Chapter Six #2
The cell is exactly as barren as that first glance suggested. No hidden doors. No convenient weaknesses in the stone. Nothing except the cot, four walls, a ceiling barely high enough to stand under, and that single grate near the top that probably leads nowhere helpful.
I’m studying the grate, trying to judge if it’s large enough to fit through, even if I could reach it.
But even if I could, I’m shackled, so what’s the use when I hear footsteps on the stairs.
Heavy and deliberate, each step measured with the kind of precision that suggests someone accustomed to moving through darkness without needing light to guide them.
The footsteps stop outside my door.
I back toward the far wall, putting as much distance as possible between myself and whoever is on the other side, my heart hammering so hard it hurts.
The lock doesn’t disengage, but I hear breathing through the gap between door and frame, slow and steady, like whoever’s out there has all the time in the world to stand and listen.
Then the viewing slot slides open with a metallic scrape that makes me flinch.
The ice man’s glowing eyes fill the opening, blue fire in darkness, studying me with intensity that makes my skin crawl.
He doesn’t speak
He simply watches…
And the silence stretches until I can’t stand it anymore. “What the hell do you want?” My voice comes out shakier than I’d like, but at least it’s not screaming.
“To see if you’re comfortable.” The words drip with sarcasm cold enough to frost. “Can’t have you getting too cozy down here. Heard the iron had a reaction.”
“Iron?” The question barely makes it past suddenly numb lips. “Why iron?”
His eyes narrow, studying me like I’ve said something revealing. “You really don’t know, do you? What you are? What you might be capable of?”
“I know exactly what I am!” Anger flares hot enough to burn through fear, at least temporarily.
“Human, mortal, nothing special except being in the wrong place at the absolutely worst possible time. And you’ve chained me like an animal because your weird fire liked me?
That’s insane! You’re insane! This whole fucking thing is insane! ”
“The flame hasn’t responded to anyone in decades.
” His voice drops to that sub-zero register, sending the temperature in the cell plummeting another five degrees.
“Certainly not to any human who’s wandered into our territory.
So, either you’re lying about what you are, or you’re ignorant of the abilities you possess.
Either way, until I know which, you stay exactly where I can control you. ”
Control me? Huh! Like hell, tyrant!
The viewing slot starts to slide closed, and I lunge forward before conscious thought approves the movement. “Wait! You can’t just leave me down here. I’m hurt. I need medical attention. At minimum, I need water and food and—”
“You’ll get what you need to survive!” His voice roars like a predatory animal, the huge door rattling with its intensity.
I scramble back a couple of steps, almost falling over my chains as the slot snaps shut, cutting off my view of those burning eyes.
“Nothing more. Nothing less. Learn to appreciate the distinction.” His tone is less aggressive now, but still loud, nonetheless.
His footsteps fade back up the stairs, leaving me alone again with nothing but weak light and growing terror for company.
I sink onto the cot, springs protesting with sounds that suggest they’ve carried too many bodies over too many years. The thin mattress does nothing to cushion stone beneath, but at least it’s off the floor, away from the cold that’s already trying to steal what little warmth my body maintains.
Time becomes meaningless in the absence of windows or clocks. Minutes might be hours. Hours might be days. The overhead bulb continues its weak flickering, providing just enough illumination to make the shadows worse, not better.
I try to sleep, but every time I close my eyes, I see the hunter’s neck bent at that impossible angle, his eyes wide and glassy with terror that didn’t fade even in death.
I hear his voice screaming about monsters and dragons, warnings I dismissed as trauma-induced ravings that turn out to be horrifically accurate.
Footsteps come again sometime later, heavy enough that I feel them before I properly hear them, the rhythm wrong in a way my body reacts to instantly.
Each step carries an accompanying sound I can’t quite place, metal dragging across stone, maybe, or something sharper, a scraping undertone that makes my skin tighten as it moves closer.
The small viewing slot slides open.
What looks back at me is not human.
Not even close.
The shape fills the narrow opening with a presence so dense it feels like pressure against my chest, hollow eyes set deep in a gaunt face that looks carved from starvation itself.
Skin is pulled tight over bone, stretched thin enough that every ridge and hollow stands out in stark relief, shadows shifting along its surface in ways that make my vision struggle to keep up.
The longer I look, the more those shadows seem to move on their own, as though the thing’s form isn’t entirely fixed, as though hunger has warped it into something that doesn’t obey the rules flesh is supposed to follow.
Its mouth parts slightly.
Teeth crowd into the space, too many of them, layered and uneven, all sharp in a way that makes my stomach twist. A cold wave rolls through me, not the physical chill I felt with the prez’s ice, but something deeper and more invasive, something that sinks past skin and muscle and settles directly into my nerves.
Oh God.
This must be Wreck.
He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. He simply watches me with those empty eyes that somehow still manage to convey appetite, a focused, consuming attention that makes it impossible to pretend I’m not the center of it.
As his gaze holds mine, something inside me shifts, loosens, and then begins to pull free.
Fear drains out of me in a slow, awful tide.
It isn’t a metaphor.
I can feel it happening, a steady siphoning sensation that starts behind my sore ribs and spreads outward, tugging at every instinct screaming for me to run. My heartbeat stutters, then accelerates, breath coming in shallow, uneven gasps as panic spikes, and with it, the pull intensifies.
The more terrified I become, the stronger the presence beyond the door feels, the air growing heavier, thicker, as though he’s drawing nourishment straight from my unraveling thoughts.
I try to look away.
I try to scream.
I try to do anything except sit frozen on the cot while a monster feeds on my terror through a narrow slot in a steel door.
But my body refuses to cooperate.
And my muscles lock, my breath catching painfully in my chest as my lungs forget the rhythm they’ve followed my entire life.
My vision blurs at the edges, spots dancing while my mind fractures under the certainty that this thing could take me apart without ever touching me.
That it could eat me slowly, not flesh first, but fear, sanity, will, leaving whatever remained to die afterward.
This is real.
The realization crashes over me harder than the fear itself. This isn’t speed, strength, or ice bending the laws of nature from a distance. This is something happening inside me, something I can’t shield against or reason away.
Monsters aren’t just real.
They can reach in and take pieces of you while you’re still breathing.
And then, just as suddenly as it began, it stops.
The pressure eases.
The pull releases.
Whatever had been clawing through my chest loosens its grip, and fear floods back into me all at once, crashing home in a violent rush that leaves me gasping.
My muscles unlock in stages, a tremor rippling through my body while sensation returns, breath shuddering in and out of lungs that finally remember how to work.
And the viewing slot slides shut.
The sound lands heavy in the silence, final and deliberate, and the absence that follows is dizzying, like stepping off a moving floor. I fold forward, my heart hammering, every nerve screaming now that it belongs to me again, shaking with the certainty that he didn’t just leave.
He let me go.
I drag in a harsh, broken gasp, lungs burning as they remember their job too late, while oxygen finally floods back into my system.
My hands shake violently, fingers curling in on themselves as I press them to my face, only registering the wetness when I pull them away and see tears streaked across my palms.
I don’t remember starting to cry.
The footsteps retreat down the corridor, heavy and unhurried, that same scraping sound trailing after them, and not once does Wreck say a word.
He doesn’t have to.
He’s already taken what he came for.
Time continues its meaningless march.
The bulb flickers, my ribs throb, and blood crusts in my hair. And slowly, so slowly, I almost don’t notice it happening, something inside me begins to shift.
Terror is exhausting.
Fear can only run at maximum intensity for so long before the body can’t sustain it.
The panic that had me ready to claw through stone with bare hands if it meant escape begins to bank, cooling into something harder, colder, more useful.
Anger.
The ice man put me here.
Locked me in stone and darkness and called it necessary.
He chained me with iron for touching his precious flame, for having the audacity to survive a car crash and seek help in the wrong place.
But I’m not dead yet.
And I refuse to break.
The defiance crystallizes into determination that settles in my chest like armor. They can lock me up, they can chain me, they can send monsters to feed on my fear in the darkness…
But they can never make me surrender.
I settle back against the wall, ignoring the cold seeping through the thin mattress and thinner jacket, and wait. Patient, defiant, exactly as stubborn as my mother always claimed I was being, except this time, that stubbornness might be the only thing keeping me sane.
Being here in this dim cell has my mind playing tricks on me.
I don’t know if I have been here for hours.
Or has it been days?
The only constant is the ringing in my ears and the coldness of this cell.
Then I hear footsteps again.
Lighter this time.
Quick.
Purposeful.
The viewing slot opens to reveal a woman’s face, sharp features framed by hair the color of flame with gold running through it like molten metal. Her eyes are amber, literally glowing with inner fire, and when she speaks, her voice carries heat that has nothing to do with temperature.
“You’ve got fire in you,” she says, studying me with intensity that suggests she sees more than just flesh and fear.
“Don’t let them snuff it out.” Before I can respond, before I can ask who she is or what she means, the slot snaps closed, and she’s gone, footsteps fading back up stairs I can’t reach.
It’s not kindness.
Just an observation from someone who recognizes something in me that I don’t fully understand yet.
But it’s enough.
Enough to remind me that I’m still here, fighting and refusing to break no matter what fresh horror comes through that door next.
The bulb flickers overhead, throwing shadows that dance like living things.
And in the darkness of my cell, deep in the mountain’s belly, I wait.
For what comes next.
For the witch they seem scared of.
For whatever fate has in store for a photographer who touched the wrong flame at the worst possible time.
But I wait on my own terms.
Unbroken.
Defiant.
Exactly as dangerous as they fear I might be, even if I don’t understand why.