots—paws—crunching over dry grass and broken shells.
I try to flinch away, but my body is slow, muscles locked, the drug holding me flat against the headstone.
The Executioner makes a low, desperate shout, but his ropes hold.
The Duchess has slumped beside me, her enormous head turned like she can’t watch. Maybe I won’t have to either.
The beast’s hand closes on my arm, and the claws on his other hand slide up under the hem of my red dress. My brain screams.
Move, move, do something!
But my limbs are disconnected… numb… the world spiraling in and out.
He leans close, breath hot and foul against my ear.
“You wanna know all the things I’m gonna do to you to make you scream?
” He chuckles and I flinch. “You’ll feel like this all the time when we lock you up.
It’s in the meds, and you’ll never be able to escape.
We already got one of you.” He licks my neck.
“Shame y’all won’t remember each other though. Could be fun.”
My dress is up to my waist now, and every cell in my body revolts. But the drug has me pinned and the ropes have me pinned and the fear has me pinned and I’m trapped again in a warehouse I can’t leave, I’m—
An engine.
Far off, but it’s coming. A low rumble cutting across the water, growing louder.
The beast’s hand stills on my thigh. The dragon straightens from its patrol, burning eyes narrowing toward the sound. Even the rat looks up from his phone. The walrus’s whiskers twitch.
“You hear that?” the dragon asks and the beast shoves off of me to huddle by their fire.