Epilogue
Emily Rosewood
Screams, muffled at first, grow clearer. Panic, all because of that rat, Jane. The bitch was always screaming about something. You would think some creature acting like a cute insect would shut her the fuck up.
Feet stomp on my head, driving me further into the ground. Saya’s hand… Saya’s hand! I let go, or did she? Crap, I can’t remember. One of us let go, and I found myself beside Holly. Someone steps on her head, and a gurgled scream comes from her.
I need to get up. I need to get up.
I push with my hands, but pain pulses into the side of my head. Every muscle in my body turns to jelly, collapsing into the sea of bodies.
“Cole! Where is Emily?” Through the haze, Saya looks at me, but she’s not looking at me. She stares, bewildered, and as I go to raise my hand, fucking Jax grabs her arm. After a quick glance in my direction, he drags her away.
Don’t go. Blood slips down the corner of my mouth. Don’t go with him.
Insect noises return after the silence. Taking a breath in, I close my eyes. Lie still. Act dead. Act fucking dead. Don’t even breathe, Emily.
Heat and decay breathe down my neck, insect noises stinging my ears, and a low growl rumbles from its throat. A wet, sticky substance hits my face, and as I sense it near, a loud beeping comes from further away. “Clean it! You need to clean it, Jax!”
The insect noises fade, and I exhale deeply, breathing again. Except I can’t move. Nothing in my body works, and what used to be pain has gone numb.
Wait, am I fucking dying?
Darkness closes in on the dark grey static behind my eyes. Every breath in becomes slower as I breathe out, and the thud of my heart in my ears slows and deepens. No matter what I do, no matter how fast I want to breathe, my chest rises and falls two heartbeats slower than normal.
“Shit! There you are.”
Huh?
Fingers move through my knotted hair, lifting my head, only to hiss a breath. “Fuck, you’re dying.”
Yeah, no shit!
“This is gonna hurt, sweetcake.”
Sweetcake, what—Before my mind can return to what I have always seemed to avoid talking about, a sharp pain hits my temple, then sudden pain floods my insides.
I can’t move. I can’t fucking scream, or even open my eyes to stare at the monstrosity of a man doing this to me.
Instead, I am paralysed as my insides burn me alive.
It’s like something is moving inside me.
I open my eyes to flashing red. “WARNING! WARNING! THERE IS A VEGODIAN WITHIN THE PRAYER SANCTUARY! WARNING! WARNING!”
A what?
Heaviness closes my eyes, as if it wants to draw me back to sleep. I’m too tired for this shit. Mother, take me now.
Echoing sounds come from the right, and as my eyes are just about to close, the sound sharpens, and my eyes fly open.
Tubes connected to my body unhook, and a long, flatline beep pierces my ears.
My focus drops to my stomach when someone places a blood bag and another clear bag on it before moving around to the other side.
Whoever they are, their footsteps are panicked, but they are silent—as if they don’t want to talk.
Pressure settles on the bed, and arms hook beneath me, tucking under my legs and supporting my back. “Come, sweetcake. We need to hide.”
His face comes into focus. Soft blue eyes, dark blond hair in messy waves to his shoulders, stubble dusting his jaw and chin…
Cans fall from the shelf as he thrusts deeper inside of me—a rhythmic pattern, as one hand grabs my tit and the other rubs my clit frantically while I grip the shelf for any support. His tongue wets my ear, sucking on my lobe while he slams into me, ensuring his cock can go as deep as it can go.
“Fuck, you’re so soft, sweetcake,” he moans, grabbing my jaw and luring my mouth to his to shove his tongue deep into my mouth while I buckle under his rough fuck.
“You…” I croak, my throat hoarse and dry.
I want to move. Wiggle free from this Bleeder’s grip, but he doesn’t seem bothered by me as he thrusts the closet door open and steps inside with me, closing it behind him. As I open my mouth again, his grip tightens, eyes narrowing. The door swings open and hits the stopper with a shudder.
Looking away from him, I widen my eyes as I peer through the gaps in the wooden panelling. Red paints the hallway, and screams pop the bubble in my ears, ringing inside. My attempt to free myself from him turns into a desire to draw closer to something at least familiar.
A woman wearing a fox’s mask leans into the room, but I can’t tell what she’s doing until she faces the children, huddled together near the bloody bodies. “Come, children. You will be safe in here.”
Saya?
I open my mouth, wanting to know if that is my friend behind the mask, when my breath sharpens. This shadowy figure appears beside her. My eyes narrow further, my mouth snapping shut as his hand touches hers, and she doesn’t flinch.
Holy fuck, is this the nightwalker from the private room?
My mind reels, going into a thousand places, but I smile. That’s Saya. I know her monotone voice anywhere. I can’t believe the kids listened to her. She still sounds like a fucking robot.
“Other children will be hiding. When this is all over, I need you two to be strong for them,” the shadow creature says, and they listen to him. Why are they listening to him? Why aren’t they freaking out at the blood on the walls and the dead bodies on the—
The lure… Saya is now a nightwalker, and they’re using their powers to keep them complacent. I know, because my grandma told me! She’s always right about these myths.
As soon as the door closes, I face this fucking guy and croak out, “Bring them in here—now, fuckface.”
He grimaces, but opens the door anyway. The kids jump and reach for the exit.
“In here. Quickly!”
They look to each other, and without a word, run into the closet with us. Fuckface closes it again. We don’t talk. We don’t make a sound. We watch and wait.
“Any survivors!”
“Stay here,” fuckface whispers. My eyes open, and a groggy spell lifts as I notice the door to what looks like a hospital room swinging open and a flashlight sweeping through. The red lights stopped flashing some time ago, and everything plunged into darkness, like a power outage.
The children crawl further back into the closet, and the Bleeder opens the door, stepping out with me in his arms. The man at the entrance snaps his torch onto us. I wince at the harsh light before he settles it on the Bleeder’s face. “Ellis, what are you doing here?”
“I was watching over her when I heard the commotion and hid.”
“Pussy,” the other sneers.
He shrugs. “I’m alive, though. An alive slayer is better than a dead one.”
Slayer? Isn’t he a Bleeder?
The man lowers the torch and leans against the door with a sharp sigh. “It is a slaughterhouse down here. I’ve found so many dead bodies that their faces all look the same to me.”
This fuckface Ellis guy moves to the bed and rests me back on it. The man doesn’t seem to notice me. He looks out into the red hallway.
“How many casualties?” Ellis says.
“A lot. Fifteen doctors, twelve slayers, Leon’s wife, and all the children.”
My brow furrows. When I face Ellis, he glances in my direction and shakes his head. I bite my lip and lie back, pretending I want to go back to sleep. The man ignores me, as if I were a bug in the grand scheme of things.
“The children?” Ellis sighs sharply. “What the fuck.”
“Right,” the man scoffs. “I said the same thing when Dr Hill and Jaxton told me after quarantine here was lifted. Serun must have really hated the children. Cleaned them up good.”
I grip the sheet beneath me, and my hair prickles at the two children huddled inside the closet. Then I go back to the gentle push he gave them as he lured them into the room, telling the kids not to open the door.
One is lying, and I don’t want to think Saya would ever be okay with killing children. Fuck me, I’ve heard horror stories about what she’s done whenever anyone hinted at threatening Cole. Suffocation. A bleeding eye after she stabbed someone with her fork in the mess. She was violent.
“They are sending word to Daebroke,” the man keeps talking, as if he has word vomit. I’d never tell him a fucking secret.
“In Sylvar? Why?” Ellis steps closer to me, his hand finding mine and easing my muscles. A warning glint is in his eyes before he focuses on the man still overlooking the corridor. “No one disturbs the council there.”
“Well, when you kill children, you can, especially if all the children were slayers.” Cold blue eyes roll towards Ellis. “This is war, Ellis. Best get as many fucks as you can in. Dr Hill is breaking the treaty, and she wants Jax and Leon to lead us all in to burn it to the ground.”
Jax?… Now, why the fuck do I think he has something to do with this, the controlling pin-dick fucker?
The man nudges his head down the bloody corridor that smells like a feeding ground and says, “Speak of the slayer, and he shall arrive. Jaxton, what the fuck is happening down there?”
“It’s a fucking bloodbath.” My stomach drops as he comes into view. His focus snaps onto me, eyes widening a fraction before his brows pull together. I’ve seen it before—fucking a thousand times with Saya, and how he “acts” concerned.
“Shit, Em, you’re awake.” He shrugs past the slayer who hasn’t bothered to look in my direction and sits on the edge of the bed.
Ellis lets go of my hand, and I try, with all my willpower, not to spit in Jax’s face.
“We thought you wouldn’t make it, given your skull fracture, but you’re a fighter.
” He shakes his head and forces out a laugh that sounds forced.
“Fuck, when we saw you on the ground, we thought you were dead. There was so much blood.” Blue eyes settle on me. “Do you remember anything?”
This fucking guy…
I knit my brows and croak, “Nothing…I…” I shake my head and screw up my face as I pretend to think. “I remember the lights flashing red and running out of the room. Dan… He led me down the corridor.”
Jax leans in and nods. “Yeah, he did! That’s good. You remember some things that happened. Do you remember Saya closing the door on Manni? She freaked out before I could help her, and none of us wanted to open it afterwards.”
There are violent things I want to do to people, and there is Jax. This fuck-off fucking fuck fucker is trying to gaslight me! Saya would never do that to Manni—or any of us. She always supported, defended and sacrificed blood whenever we couldn’t bleed. She was a damn sacrificial lamb.
“Are you serious?” I choke out, my hands flying to my mouth as a bite of tears, more from rage, slip down my cheeks.
He leans in, his voice dropping. “She was controlled. The nightwalker she kept visiting was Serun, the Lord of the fucking Undercity. This whole time, he has controlled and manipulated her into becoming his consort. She entered the prayer sanctuary and destroyed Mother’s light so he could come in and kill everyone. ”
“What!”
Jax pulls away and nods. “We have a plan, though. We have a plan to bring her back. Do you reckon—”
The man by the door taps his knuckles on the wood. “Taryn is here. She wants to speak to you, Jaxton.”
A woman with dark hair and even darker, dilated eyes enters, wearing a bloodstained coat that used to be white. “The kid is awake and fucking panicking. He needs a familiar face now!”
“The kid?” I ask as Jax rises. “Cole? Is Cole here?”
“A few have survived. Laura, Bia—Julian, too. But rest up, and we can talk later!” He rushes out of the room, and the door closes behind them, leaving me with one problematic man instead of three.
A moment later, the closet opens, and the two children peek out.
What the heck am I going to do with them?