Chapter 30 The Pain Of Betrayal #3
Before I could roll away, he was on me.
His weight crushed the air from my lungs as he straddled me, his knees digging into my hips.
Panic erupted inside me, wild and primal.
I bucked beneath him, thrashing with every ounce of strength I had left, my fists striking out at anything I could reach.
His chest, his arms, his face. My nails caught skin, but he didn’t flinch. Not once.
His eyes were soulless, unrecognizable.
That was when the real terror began.
“Stop panicking,” he growled, voice low and dangerous. His words vibrated through his clenched jaw, through the darkness that pulsed around him.
I screamed until my throat burned, but my voice only made him angrier. He reared back, his shadow blotting out the flickering light, and then his fist connected with the side of my head.
White-hot pain exploded behind my eyes. The world tilted sideways, vision shattering into static. The nausea came fast, rolling through me as my body went limp.
He grabbed my wrists before I could recover, wrenching them above my head with brutal force.
Metal scraped against metal, and then the cold bite of iron encircled my wrists.
The shackles. The rusted manacles that had hung useless at the bedposts now held me fast. Their weight was heavy with the ghosts of whoever had been trapped here before me.
I gasped through the pain, forcing myself to breathe. My vision wavered, blurring around the edges, and I tried to find something, anything, to focus on. My eyes locked on a dark patch of damp above his shoulder, where mold bloomed through cracked plaster.
It became my horizon.
I clung to it the way I once had on that boat to the Statue of Liberty, when nausea had taken me under and a stranger’s voice had whispered, “just focus on the horizon, where the sky meets the sea. It helps the brain sync.”
So, I focused.
I breathed. In and out. In and out.
And as Riley moved above me, lost to the darkness that owned him, I forced my mind to drift beyond the cell, beyond the pain, and prayed to whatever god still listened that someone, anyone would come before that horizon disappeared completely.
Though the skin was already tightening where his fist had struck me and my head pounded in time with my heartbeat, the blurred vision finally began to clear.
My ears picked up a faint hiss, followed by a soft whoosh, and then a steady, low roar.
I knew that sound. I had heard it before, rarely, but enough to recognize the dread it brought.
When my vision aligned completely, terror crawled its way up my throat. Riley stood at the foot of the bed, a metal blowtorch clutched in his hand, his forefinger pressed down on the trigger as a tongue of blue fire roared to life.
“What the fuck are you going to do with that?!” I demanded, though part of me wished I had stayed silent.
There was a sick, twisted part of me that wanted to know what came next in this nightmare.
His grin was void of sanity, made worse knowing that he had premeditatedly left the room to retrieve this… torture device.
“You are still connected to him. This right here is going to sever that connection.” The blue flame wavered between us, casting ghostly light across his face.
It danced in his eyes, those unnatural red eyes.
The heat shimmered in the air, a visible veil of torment, and my breath came in broken gasps as the scent of gas filled the room.
He lifted my shirt slowly, the backs of his fingers grazing my stomach, and I arched away, bile rising in my throat. That touch, once gentle and familiar, now filled me with venom and hatred.
“No! NO!” I screamed, thrashing wildly, the chains biting into my wrists as I fought against the shackles that bound me. The blowtorch roared, then cut out suddenly, leaving only the echo of my ragged breathing and the faint hiss of cooling metal.
Riley cursed under his breath, his face twisting in frustration. The darkness came alive again, crawling across the walls like smoke, reaching for me. But as it neared, it recoiled, hissing, burning against the dimming light of my scars. The glow beneath my skin was fading, but it was enough.
He snarled in anger, pulling the darkness back into himself. Then he threw his weight down on me, his body crushing mine into the mattress as I twisted beneath him, searching for leverage, searching for anything.
And then I felt it.
A snap.
The right shackle gave way with a shriek of metal, and my arm came free. I swung it up instinctively, the broken chain following through with brutal momentum.
The impact was sickeningly satisfying.
My knuckles collided with his nose, and the jagged edge of the chain tore across his face.
The motion slicing deep beneath his eye and splitting the skin through his eyebrow.
Black fluid, thick and viscous like tar, poured from the cut on his face and his broken nose.
The sight made me screech in horror, my voice raw.
He reeled back with a snarl of pain, clutching his face, the blowtorch clattering to the floor. The blue flame sputtered once, then went out.
“ARRRHHH!” he roared, seizing the hand I had just struck him with.
He lifted his body off me slightly, still straddling me but hovering so that none of his weight pressed down.
Then, with a vicious yank, he wrenched my arm across my body, nearly tearing it from its socket.
The movement flipped me over until I was face down on the bed, one arm twisted painfully behind my back while the other was still pinned beneath me, locked tight in the unbroken shackle.
The heavy weight of him settled fully on my back.
My lungs fought for air as I turned my head to the side, pressing my cheek against the damp mattress to breathe.
From the corner of my eye, I could see his knee digging into the bed beside me, anchoring his balance, and the leg that pinned my arm in place.
Cool air rushed across my exposed skin as he yanked my shirt up, the other gripping the back of my neck with brutal control.
Then I heard it.
The hiss, the spark, the roar.
The blowtorch had ignited again.
I bucked beneath him, desperate, but the weight of his body crushed me into stillness. Panic clawed at my throat, but his voice drowned it out, venomous and resolute.
“These aren’t scars at all,” he growled, his tone trembling with fury.
“They connect you to him, connect you to his world!”
“No, Riley, I…” The words broke apart and left my lips as the pain came instantly.
A white-hot agony unlike anything I had ever known seared through me as the flame kissed my back.
It wasn’t pain that built slowly; it was pain that devoured, pain that screamed through every nerve and shattered every breath.
My scream tore free before I could stop it, echoing off the walls, and vibrating through the steel and the stone. The smell of burning flesh filled the room, sharp and sickening. I could no longer feel where my body ended, and the fire began.
And then, just as suddenly as it came, the pain changed. It dulled, fading into something distant, unreachable. As though my body could no longer process it, or my mind had retreated too far to register it.
The world blurred.
Riley’s voice became a hum, low and meaningless, swallowed by the roar in my ears. My vision bled into black, and I thought, faintly, absurdly, that maybe this time I wasn’t coming back.
It wasn’t death by a Myth's claws or teeth like I always thought it would be, though. No, it was by my best friend’s hands.
The darkness folded over me like a tide and suddenly something erupted in the room. A crash so loud I didn’t know if the house was collapsing around us.
The last thing I heard was screaming, only this time…
It wasn’t me.