Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Istared at the walls, unblinking. I couldn’t blink. If I closed my eyes, even for a second, my sight might change again.
I couldn’t trust my eyes. They were lying to me.
My hands hurt so much. Cold steel bound them behind my back. My shoulder ached where they’d wrenched my arms roughly while they cuffed me. My skull felt tender where I’d been hit, but the physical pain felt like sweet bliss compared to the endless agony caused by the screams in my head.
I’d gone crazy.
No, not gone. I was crazy. I always had been.
The door opened; slow, heavy footsteps wandered in behind me, lingering at my shoulder for a second, waiting, building anticipation. I knew what they were trying to do, but it wouldn’t work. They couldn’t scare me any more than I already was.
I was lost in a fog of terror.
His voice floated through the fog, low and growly, like a feral beast. “Susan Moore.” He chuckled; there was no humor in it.
There was no humor in anything. The whole universe was cold and empty.
“I honestly thought it was going to take a little longer for you to fuck up. I overestimated you.” He huffed out another laugh.
“I suppose you get that a lot. I guess you’re one of those broads that talk the talk, but you can’t walk the walk. ”
Hours passed. The scene shifted. I stumbled along a cliff edge in the darkness, trying to run, but I kept falling. My feet refused to carry me forward. They were coming.
“You’re not very talkative, are you?” Light crept in; the cliff edge vanished. I was back in the police interview room. I glanced at the clock, ticking loudly on the wall, and saw that no time had passed. “You gonna make a statement, bitch?”
I turned. Detective Striker slowly picked up the chair opposite me at the little table, swung it around, and straddled it. He smirked, eyes twinkling, and took out a notepad. “Why did you attack Jessica Morningside?”
I stared right through him.
He wasn’t real. There was no point talking to a figment of my imagination.
Nothing was real.
Striker chuckled lightly. “I can see you’re having trouble with processing what’s going on right now, and considering your history, I’m not surprised.
I’ll spell it out for you. You’re in jail.
You are going to be here forever. I caught you red-handed, assaulting a member of the public.
You’re still on parole, Ms. Moore.” He paused, and smirked.
“Once the psych officer assesses you, you’re going back to the hospital, for good this time. ”
Wasn’t I already there? Wasn’t I already in hell?
My eyes drifted towards the walls—the same cold beige painted concrete as the corridors of the hospitals.
I could hear the screams of the other patients.
Old Mona, the bone-thin schizophrenic and anorexic from the room opposite me, I could hear her so clearly.
Mona was shrieking right now, in fact. Her sandpaper voice grated at my nerves, screaming at the top of her lungs like she always did, like she had every day and every night in the hospital.
She liked to scream about what her father had done to her when she was a little girl.
She would scream and yell about every night he’d visited her, what he did to her.
It used to shock me; it used to break my heart into pieces, but eventually, I got numb to it. Mona was crazy. Like me.
I was locked in the psych ward. Locked up in hell. I’d never gotten out.
I’d just gone crazier. Everything was a delusion—my parole, my job at the call center, me, being The Chosen One. Bart wasn’t a bear shifter. He was just very gay and hairy.
My house wasn’t real. That stupid two-horned unicorn was the most bizarre figment of my imagination. The blisteringly sexy Princess Cress was just me manifesting my bi-curious college days. The stunningly handsome Eryk and Nate—of course they weren’t real.
Donovan…
Movement pulled my eyes away from the wall. Striker was still there, and I was still in the police interview room, handcuffed with my arms wrenched tight behind my back.
Maybe I was really here and not in the hospital. Even if I was, it was still a nightmare.
Striker leaned over the table, his gray eyes sparkling with orange. “I don’t know why you’re so surprised. I told you I wanted it to be me who took you down.”
I looked away again.
Darkness seeped in. Mona started screaming. I remembered every word of her story; she screamed it every night.
“I can see I’m wasting my time here. You’re worse than I thought.
This interview is over.” Striker leaned a little closer, his hard, thin lips curved into a snake-like smile.
“Before I go, you should know something. We’re going to kill him,” he breathed out, his voice barely audible.
“Now that you’re out of the way, we’re going to kill the traitor prince. ”
A wild fury burst out of me. Something snapped, and my hands were suddenly free and wrapped around Striker’s neck. My skin flashed purple, muscles bulging.
“You will not touch him.” I bit out the words between my clenched teeth.
With a desperate snarl, he pulled me sideways and slammed a hand down on a button near the wall. An alarm screamed. My head split in two. I let go of Striker and slammed my hands over my ears.
Striker stumbled backwards, snapping his baton up into his hands.
Pain slammed into me, punching and raking my whole body so quickly I was paralyzed.
Pitch blackness claimed me again.