Chapter 37
SADIE
“Iwondered who was crashing like a wildebeest through the underbrush,” Beaufort said slyly, and it was like a whole other person had possessed him. His face was the same, but the expressions more animated, more cruel. He was no longer pretending to be civilised, then.
It belatedly occurred to me that I was facing a full blooded vampire, and I’d only just learned how to knock a blow aside, let alone how to take down someone who could have lived for centuries. What the hell was I thinking?
That was the problem. I wasn’t thinking.
I hadn’t been since I was pushed off the edge and woke up as a wolf.
My head was all over the place, my instincts spiked at the drop of a hat, and what seemed like a normal decision to help find this guy before he killed everyone else now seemed like a suicide mission.
Because the hissing intensified within the well, and it raised every fine hair on my body. Even my inner wolf went deadly still in warning. It wasn’t just Beaufort I’d presented myself to like prey to a predator, it was whatever was inside that well too.
“Don’t just hover, Sadie. Come closer. Meet my grandmother.”
“That thing in there is your grandmother? And here I thought I was hard done by because my gran sold me to this evil place.”
Beaufort snapped. “You will be respectful when addressing the high lady of the Beaufort family.”
Remember when I said my smart mouth was gonna get me killed? Yeah, here was the moment, because my mouth opened and the sarcastic words that came out were, “The high lady of the Beaufort family is hiding at the bottom of a well.”
Beaufort hissed, but at the same time the thing inside the well, his grandmother, hissed too.
A shiver ripped down my spine so hard that I shook.
Run, every instinct screamed. If it wasn’t for Rogue, tied up on the ground, or my friends in the trees, silently making their way around to try and get Serendipity out, I might have listened to it.
I took a step, not closer but sideways, and then another, circling Beaufort and the well. Trying to keep his attention on me so Elix and Paige could grab Serendipity. We’d become this close; it was stupid to leave without what we came for.
Because I had my eyes on Beaufort, I saw his hand begin to rise, and I was ready.
Even faced with his vampire strength, when he flung his blood towards me, I was already running.
I threw myself aside to escape the drops of his blood, terrified they would freeze me in place the way Reverie did.
Or would they bind me in ropes like the sisters on the ground?
Why the fuck did I volunteer to be the distraction? I felt the hot breath of death breathing down the back of my neck, and I’d already died once this week. I had no intention of doing so again.
Shift, the command came from my wolf, livid and bristling within me. We were not prey. We were not powerless. But I needed to shift.
But if I did that, everyone would know what I was. I didn’t have the nerve for it. That, or some deeply ingrained survival instinct had me in its grip.
Beaufort flung his hand at me again, and the drops of blood came so close that I saw them.
Only my new enhanced speed carried me out of their path.
If I was as human as I was when Rev attacked, that would’ve killed me.
The realisation made me breathless, shaky, but I forced myself to keep moving, jumping out of the way of every splash of blood, every flick of his hand.
I was so focused on Beaufort and the threat of his blood that I screamed when a hand launched onto my throat. And I nearly pissed myself, then and there, as I realised he’d been herding me. Forcing me closer and closer to the well. And like a lamb to slaughter, I’d fallen for it.
The primal hissing was right in my ear now, and there was no containing the shaking in my bones, no stopping the tears building in my eyes as I realised the thing inside the well had me in its clutches.
Cold skin and long fingernails pressed into my throat.
Not slimy like I’d expected, nor clawed, but preternaturally strong.
My wolf came alive inside me, and when I threw my hands up, clawing at the hand around my neck, I found my own fingernails long, sharp. Not quite a wolf’s claws, but enough to leave gouges on the arm.
“My arm. My precious arm,” the high lady of the Beaufort family wailed.
“I’ll get you a new one,” was her grandson’s gruff reply. “Take your pick of any of the girls around your well.”
I was going to be sick. The arms, and Fioranna’s eyes… He’d given them to his grandmother. The arm I scratched was too smooth, too young. Because it didn’t belong to this thing in the well. Soria’s arms had been taken. That’s what her girlfriend said. And Beaufort had her ring.
What would she steal from my body once I was dead?
I fought with a desperate intensity, working my nails down that arm, sinking them into the back of her hand, trying everything I had to prize her grip from my throat. But the opposite happened. Her hold on me tightened, pulling me off balance, pulling me backwards.
Into the well.
The angle allowed me to glimpse what waited below. Worn stone, cold and mottled. The bottom was almost entirely covered by bones picked clean, or limbs still with their flesh half upon them, a snack for later.
It was a pit of corpses. And I was going to join them.