Chapter 32
ABYSS
Poppy
By the time I register I’m on the ground, my gun is in my grip as I absorb what I’m seeing.
A woman with blood—my blood—on her gloved hands staggers backward. She’s in strange robes, almost like a nun's but tighter, her hood pulled up. Her Leviathan mask hides her features, but I don’t give a fuck who she is as I train my gun on her head with a violently shaking hand.
POP!
The shot echoes through the night, missing her forehead by inches. It grazes her hood instead, carving a bloody line through her ear. She yelps and bolts, fleeing down the street, her silhouette outlined in the blinding headlights of oncoming traffic.
I fire three more shots. Pop, pop, pop, they sing.
She zigzags, avoiding them all.
Snarling, I surge up and fall back down, screaming as my own blade twists into my guts. My vision blackens before bursting bright white again as agony rages from my belly and bellows out my throat.
Time crawls, the pain numbing. I can’t feel my fingers. My lashes flutter as my eyes roll. The black blur lining my peripherals grows. It reaches for me with spindly, starless talons. Promising a touch as arctic as eternal winter only until I reach the dark abyss.
As I stare at death coming for me with a smile on its horrific face, all I can think is, Which circle of hell will I spend eternity in?
Shouts. I barely hear them over the ringing in my ears and the roaring in my blood. Fear closes my throat, choking me. All I can see is a single dark figure rushing toward me. Broad hands palm each side of my jaw, their warmth chasing the cold.
“Don’t you dare, Petit Diable,” Bronte growls. “No one gets to kill you but me.”
My snort comes out as a cough tasting of copper. “D-don’t threaten me with a g-good time.”
Several people hover behind him—my friends. Bax, pacing and nearly ripping out his golden surfer curls. Cas, on the phone as his obsidian eyes flit fearfully to me. Nik, holding Circe back as she keeps reaching for me.
Bronte tears my jacket and prods the bloody skin surrounding the blade jutting from my abdomen.
“What are y-you doing?” I rasp.
“Assessing.” He barely touches the knife, and I let out a shriek as pain bolts through me like lightning. “That’s staying in.”
“Is it b-bad?”
“No.” His voice shakes. He’s fucking terrified. “You’ll need stitches. Come on, let’s get you up.”
He bends my legs over his arm, folding my middle around the blade, and my answering scream nearly blacks me out.
“Shh,” he whispers in my ear. “You’re going to make my migraine worse than it already is.”
“F-fuck you very much.”
“That’s going to have to wait, I’m afraid.”
Bronte lifts me with him as he stands to his full, dizzying height. My head lolls, and I glimpse the pool of blood splattered across the pavement like a grisly child’s painting.
“By the f-fucking stars.”
“Don’t look.” He gently coaxes my head against his shoulder, shielding me from the sickening view. “It’s just a scratch.”
My eyelids lift slower with my next blink. Exhaustion settles into my bones like a warm blanket in the dead of winter.
“Poppy, don’t…”
Bronte’s voice fades out and tumbles back in as I’m jostled in the passenger seat of his car. He grinds gears, hissing curses as we soar through red lights.
“Mon roi?”
He glances at me, panic blackening his wildfire eyes. “Stay awake for me, ma reine.”
I try, but sleep wraps me in its cocoon and drags me down into the endless dark where I hear him murmur, “Je vais te ramener à la maison, Petit Diable. Always…”