Chapter 48
“Under no circumstances should you make any deals with creatures that show signs of intelligence, entities of unknown origin, or unclassified beings. Should you be offered a deal or bargain, notify your HR team immediately.”
Entity Employee Handbook: Warden Edition
Her head ached. The skull-splitting pain lanced down her neck and drew a hiss through her teeth as she tried to look around.
Alexys was knelt on the ground, her arms tied behind her back, her ankles bound tightly together.
Before her was a stone table. The surface was completely smooth and stained nearly black with layers of dried blood that spilled down the sides and onto the dirt floor. On top of the stone slab was Nic.
His glasses were gone, no doubt lost in the scuffle to get them there.
His pants were ripped at the knees, the skin raw and bleeding beneath.
His once-white shirt was covered in dust and dirt from being dragged through the mine.
He looked at her, gray eyes nearly glowing with fear in the lantern light.
Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest. The familiar feeling of panic, her closest companion on this trip, reared its head at the edge of her consciousness. She struggled to breathe, to hold the panic at bay while her mind raced to understand what she was seeing.
All those near-death experiences, all those times they should’ve died but didn’t, and they still ended up here.
Death at the hands of a deranged mountain cult.
It was all too much. Alexys’s panic mounted as one of the members stepped toward Nic, clutching in her hand an obsidian blade nearly as long as her forearm.
“No!” Alexys cried. “Please don’t, not him, please!” She was desperate. “You only need one, right? Just one sacrifice for your protection spell or whatever you’re doing?”
A younger man looked back at her. A confused scowl twisted his otherwise forgettable features. “You wanna take his place?”
“Yes, please. Take me, instead.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Alexys couldn’t look at Nic as she begged, “It’s all my fault, please, let me make this right.”
“Alexys, don’t you dare!” Nic barked, thrashing against his bindings. “She doesn’t mean it, just let her go, she won’t tell anyone about this.” His voice broke as he shouted.
One of the cult members forced a shred of fabric into Nic’s mouth, silencing his protests.
Alexys was grateful for it. She couldn’t let him talk her out of it. She needed the absolution. If anyone deserved to die there that night, it was her. Maybe, in some way, that would make up for Elliot. For everything.
“Please, let him go,” Alexys begged again. “Use me as your sacrifice, and let him go. I won’t fight, I promise.” She choked on her words, nearly blinded by her tears.
Her entire life, she’d tried to honor her dad’s legacy.
Alexys was so proud of the work he had done as a Warden, and all she really wanted was to feel close to him.
Wasn’t that why she joined Entity? Wasn’t that why she had such a chip on her shoulder?
Despite it all, in that moment, on her knees begging to be sacrificed, she’d never felt closer to him.
She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he would have done the same.
He wouldn’t have allowed a coworker to die on his watch.
He would have done everything in his power to save them.
And that was exactly what Alexys would do. Save Nic, her colleague, her friend.
The tight ropes rendered her hands and feet nearly numb, and an icy coldness began to ache painfully in her fingertips. Her voice was barely a whisper, but her gaze was resolute. “Please. Just let him go. I’ll do whatever you want,”
“You value your life so little?” The auburn-haired woman sneered, a nasty thing filled with a malice that Alexys was sure colored her very soul black. “Aren’t you a pathetic pair.”
Alexys looked back to Nic. It was a horrible mistake.
Nic’s face was wet with tears. His eyes were red-rimmed, shining a brilliant mercurial silver in the lamplight. He shook his head at her, fighting against the bonds holding him. He finally managed to spit out the gag, his breaths tearing raggedly from him, horribly loud in the quiet space.
“Don’t you dare,” he shouted at her. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
The sound echoed off the walls and drew the attention of the others. They stopped their altar preparations and watched the macabre standoff.
“Don’t do this Alexys, please.” Nic choked on the words, his chest rising and falling with frantic breaths.
His eyes held hers with an emotion she couldn’t name and couldn’t look away from.
“If you would just listen to me for once in your life, you could survive this. I don’t care about me.
I don’t care as long as you make it. I need you to make it. ”
“I’m sorry, Nic. I can’t.” A sob caught in her chest. “I can’t let another person die because of me.”
“It’s not your fault, I’ve told you that. None of this is! Stop trying to be a martyr!”
“It can’t be you. You’re good, Nic. You’re so good, and I’m—I can’t …” Alexys broke off as another sob shook her body. Her chest burned with it. If anyone made it out of this alive, it had to be Nic. He wouldn’t have even been here if she had just …
“Enough. This is pathetic.”
Alexys’s gaze snapped to the auburn-haired woman whose name she wished she remembered if only to curse it with every stabbing beat of her heart.
She thrashed against the two people who took hold of her.
Alexys wanted to dig her nails into the woman’s flawless, ivory skin.
To make her spill a drop of blood for every second Elliot had been gone.
To claw the sneer from her face. The sheer strength of her rage and desperation stole her breath.
“The moonlight’s fading,” the woman said. “It’s gotta be now.” She took the obsidian dagger from the other cultist standing beside the altar. The black blade glittered in the firelight. Alexys’s fingers itched to take it from her and kill her before she had the chance to use it.
The woman sneered at her again. Her cruel eyes desired nothing but to inflict pain on the people around her, starting with Alexys.
“Take me.” Alexys’s words were a desperate plea as her tears ran hot and angry. “If you hate me so much, take me instead.”
The woman clicked her tongue, both mocking and rebuking. “So eager to die.” She took a step toward Alexys, blade shining dangerously between her skeletal fingers.
Alexys felt a sickening mixture of triumph and desperation. A rushing sound started to fill her ears. Her vision blurred. She was going to die.
Alexys scrambled for mental purchase. To come to terms with her inevitable death before the cultist got too close. Thoughts of her mom, of her brother, of everyone she loved and cared for swept through her, but she couldn’t move. She knelt, frozen on the ground, as everyone in the room stilled.
“Agnes.” The man with the scar-like wrinkles and gray hair stepped forward.
Alexys marked the name, engraved it on the wretched part of her heart that promised retribution if ever given the opportunity: Agnes.
If they made it out alive, Alexys would come back for her.
Agnes and the older man seemed to have a silent conversation, one Alexys couldn’t begin to interpret. Agnes scowled at her then turned on her heel and stalked back toward the altar.
“No.” The hold on her arms tightened as Alexys jerked. “No, no! Take me!”
Agnes tossed one more venomous smile over her shoulder but didn’t stop walking toward Nic.
The six remaining people gathered in a loose circle around the altar and began to chant three lines in repetition:
“Of ourselves, for ourselves. To conceal and protect. For the deal that was struck.”
Alexys thrashed, begging and pleading to take his place. None of them listened.
I can save him.
Silas’s voice cut through the chanting like a shard of ice. Alexys froze. That icy voice was so close, her gaze darted around the room, but she couldn’t see him.
The chanting grew louder. Her heart raced. She screamed at the cultists to stop.
Let me, Alexys. Tell me you want me to, and I will save him.
Alexys choked on her gasping breaths. She couldn’t think, couldn’t understand anything more than her desperate need to save Nic. She could see him, barely, in a gap between the cultists.
He was pressed tight against the stone table, his face turned toward her.
He had stopped crying, tear-tracks pale against his dirty cheeks.
His eyes locked on hers, and she couldn’t look away.
She was drowning in the terror held in his gaze.
The terror he tried to hide in reassurance.
A reassurance for her, as if this wasn’t all her doing.
As if he wouldn’t be home safe, away from this horror, if it wasn’t for her.
Nic started to mouth something to her, but someone stepped between them and blocked her view. Alexys felt the loss of his gaze like a physical blow.
Make the deal, Alexys.
Agnes raised the obsidian dagger high in the air.
Alexys’s frantic gasps clouded the air. Her fingertips ached with the cold, and a layer of frost began to creep along the ground, her kneeling body at its center.
“Please,” Alexys whispered. “Please save him.”
The chanting reached its loudest, the cacophony of voices echoing off the walls and rebounding around her. The blade flashed in the lamplight then sliced through the air.
With sickening ease, the blade sank into Nic’s chest.
Alexys screamed.
Silas laughed.
And the stone altar shattered.