42. Artemis
42 ARTEMIS
I must’ve passed out or been dragged into oblivion by the drug.
But waking up is worse, because there’s a fabric bag over my head.
Every inhale pulls it against my lips and nose, making it hard to get a true deep breath.
As a result, I hyperventilate.
I can only focus on that, my frantic breathing and the blood rushing in my ears.
White spots dance in front of my eyes.
The bag flies off my head.
It’s in the grip of a man who is at once foreign and familiar.
Dark hair that’s recently been buzzed short, cold blue eyes.
Beauty still clings to him, although maybe it’s just my perception that’s warped.
He grips my chin, tilting my head up.
“As much fun as it would be to see you pass out, we need to have a chat. So slow it down, Madden. Deep breaths, now.”
With the bag off, the oppressive, claustrophobia removed, it’s easier to do that.
To follow his direction and slow everything down.
As soon as my chest loosens, and that crushing panic abates, he releases me.
I’m bound to a chair.
My wrists are secured behind my back, my ankles attached to the legs.
I jerk, testing the hold, and Gabriel laughs in my face.
He’s so close, I can’t tell much else about the room.
I can’t seem to look away from the madman in front of me.
My muscles tremble.
“Still weak,” he says.
He’s got a hard-shell case on a chair behind him, and the gleam of different bottles under the fluorescent lighting speaks of terrible things.
“Kade handed you over. How do you feel about that?”
I narrow my eyes.
“Betrayal has never sat well with you.” He approaches again, leaning in and bracing his hands on the arms of the chair.
His face comes in close to mine.
He has a bandage across his nose.
“Kade gave you up to save Reese Avery. Did he tell you that before he stabbed you in the back?”
“He apologized,” I say stiffly.
“And I have a feeling it was more your fault than his.”
Gabriel laughs.
“Yes, yes, it was all my fault. I didn’t give him much of a choice, did I? The cocktail I gave Reese… well, it’s designed to interact with those pesky drugs they give to bring patients out of comas. It just dragged him deeper into the depths of his own mind.” He pauses, examining me.
“There’s something beautiful about that, don’t you think? It was a nasty concoction to begin with, everything crafted to put him under for a long time. But it worked perfectly.”
“So what he said was right.” I sigh.
“Reese wouldn’t wake up without you fixing it.”
“Giving him the correct combination of drugs to unlock his mind? Correct. It’s like a key to the cage trapping him in his own body. Delightful to watch you all moan and squirm…” He leans in even closer.
We’re nose to nose. “How I love to watch you moan and squirm.”
“So what’s your plan with me?” I demand.
He smiles.
“Well, that’s simple, dear Artemis. We’re going to reminisce about the good old days.”
That does not sound promising.
He nods encouragingly.
“Yes, yes, exactly right. Here.”
He moves aside, and I get my first good glimpse at my surroundings.
So focused on him, I didn’t look around when I should’ve.
We’re in the amphitheater at Terror.
My heart sinks. We’re somewhere in the middle of the rows, positioned above the dark stage.
This booth has been cleared of seats.
It’s just the chair I’m tied to and the one he has that hard case sitting on.
He moves the case to the floor and drags it closer, sitting right beside me.
“Begin!” he calls.
The stage lights turn on with a bang, someone, somewhere throwing a heavy switch to illuminate them.
The stage seems to almost glow white for a second, and I blink rapidly to allow my eyes to adjust. It’s then that the curtain on the far side is pushed aside, and someone is shoved through.
“Oh!” Gabriel leans in to me, his lips at my ear.
“Oh, do you know her?”
I stare.
I do know her.
“The woman…” My mouth is dry.
“She helped me get you out.”
“Correction,” he snarls.
“She was supposed to help you get us out, and she failed to protect us.”
I dip my head.
His fingers curl in my braid, and he jerks my head back up.
“What do you think her punishment should be?”
The woman stumbles around the stage.
She’s in white lingerie, her body pale and emaciated.
I could count her ribs.
Her shoulder blades stick out, and her skin is practically translucent.
“I think she’s been punished enough,” I answer carefully.
“Perhaps you should let her go.”
He laughs.
It’s loud enough to draw her attention.
Her glazed eyes coast over us without recognition.
“Here are some options,” he says.
“We could stab her in the gut and watch her bleed out in the corner while we continue our game. Or you could choose to kill her now and put her out of her misery.”
I bristle.
“Excuse me?”
He reaches down, pushing up my pant leg.
The knife I always keep on me slides out of its sheath easily.
Without warning, he presses the blade to my side.
Then keeps going.
The knife bites, entering my body slowly.
Everything flashes white-hot inside me, and pain chases it.
I clench my jaw against the scream rising up in my throat, and only a lone whimper escapes past my teeth.
I can’t control my hands from spasming, clenching on the arms of the chair, until he stops.
He leaves the blade there.
It protrudes from my side, but my mind cannot comprehend it.
If my hands were free, I’d yank it out and stab him with it.
Gabriel examines my face, then reaches up and swipes his thumb across my brow.
“Sweat,” he says, more to himself than me.
“Interesting.”
His attention swings back to the woman I had to bribe, nearly a decade ago, to help me.
She worked in the bowels of Terror.
It took weeks of watching the place to figure out who worked in the building, and even longer to convince her to help.
In the end, it wasn’t her moral compass that made the decision.
It was the money I shoved at her.
He makes some sort of motion, a sideways ticking of his finger, and a man with a bandana covering the lower half of his face strides out of the shadows.
He grabs the woman by the back of the neck and forces her to her knees.
He drives a knife into her back.
The scream the woman releases is earth-shattering.
It goes straight into me, and I yank against the constraints.
She falls forward, on her hands and knees, and tries to shuffle away.
Her legs don’t work, though.
She can barely drag herself away from him, her fingernails digging into the platform.
“Got her in the spine,” he whispers in my ear.
“Even if she survives this, I don’t think she’ll walk again. Poor bird.”
He clucks.
“I don’t see the point of this.” My voice rasps like I was screaming, even though I didn’t make a sound.
“You’ve held a grudge this whole time?”
“No.” He taps the knife handle.
The pain radiates through my stomach, the blade shifting, and I groan.
“But I met someone who incited violence in me. Who made it possible.” He raises his hand, another signal, and then he pinches my chin and forces me to see who next comes through the curtain.
The figure stumbles before they make it to the edge of the stage lights.
I lean forward, straining, even as the knife moves again and my body screams to stop.
Antonio steps into the spotlight and lifts a hand to block the glare.
He first looks to the woman coughing up blood in the corner, then to us.
Recognition flares, then horror, across his face.
“No,” I choke out. “No, please.”
Gabriel claps.
“I love choices, don’t you? You or him, Artemis? You get to pick. Who to save? Who to sacrifice?”
My heart breaks a thousand different ways, because there’s no way I can’t choose him.
Tears fill my eyes, and unlike in the hospital, they spill down my cheeks without restraint.
“Don’t,” Antonio calls.
He moves forward, his expression stern and familiar and full of fear.
“Don’t you dare pick me, Tem.”
I can’t speak.
“Oh?” Gabriel’s breath hits my ear.
“A little needling, then.”
He slides the knife out.
I scream. It hurts worse than it did going in, the pain growing until I’m nearly blind with it.
But he drives it back in.
A different spot, carefully found, and my voice just gets louder.
It shreds, and I thrash in place.
My vision flickers, the pain almost overwhelming.
“I’m curious how you convinced a Terror guard to betray his employers. Was it his guilty conscience? Money? After all these years, I was never able to figure it out.” His breath hits the side of my face, but his words pull me away from passing out.
“He was solace when I was in there, Artemis. The only friendly face. But he was still the one left holding the key to my cage at the end of the day.”
No .
“He’s not who you’re making him out to be, Gabriel.”
He hops up.
I barely track him moving down the row, then the aisle.
He practically skips down to the stage, where he stops just in front of Antonio.
He towers over the older man.
My heart lurches.
“Bring her down here,” he calls suddenly.
The man who’s clearly helping him, or working for him, comes up the aisle.
He cuts me free of the chair and lifts me.
He ignores the knife blade stuck in my stomach, although every fucking step vibrates through me.
He carries me down to the stage and drops me on my feet.
My knees buckle, but I somehow stay standing.
Somehow, even though the pain coursing through me is unlike any I’ve known before.
My hands are still bound behind my back.
But then a knife slices through that restraint, too.
My hands flutter around the handle of the knife protruding from my stomach.
The war between needing it out and knowing I shouldn’t move it rages in my head.
Gabriel watches me with a small smile.
He enjoys chaos and destruction.
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” He comes closer and, without warning, draws the blade from my skin.
Again.
It’s agony .
I go down to my knees.
Hard .
My throat locks up tight, not letting a single sound out.
At least I can press my hands to the wounds.
Both of them. Blood drips and oozes out, more with every beat of my heart.
Kade’s sweatshirt is soaked through in a matter of seconds, and blood stains my hands.
Suddenly, the knife at my throat makes me pause.
Gabriel grips my hair and stands behind me, the edge of the knife pressing into my skin.
There’s a prick of pain—a drop in the bucket—and wetness rolls down my throat.
“Antonio,” Gabriel says.
“Such a pleasure to see you again, old man.”
Antonio grunts.
He’s pale, frazzled.
More scared than I’ve ever seen him.
Unflappable Antonio.
He stepped in and protected me when I was fresh out of Terror, vulnerable and flayed open.
“I’m going to give you both a moment to talk over this opportunity. The chance for one of you to walk out of here alive.” He pauses.
“Well, perhaps not walk… but you’ll be alive. Isn’t that kind?”
“Like how Reese is alive?” My voice does not sound like the sure, confident woman I pretend to be on a regular basis.
It sounds more broken than anything.
Gabriel brightens. “What a good idea, Artemis. A trade. One of you sticks a knife in your heart, and the other gets a little shot. It’s like taking a ride. Around and around you’ll go. When it stops, nobody knows.”
He takes the knife, dripping my blood across the stage, and grabs his kit.
He prepares a syringe, recaps it, and brings it back.
He sets it between us, along with the knife, and winks at me.
“We’ll shoot anyone who comes out,” he warns, his expression serious for a split second.
“And if you haven’t decided when I return, we’ll shoot you both.” A broad grin overtakes his face, his whole body language changing and tone lightening.
“Good luck!”
He leaves, taking his henchman with him.
The woman in the corner is silent—dead, maybe.
She was going to die.
There’s a pool of blood under her.
Antonio shifts, and I tear my gaze away from the woman.
I focus on him.
“How’d they get you here?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. There’s at least twenty feet between us.
Ten to the knife and syringe.
A good lunge wouldn’t do it.
My head spins. I just need to get to the knife before him.
“He said he had you,” Antonio says quietly.
“I was already here. The power went out, and suddenly he was in my office, in the dark, telling me all the things he was going to do to you if I didn’t come with him.”
“Please. I know what you’re thinking?—”
“You don’t. I should’ve done better by him, Artemis. This is more my fault than yours.”
He says I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I know he’s going to go for the knife.
He’s unharmed, everything in place.
Gabriel didn’t have to rough him up to get him here—Antonio came because of me.
He walked into this place, this familiar place, with the knowledge that he might not walk out.
We’re not delusional.
We both know that Terror still lives in the heart of this building.
And we’ve been desperate to try to hide it, to cover it up with paint and gilded edges, but it doesn’t work like that.
"Artemis.” He’s steady. So fucking steady.
I blink, and he’s got both the knife and syringe in his hand.
Another blink, and he’s kneeling in front of me. I’m still on my knees. In all this time, I haven’t managed to move. Hadn’t tried. My limbs are heavy, the blood seeping between my fingers. I’ve got no fight left, except for the desire for Antonio to walk out of here alive.
“I don’t regret saving them,” he says to me. “And I do not regret saving you. Because you saved me, too.”
My eyes burn. He’s gripping both so tightly, his knuckles white and hands trembling.
“Don’t do it,” I beg him. I latch on to his arm, staining his jacket with blood. “I need you.”
He rolls up my sleeve and slides the needle into my arm. A sob bursts out of me, and I fall forward. He catches me, putting my forehead on his shoulder, as his thumb depresses the plunger. He waits a moment, then shifts me onto my side. All the way down, until my head touches the floor.
“Close your eyes,” he says. “I don’t want you to see this.”
I can’t.
The drug is already latching on, making it harder to think. I try to reach for him, and my hand barely trembles along the floor.
He turns the knife around, the point aimed at his chest. Under the ribs, angled high.
No, no, no.
I can’t lose him.
I can’t look away.
The drug is dragging me down into ice water. Everything is cold, nothing else matters. I lose my body in the process. Just a floating consciousness trying to figure out how to fix this, how to stop him from killing himself.
He grits his teeth, hands shaking, and glances around. He says something in Italian under his breath. Maybe a plea or a prayer, but either way, there’s no one riding in to save us.
“I love you, Artemis. See you on the other side.”
I try to scream, but my vocal cords aren’t responding. Nothing is.
With that, he drives the knife into his chest.
TO BE CONTINUED…