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Karl was yelling about getting someone to leave. Not me. He wouldn't do that--wouldn't pull me away, not when death was so close, hanging in the air...
This was what I was made for. This was where I belonged, in the center of the whirlwind, drinking it in...
"You need to get her out of here." Benicio's voice.
"You don't think I'm trying?" Karl's snarl.
The room spun, pulling me under.
"It's the chaos." Benicio. "She's--"
"I know what's happening." Karl. "And apparently you do too."
His anger spiked and I shuddered. So delicious, so perfectly--Hands went around my waist. Lifted me. I lashed out with everything I had. The arms only gripped tighter and carried me, kicking and punching and screaming, from the room, out two doors, into the bright glare of a white room.
The chaos lifeline snapped under the glare of those bathroom lights. I looked up and saw my reflection--a nightmarish version of myself, my hair wild, lips pulled back in a snarl, face contorted with pure animal rage.
The face of a demon.
Karl carried me into the bedroom. He lowered me onto the bed, and as I gulped air, my throat raw from screaming, I struggled to block the memory of my reflection, telling myself it'd been some hellish trick of my mind.
The last five minutes flooded back. What I'd felt in that room. What I'd thought. All of it as alien as that horror in the mirror and yet, like the reflection, recognizable.
"K-K-Karl..."
I looked up, my eyes filled with tears of shame, and could see only a watery figure. I felt his arms around me as he crouched, pulling my face against his chest.
"Shh, shh, shh."
"I-I-I--"
"Shhh."
I forced my head up, to find his face, to look him in the eyes.
"I wanted him to die, Karl. I couldn't even remember who he was. A man I know, I like, and I wanted him to die so I could feed off--"
My head jolted forward, gorge rising, and before I could stop it, I threw up on him.
"Oh God, oh God, I'm so--"
He took my chin and lifted it, looking me in the eye. "It's okay, Hope."
With his free hand, he deftly unbuttoned his shirt, peeled it off and tossed it on the bed, never breaking eye contact. Thinking of that--throwing a vomit-covered shirt onto Benicio Cortez's Egyptian cotton sheets--I had to bite back a surge of hysterical laughter. My eyes filled at the same time and I started shaking so badly I couldn't breathe.
My mind was back in that room, wallowing in the chaos, gulping it down, seeing Troy...
A sudden vision shoved the memory aside. I was peering through bushes, watching a dark-haired young man on a restaurant patio, eating a burger with one hand, writing with the other, gaze fixed on a book. Something about him looked familiar.
The vision faded and I saw Troy again, dying. Then I saw him sitting across from me, laughing and flirting, and I was thinking what a nice guy he was, how he was someone I'd like to know better, someone I...
Wanted to watch die?
My stomach heaved, but there was nothing left.
Karl pulled my face back to his. I struggled to understand him.
"Focus on me, Hope. On what I'm showing you."
