Chapter 21
Ihave nightmares. Plural.
I’m literally haunted in my dreams, and I can’t even say by what. Is it a foreign entity that wants to kill me? Is it me from another universe? Is it pain itself? Whatever it is, it doesn’t always show up the same way, which somehow makes it worse.
From time to time, I wake up with this gnawing paranoia, like every second I spend asleep is part of some dangerous setup, and I’m never actually safe.
Which is, in a way, almost funny. Because I’m not safe in the waking world either.
The moment I open my eyes for real, two other pairs of eyes are already on me. Watching. Focused. So intensely it feels almost unreal, like I dragged the nightmare into daylight and it simply traded shapes.
“Hi,” Hailey says. “A bad dream?”
“Uh, yeah,” I murmur, pushing myself upright and rubbing at my forehead.
The first movement I make tells me the van is already in motion. The narrow slit that passes for a window shows clear blue sky sliding by.
“We’re already moving?” I ask. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
They exchange a look, and the little flicker of it makes something click in my head.
Lila is awake.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her conscious.
I shift my gaze to her and notice her whole body is vibrating with restless energy.
I don’t even know if shaking is the right word.
She jitters, like her nerves are plugged directly into a live wire.
Her fingers keep tapping against her knees, and her eyes refuse to settle on any one point for more than a heartbeat.
Her blonde hair brushes her collarbones, and she has a strand caught between her teeth, worrying it like she can chop it with her teeth.
I clear my throat.
“Hi. I’m Skye,” I tell her gently. “We don’t know each other.”
“Mhm,” she says.
That’s it, and honestly, fair. If I were her, I wouldn’t be eager to chat with a stranger either. I’m new, I’m from the outside, and I can’t even begin to guess what’s ricocheting around inside her head. Even so, whether she realizes it or not, I might be her best shot at getting out of this.
I turn back to Hailey.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I ask again.
“We don’t wake each other up,” she says.
“What? Why?”
“When you’re asleep is the only time you’re not here.” She says it like it should be obvious, like it’s a kindness. “I thought you will be happy.”
Goddamn it.
Why, in all the torture of my nightmares, couldn’t I have gotten one sharp enough to snap me fully awake. Instead I floated up and down the surface, half-waking and slipping under again, never reaching the point where my consciousness caught up with reality.
I should have been awake to see what happened. Did the killer change the tire? Are we still in the city? What did I miss while I was out?
But it’s pointless trying to explain that sleep matters less to me than information. In their world, that kind of thinking doesn’t translate anymore.
So I do what I can. I push myself up and inch toward the tiny window, needing something, anything, that might give me a clue. The van hits a bump and my stomach lurches. I fling out my hands on instinct, catching myself against the wall before I can topple over.
“Why aren’t your hands tied?” Hailey asks.
Oh, shit. Right.
I’m grateful my face isn’t aimed directly at her as I close my eyes for a moment, collecting myself. Then I glance over my shoulder.
“I bit through the zip ties,” I say.
“With your teeth?” she presses.
“Yes.”
I don’t even know if that’s humanly possible, but what else am I supposed to tell her? I’m not about to disclose that a fucking Grim Reaper cut them with her scythe.
I hold Hailey’s gaze, waiting for the disbelief to land. She just stares back at me for a beat, then drops her eyes to her own zip ties like she’s trying to measure them against the strength of a jaw.
“Do you have fake teeth or something?” she asks eventually.
“Yup,” I reply. “Had, um… had an accident in my youth. Needed to replace all my front ones.”
“Fucking lucky…” she mutters.
The way she says it sends a rush of adrenaline straight through me, and my thoughts start sprinting, a thousand miles an hour.
“But one is my limit, I think,” I add quickly. “I think something broke in my jaw.”
I cannot have her thinking I can bite hers off too. As much as I want to help her, I honestly do not think I would be able to do that.
“Yeah, I figured as much,” Hailey says. “When I tried to bite off mine, I chipped a tooth. I heard the one before me, the girl Lila knew, actually lost one.”
Okay. I really did not need to know that. My empty stomach churns at the image, and I can already feel nausea creeping up. And they aren’t done. If anything, the topic seems to invigorate Lila. She wraps her hands around her knees and shakes her head hard.
“Yeah, the blood was everywhere,” she says. “I still have the stains on my back.”
She starts to turn around to show me, but I stop her before she can.
“I believe you,” I say quickly. “That must have been awful.”
“She left shortly after.”
Left here means… died. The girl died shortly after.
A chill skates down my spine.
“I’ve been here way longer than she was,” Lila continues. “She was making lots of trouble, so they got rid of her faster.”
I blink.
“Anyway, I wonder when they’ll give us something to eat…” Hailey says.
I go stiff for a beat, not sure what to do with any of it.
They have to be terrified. They have to be traumatized.
But it sounds like things have been bad for so long that numbness is the only way they can breathe.
They talk like everything is fine, like we’re swapping gross stories at lunch instead of surviving in the back of a moving cage.
I turn to the window again. Canopies of trees blur past against the pale sky. We’re completely out of the city now, and the thought hooks into my ribs. Does that mean the man really did change the tire?
I can’t stop fixating on it. I need to know. Part of me wants to believe he didn’t, wants to believe we’ll have to stop somewhere, that my guys will have more time to find us and drag us out of this. But what if he did? How much longer will this last?
An indefinite amount of time later, we jolt over a rut hard enough that my teeth click. The vibrations get worse, less constant and more uneven, like we’re on some forgotten dirt road, except the slight curve of the van’s floor says otherwise.
I think the rim is actually giving out.
Somewhere outside, behind the hushed voices of Hailey and Lila, a grinding metallic shriek cuts through the air.
It’s that nails-on-bone sound, a shrill scraping of aluminum against asphalt.
A smell starts seeping in, too, sharp and bitter like burnt metal.
Then a loud pop. The van jerks sideways so hard my shoulder slams into the metal wall.
“What happened?” Hailey asks.
It carries on for another couple of minutes, and then he kills the engine. The quiet drops in instantly.
That’s it.
It’s true.
The rim did give out.
My breathing turns quick and shallow.
“A miracle happened,” I reply.
Cassian was right. If only he were near me, I’d kiss him right now. I feel the door up front open, and I know the driver is out of the van.
With the amount of space the three of us have back here, there is no way he keeps his tools in the front. That has to be what those cabinets are for. Whatever he needs only sometimes, he stores back here, and the locks are there because he is not worried we will find a way to reach them.
I can’t know for sure, but I am willing to bet he will open the back to grab something. Which means if I can make it look like I am still tied up, and I pick the right moment to strike when he is close, I can free myself for real.
My heart rages in my chest. I shoot a look at Hailey and Lila.
“Don’t snitch me out,” I whisper. “I’m going to save us.”
I hurry to the spot where I woke up when Rhea first appeared, find the shredded remains of my plastic zip tie, and loop it around my wrists so it leaves a dark line on my skin.
Then I tuck my knees in close and pray he is too focused on the tire to notice the tiny detail that the ties are not biting down hard enough to hurt.
I can hear the girls breathing. I can hear my own heartbeat. I can hear the faint plink-plink of cooling metal.
This is it. This is it. This is it.
Then the hatch opens. The man repeats the exact same thing he did yesterday, sliding the gun in first.
“Don’t you dare fucking move,” he grinds out.
Hailey and Lila freeze, and so do I. This time, though, he doesn’t seem to have as much patience. The threat lasts only a moment before he pulls the gun back out, shuts the hatch, and then opens the door for real.
Light floods in, so bright it burns. It pours over all three of us until I can barely keep my eyes open.
Motherfucker.
He’s right there.
He leans in halfway, boots scraping dirt as his shadow swallows half the space. Through squinted eyes, I see him holding the gun in one hand while the other guides a key into the cabinet’s lock. The key clicks. He bends, yanks the cabinet door open, and the gun dips just enough.
That’s all I need.
I lunge.
My shoulder slams into his ribs, and the gun jerks sideways. He grunts, his weight pitching back.
Take this, you son of a bitch.
His finger squeezes the trigger as he stumbles. The shot cracks into the sky.
I don’t think. I grab whatever my hand lands on in the cabinet and swing. It connects with his temple. His body lurches, then folds, collapsing halfway into the dirt. The gun tumbles from his grip and skitters to the ground a couple of steps away.
I dive for it, but my knees skid and my palms slide through dust and gravel. He’s already rolling over. Blood leaks down his face. His hand clamps around my ankle hard enough to jar my bones. I kick him in the shoulder and lunge again, stretching for the gun until my fingers scrape cold metal.
Got it.