Chapter 24
I walked along the dry parts of land, setting up hunting traps. My food stores would run out sooner rather than later, but it wouldn’t be my first time living off of foraging and hunting. The water rippled on my right as Rot swam out of sight below the surface.
The water showed him going around the corner. Scouting the area, I was slowly heading into. He’d been shooing alligators away from me as I did this, even after I said he didn’t need to.
Pain shot up my ankle, and I dropped to my hands and knees as the sudden pain made me buckle. I forced myself to breathe through it and adjusted so I could check my ankle. There was nothing there except the healing cuts from the bus wreck.
It felt like countless blades were digging into the bone.
Matching pain clasped around my wrist, and I screamed in agony.
I held up my shaking hand, yanking my long sleeves back. My wrist was perfectly fine. What was happening?
It was hard to think around the pain, and it took two seconds too long for the answer to slam into me. The reason I couldn’t see the cause was because it wasn’t happening to me.
Panic overrode the pain, and I stumbled to my feet, running in the direction he disappeared in. I didn’t have to go far. Just around the bend, Rot’s hand and foot were in bear traps as four of the boys came behind him with a giant cage.
“Anchor it down,” Gale yelled from the front. He’d been the bait.
“Stop!” I screamed. Terror I didn’t understand went through me. “What are you doing?”
“There you are,” Gale huffed. A giant claw mark dripping with blood went across his chest, and I assumed the trap had almost been fatal for him. He waved for me. “Come here.”
“You can’t do this! This is against our beliefs.” I went over to him, pushing his shoulder. “Leave. I’ll wait until you’re gone and release him.”
“He took you from me.” Gale’s mouth warped into an ugly shape.
“I can’t be taken from you. I don’t belong to you.” But the way his eyes tightened with my words disagreed with my assessment.
Thrashing came from behind me, and that animalistic look was in Rot’s eye. The man inside him was gone. The boys struggled to secure the cage to the ground.
The scene flickered away, letting a memory take over my mind.
I was in a cage a lot like this one. Made of wood and sage. The bars burned me when I touched them.
I’d been made to be strong, and yet I was powerless.
A woman with an old style dress, a tight gray bun, and eyes the same shade of blue as mine glared at me with disdain that made me want to shrink.
I was face to face with who I assumed was Levicy Rinah, I’d never come across a person with the same sky blue as mine. I swore her eyes pulled me to her like a magnet.
“I need a real monster.” Her smirk grew.
My chest radiated with agony that wasn’t mine. That I’d never be good enough. I was a defect. And everyone needed to pay for the torture she put me through.
But underneath that anger was fear that made the spit in my throat thick. The kind of fear that made people put fortifications around their hearts.
Even while his eyes were dim in this feral state, I realized he was the only person here I related to.
I didn’t understand these people, but I understood him all too well.
The need to defend him hit hard enough to make my voice break. “Let him go!”
I saw the ragged book clutched in Gale’s hands. The one that went missing while I slept. “You stole that from me?”
The sear of my skin redirected my focus to Rot. The cage he was in was wrapped in sage. Flashes of pale skin showed where it touched him and the cage was smoking.
Gale had used me to hurt Rot.
I tackled Gale. He hadn’t expected me to do that, and we toppled into the mud. The book flew out of his hand and into the swamp with a loud plop, where it would hopefully be lost until the end of time. I hadn’t gotten to read all of it, but that didn’t matter.
So long as another asshole like Gale never laid eyes on it again.
He flipped us until I was under him. His fingers squeezed around my throat, cutting my air off. “You’re so passionate, Talia.”
His eyes narrowed on me, and something about them didn’t sit right with me. Fear I hadn’t felt in a long time welled in me. His normally coiffed hair fell into his eyes, making it worse.
Why did everything inside me shake with fear?
“What are you doing, Gale? She’s one of yours.” One student left his post of tying down the cage.
“She needs to finally learn.” He grunted.
What was he talking about? I’d done everything he wanted from me. Something in the back of my mind nagged at me, but the need for oxygen drowned it out.
I kicked my feet, trying to get him off of me. The young man came up and pulled him away. “Get off her!”
Gale pulled a gun from his jacket and pulled the trigger with a cold, clinical expression that shook me to my core. The explosion when the gun fired made my ears ring painfully. Hot blood coated both of us as the guy hit the ground with a sickening thump.
I froze, hoping to sink into the mud and disappear. The entire time I’d known him, he’d preached against firearms in the field. He barely even approved of the tranquilizer gun. “What are you doing?”
His eyes slowly came back to me, twisting my stomach until I was sure the organ would never recover. I know I’ve seen his eyes somewhere else. Where?
Damn it, Talia. What are you forgetting?
“I’ll kill you before I let you go.”
I knew he abused his power, but now I could see the insanity in his eyes. It was painfully familiar, and I knew I had to get out of his grasp.
“Fuck this!” The last couple of students fled into the woods.
“Be my good girl.” He pressed the hot muzzle under my chin, burning the tender skin.
“You can’t have that. This is a science expedition.” A childish notion, not worth the finite breath I wasted to utter it.
He shushed me with that calm voice he used to de-escalate situations. Effectively telling me he could do whatever the fuck he wanted to do.
Rot thrashed against his cage harder. The anchors grew slack with all the force, now that no one held it in place.
“Stay,” Gale stood up and leveled the gun on Rot, who glared at him with murderous eyes. It was surreal to see two sets of eyes with violence in their minds, with two very different reactions.
“No!” I scrambled to my feet, slipping in the mud before I got my feet under me, and stepped between him and Rot as Gale fired.
Could a person keep going if you ripped their heart out of their chest? No.
Whether I’d made peace with it or not, Rot was an essential part of me.
The bullet ripped through me easier than any knife could, sending agony through my shoulder. I screamed but kept my body as a shield between them. If my legs gave out, Rot would die. I couldn’t let that happen.
Gale roared with desperation that almost convinced me it was for me.
The swamp’s sounds grew louder, more agitated. Even the frog’s songs sounded like a war drum. The sound of claws on wood was a deadly threat of what was to come.
“Move,” Gale commanded.
“No.” My voice shook.
“He’s going to escape.” Gale snarled, but next to Rot, his irritation was nothing.
“You better run then.” I hoped I sounded brave and not like my shoulder was ground beef.
“Not without you.” He put his hand out for me to grab. If I had to choose between him and the monster, there was only one choice. He sensed my hesitation. “You can kiss your scholarship goodbye if you don’t come with me right now.”
There it was.
The next time Rot slammed against the cage, it flipped until the top was on the ground. Gale ran away, but he wasn’t done yet. I sensed it deep in my bones.
A roar came from behind me, and my blood ran cold.
I turned around and found a feral lizardman looking right at me. His blown pupils zeroed in on me as his tail smashed the ground threateningly.
This was what I chose.