Chapter Thirty-Seven Violet
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Violet
The hood swallowed the world. No light. No air. Just the reek of old fabric and that sharp, metallic tang woven into it. Blood. Death. The knowledge of it made bile climb my throat.
I thrashed, shoulders jerking, heels hammering into unseen legs. I fought like hell because fighting was all I had. A grunt answered me. Then a curse, low and unhurried, from a voice too calm for the violence happening around me.
They didn’t rush. They didn’t stumble. They carried me with a measured rhythm that chilled me worse than the night air. Demons didn’t need to hurry. No one was coming for me.
I wasn’t a person to them. I was property. A relic being dragged back to the altar, meant to be opened and emptied to feed their god.
Roots snagged my feet and sent me pitching forward. Hands jerked me upright before I could fall, fingers digging deep enough into my arms to bruise bone. I screamed, but the hood and gag strangled the sound into nothing.
On and on they moved me forward, through leaves crunching like broken glass underfoot. My chest burned, lungs tearing as I hyperventilated. Blood roared in my ears. Disoriented, I lost all sense of direction. The ground shifted, dirt giving way to something harder beneath me.
A road.
Then the growl of an engine. Doors slamming. The scrape of boots on pavement.
My body was lifted off the ground, hauled like cargo, limbs flailing uselessly. I kicked until my muscles screamed, until my ribs ached from the force of trying. None of it mattered. They were steady. Practiced. Patient.
I was tossed inside, and even through the hood, the stench of grease and old gasoline was strong. They shoved me onto a hard metal floor. The door slammed. And the darkness consumed me even more.
The engine rumbled to life, vibrating up through my spine. They didn’t speak loudly enough for me to make out what they said. Panic crawled up my throat like fire and acid, and all I could do was choke it back and know:
I was being delivered, and all I could do was lie there and await my fate.
Every bump rattled my bones; every sharp turn displaced me harder than the previous one.
Each mile stripped away another sliver of hope until nothing was left but the certainty of where I was going.
By the time the engine cut, my stomach was a knot of nausea and my lungs burned like I’d been running.
Hands seized my arms and dragged me out. My knees buckled, but they didn’t let me fall. They carried me forward as if I were weightless, like I was already a corpse.
A door groaned open, its hinges shrieking, and even through the hood I smelled the change in the air. Hay. Mold. That sick, metallic bite of old blood soaking wood. The same altar from Ohio. They had transported or maybe rebuilt it, and now it waited for me like it had never let go.
They shoved me forward, my knees hitting the rough boards. The hood was yanked free.
Light stabbed at me, sudden and blinding, flames twitching as if they were alive.
I blinked until the blur cleared. Candles.
Hundreds of them. Melted down to stubs, jammed into every crevice, every flat surface.
Their fire jittered in the stale air, shadows leaping across walls painted with symbols I knew too well.
It wasn’t just a barn. It was a sanctum. A slaughterhouse dressed up as holy ground.
And then I saw him.
Marcus.
He stood in the center as if the entire rotting building bowed to him. Knife in hand, smile carved thin and cruel. The blade caught the candlelight and gleamed, and in that glow I saw my death spelled out.
“My sweet Vienna.” His voice was reverent, worshipful, like he was already speaking to the Blood God through me. “The Vessel has come home.”
The words crawled over my skin, sank into my body, and told me exactly what I already knew . . . this was the end.
Bodies closed in, heat and breath and sound pressing against my skin until I couldn’t tell where I ended and they began.
They stomped the dirt in unison, each strike a hammer reverberating through my ribs.
One leaned close enough that his hair brushed my cheek, his breath sour with rot as he hissed words—prayers—to the Blood God.
Another smeared ash and cooled blood across my face, grinding grit into my lips until I tasted earth and death.
I stood and moved back, desperate for a gap, an escape.
But all I saw were crazed eyes, mouths stretched too wide, and eyes rolled back in a frenzy.
A woman moaned with every stomp, swaying, and her hair thrashing wild.
A man tilted his head up and screamed the chant until spit sprayed from his lips like mist.
The circle closed in, bodies pressing like a living wall, herding me where they wanted me—toward the altar at the center of the barn. It loomed like a nightmare, its wood carved with sigils and blackened with decades of blood I’d tried to erase from memory.
My legs locked. “No, please.” The words splintered out of me, brittle and swallowed by their roar.
Hands clamped my arms, hauling me as if I weighed nothing. I fought like a cornered animal—clawing, kicking, tearing at their flesh. My nails scraped skin. Someone hissed. Someone else laughed, a low, fevered sound.
Fingers snatched at my hair, tore at my clothes, dragged the fabric from me until I was forced into a thin, white sacrificial shift. They shoved me forward. My palms slammed onto the altar’s surface, splinters biting into skin.
I scrambled, elbows and knees swinging. I drove my elbow back into someone’s face. Heard the wet fracture and their grunt of pain. I kneed another in the groin and felt him buckle. If they wanted my blood, they’d pay for every drop.
But there were too many. Hands everywhere. Fingers locked around my wrists. Another set seized my ankles. In a single, practiced motion, they lifted me and slammed me flat against the altar. Old blood slicked my back, cold and sticky. The smell filled my lungs with copper, sweat, and rot.
Rough rope snaked around my wrists, my ankles, cinched tight until my body was stretched out like a cross. My breath came in ragged bursts. They had me pinned, reduced to a living sacrifice on a crucifix.
The chant shifted, slowing, deepening. Heavy. Deliberate. A heartbeat pounded through the barn’s bones. Candle flames bent and twisted as though dragged by an unseen wind. Shadows crawled across the rafters like black fingers reaching out.
A voice cut through the noise—deep, commanding, final. The chanting faltered, then fell into a trembling hush. All heads turned.
A hooded figure stood at the heart of the barn, tall and faceless under black cloth. Not Marcus. He lingered off to the side, his smile soft and almost loving as his eyes followed the figure with the blade.
Steel caught the candlelight. Curved. Etched. It gleamed as they raised it slowly, deliberately, and the crowd moaned as if they were tasting ecstasy.
The chanting rolled and rolled, a tide inside the barn that never broke.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “Please,” I whispered, the word so small it died against the heavy air.
The blade lifted higher. The chanting thickened until it felt like a noose closing around my throat. The reek of madness hung over everything. The figure moved closer, its cloak trailing like spilled shadow, the blade hovering over my heart.
And then—movement at the edge of the circle.
A ripple went through the barn as the supplicants parted.
Even the shadows seemed to shift aside. A man stepped forward, moving through them with calm certainty, their frenzy bowing to his presence.
When the candlelight finally caught his face, my lungs seized.
Grayson.
Relief hit first, sharp and hot—he was alive, he was here, and he’d found me. Hope swelled, and then it cracked. He wasn’t running. He wasn’t surging toward me as he fought them.
He wasn’t here to save me.
No. That single word ricocheted within me. Hot, painful, and breaking my heart.
He stood with them, his mouth not moving with the chanting, his gaze never breaking from mine. The blade still hovered above me. The crowd still writhed. And everything inside me splintered apart.
Grayson—the man who swore he would keep me safe—had delivered me to the altar himself.