Chapter 22
Two weeks
“As if it’s the first time I hear this lie,” I spit the hate words at Marshall.
“Anmara, dear,” he says as he sets his gaze on me.
The same expression he always wore when we were together. Every time he said he cared about me, every time he said he loved me, when he proposed… along with almost the same words.
Until death do us part, Anmara. I promise you.
“Don’t call me dear,” I say, and before my fist could hit his already mutilated face, Lucas stops me, making me angrier.
I look at him with the most frightening expression of mine, but what I see in his green eyes makes me remove the frown from my forehead. I see something that I didn’t think I would see.
He knows.
He followed me around for so long… he surely knows. I can see it clearer than anyone in this room in the most diffuse light.
But… how?
“Maybe later, Anmara,” he whispers to me, his breath hitting the bottom of my neck and giving me sweet chills. “I will let you do the honours only if you know for sure that is what you want, but now we need him.”
However much I could protest, he is right.
Maybe after all this craziness, I could have a normal, authentic romantic story, with real feelings, no empty talk or distant gazes.
A story full of real love, of nice caresses, touches in every curve of my body, of amazing orgasms…
with Lucas, because, however much I could deny it, I am attracted to him like a fucking magnet.
“I know you need me. Otherwise, I would’ve ended up 1000 meters below ground already,” Marshall says, interrupting my erotic thoughts.
“I’m aware of that, but I cannot say anything about the formula.
It’s more valuable than my life, and all that I want is a drop of normality, however incoherent I might sound now, or how little you trust what I say," he says, making me roll my eyes.
I don’t know if I should believe the words he gets out of that miserable mouth, but I let him continue. Maybe he’ll tell us something useful too, not just nonsense.
“I know all of you read what I wrote. Bianca wouldn’t have done this otherwise," he says, pointing with his head to his body. “Also, if I were to give you the formula, everybody would know it and would profit off of it and wouldn’t be my property, so I prefer it to die with me than be others’ slave.
To create drugs for others, it’s one thing, but sharing my unfinished life-long project…
it was my mistake that I trusted the wrong people with some test doses and samples.
Otherwise, I would’ve been the only person who had the prototypes, and nobody would’ve known about their existence. ”
“Wait, what do you mean by prototypes?” Bianca asks. “Are there more variants?”
“Finally, someone who can speak the same language as me,” Marshall smiles. “Would you like to play with another tong…”
“If you continue your idea, you won’t have a tongue to get that bullshit out of your mouth with,” Bianca cuts him off.
I love how the exchange of words doesn’t affect me. It’s not like the man in front of me should’ve been my husband, and his tongue ended up in all the possible places on…
Okay, it’s not the right time to think about this stuff now. It didn’t even go into all parts of my body. Not where Lucas’s went.
Oh, and how good it felt…
Really, Anora, shut up! My own imagination is enough.
“What do you want to say through that, Marshall?” I ask, starting to panic.
“I want to say that every set of dozens has the ingredients in different quantities, more or less. Each one of them can be more lethal for the body, can have a stronger effect, can last longer, can become what I wished for and…”
“To last longer?” Lucas interrupts him. “You’re saying it has an expiration date?”
“Someone smart in this room. Congratulations! I would clap, but you cut this opportunity from me.”
This thing calms me down with the same intensity it unrests me.
“What is the longest duration of action?” I ask him in a more stable voice.
“Around one week on the weakest subject of mine. So around half of the time, for someone stronger.”
I don’t know if I just thought Bianca growled like a feline that was ready to attack. She abstains sufficiently well not to jump on his neck again.
“Maybe even less. It depends on the dose he received. A lot of them were stolen to know their exact action time. But don’t put your hopes up for less than a day.
That’s extremely rare. You’re actually lucky that the stolen doses were made from the same ingredients because otherwise I couldn’t even tell you the side-effects," he says with ease.
“What side effects are we talking about here?” Lucas asks.
“Nothing special. Insomnia, strong headaches after the effect passes, and sometimes… heart attack shortly after it. I think the ones you suspect are quite strong, so it won’t be the case.”
I feel Lucas starting to shiver next to me, and I quickly realise why.
Blake has a heart condition.
A heart attack could kill him.
“We have to find him. Now!”
Lucas takes my hand, and we get out of the door, leaving Bianca swearing that we left her with Marshall.
?
I stay by the door frame, watching Lucas as he takes his suitcase and flips it upside down in the centre of the bed.
“It has to be here somewhere. I know I put it here,” Lucas says while he is searching through the pile of stuff.
“What exactly are you looking for? From what I know, we need to look for Blake and Paul, not for clothes to dress them up with,” I say, only thinking about the worst.
I don’t even know why we aren’t on our way to… actually, I don’t even know where we could start searching.
“Among the devices I create, there is one that restarts the heart. I always had it with me anywhere I went, and I know for sure that it has to be here.”
“And what the hell would you do with it if we find them dead?”
He freezes at my question, but then slowly lifts a strange device from his clothes while he takes his gaze to mine.
“Because that’s why I created it. To bring anyone who died in the last few hours to life. That’s how I managed to get more information from the people who annoyed me the most," he says, and comes closer to me.
“That… is impressive,” I say, and I have to admit that something like that didn’t even cross my mind.
With his free hand, he touches my cheek and gets me into a short and full-of-desire kiss that he ends too quickly.
“I want to promise you with all my heart that everything will be fine, but not even I know what the future will bring with multiple variations of this… obsession. But, I can promise you that I’ll do everything in my power to protect you, even if I have to kill my own brothers in the process," he says, making me shudder.
“Where do we start?”
“Guess, Anmara. How could they have gone out?”
I don’t really want to put my foot there, given the state we found Blake in last time, but he is right, and we don’t have any other choice.
“To the tunnel of horrors.”
I get out of the apartment first with Lucas behind me, but not before I give him a kiss that proves what I already knew: I am head over heels for him. Worse than anybody before Marshall. Worse than… him and I hope that will only remain an illusion, and she won’t want him as bad as I do.
Not again.
?
Something is not right at all. I can feel it in my bones.
We arrive in the basement, where a more profound darkness greets us. As it wasn’t scary enough down here without the burned-out bulbs.
Lucas gets a lantern out of his pocket and lights it up. That just amplifies the terror of this place, especially when he gets closer to the bulb that seemed fried.
It isn’t.
He looks at me, and I can read the concern in his eyes.
“Let’s hope it isn’t what we think it is,” I whisper, like the spirits of this place could hear us if we spoke in a normal voice.
Lucas doesn’t answer me. He moves his gaze to the place illuminated by the low light of the lantern. The place where the bulb is smashed. There is blood everywhere around it.
His light moves toward the door leading to the tunnel. Traces of a bright crimson surrounds the door. I am already feeling my own blood boiling inside me, scared of not having the same fate.
We go to the door and open it, hearing the same dreadful sound as last time, but that isn’t the only thing we hear.
“No!” a masculine voice screams in the profound darkness.
Lucas quickly takes my hand, and we run to the source of the voice.
“No, no, no, please, no!” the same voice screams.
We hear it louder as we approach the source, and we quickly realise it’s Blake.
I feel a headache at the back of my neck, and I am fighting with it while I’m running beside Lucas.
I can help you, Anmara. I promise you that I will be a… good girl.
No, not now!
But when?
Two people appear in front of us, and we slow down, staring at them carefully.
“Snap out of it, you moron!” screams the shape that is contouring more clearly.
Blake is staying above another body, which abruptly shudders while he is shaken hard by the first one.
Paul pushes Blake with a force that looks like it is draining all the power in him. Blake falls on his butt and puts his hands on his face, rubbing it aggressively.
“What the hell is going on here?” Lucas asks while approaching Paul.
When the lantern gets closer to him, I shiver and bend over Paul. A lot of blood is flowing from multiple parts of his body, but what scares me the most is the red stream that is coming out of him from a zone too close to his heart.
He coughs and tries to speak, but he is interrupted by the blood that comes out of his mouth.
“What the hell did you do to him?” I scream at Blake.
He takes his hands off his face. Even in the weakest of lights, I can see his eyes full of tears and his face full of dried blood, which makes him look like a real monster.
I try to get closer to him, but he doesn’t let me.
“I cannot control myself, Anmara. Don’t get any closer! I don’t want to hurt you, too,” he cries.