Chapter Thirty-One
RAVEN
AS I begin to stir, it doesn’t take me long to realize it’s still dark.
And cold. God, it’s almost freezing in here, little puffs of white escaping from my nose as I breathe.
I sense more than see Knox beside me, his breath low in sleep.
Wondering what woke me, I turn to my side to look towards the clock.
Through the dark without my glasses, I can just make out the numbers, but I’m only processing the meaning when a shadow catches my eye. It shifts closer to me like a dark spotlight.
My tired, sluggish brain doesn’t understand.
The shadow stops beside me.
The shadow speaks in tones too low and grumbling to understand what it says.
I open my mouth to respond, wondering at the oddness of this dream.
A flash in the dark catches the red light from the clock.
I don’t have time to process the flash when the most extraordinary sensation explodes in my left shoulder.
I don’t register the feeling as pain. For one impossible second, it’s only pressure. A horrible, crushing pressure buried somewhere in my shoulder.
Then the blade comes free and something ruptures inside me.
The sensation is so violent my brain cannot keep up. Muscles and tendons wrench apart around the wound, and suddenly wet heat floods down my shoulder and over my chest.
My right hand comes up on instinct, shoving at the shadow in front of me. I don’t even know if I make contact. I only know that the shape recoils, slipping backward into the darkness.
For half a heartbeat, I think it’s over, that my eyes will open once more to a bright morning and nothing more than a sweaty forehead from this horrible dream.
Then it comes back.
The blade flashes red.
Red from the clock’s dim light. Red from my blood.
I see it coming for my face and throw my arm up.
Steel bites into my forearm instead.
A wet, sickening burn travels through me as the blade slices across my flesh. My fingers jerk open. My whole arm goes numb before the pain catches up, bright and savage, shooting all the way through my body.
An awful gurgle crawls out of my throat.
Suddenly my lungs refuse to cooperate. Every breath comes in shallow and ragged, dragging against the panic clawing its way up my chest.
The shadow moves again.
And somewhere beneath the roaring in my ears, I hear myself make that awful sound again—half gasp, half choke—as the shadow lifts the knife for another strike.
The flash of the blade is my only warning as the shadow comes back for another piece of me.
And another. And another.
Pain like a red-hot iron being pressed to my skin erupts all over my arms and upper body.
I reach up to stop it, but all the strength drains from my left side, my body and mind falling into a heavy stupor where pain no longer registers.