She looks at the blood that’s still dripping in the bowl, eyes fixated on every drop as she speaks. “Well, you see. I was in love once. Hundreds of years ago.” She pauses. Sighs as if reminiscing her long-lost life, and then her dead gray eyes lock with mine. “Me and Beelzebub were happy for many years untilthose foul archangels came and took him back to Hell. They imprisoned him in blessed chains so he could never escape. I have waited five hundred years to come back and break him out.” She turns her head and bellows toward the door she came through, “She’s awake, Clayton. Bring your phone.”
When the bowl is half full, she takes a few steps to my right and crouches, dips her fingers into my blood, and starts to draw another circle on the floor the same size as the one beneath my chair. The sound of a door opening and closing echoes through the cabin, and then heavy footsteps follow before the rogue wolf prowls into the room like a predator cornering its next meal.
“Look who decided to join the party. How’s that pretty little head of yours?” Clayton taunts, wrapping my jaw in a punishing grip.
“Fuck you!” I shake his hold before I spit at him. My saliva hits his cheek and runs down his face.
“You fucking, bitch,” the rogue sneers. He wipes at my saliva with his fingers. In the next second, the back of his hand collides with the side of my face, sending my head flying to the side.
Despite the exploding pain, I straighten my head and give him a bloody smile. “That’s all you got?”
His fingers clench at his sides, and he bends his knees to be at eye level with me. “You’re going to regret disrespecting me like that, you stupid cunt,” he spews, and his big hand wraps around my throat, cutting my air supply and crushing my windpipe, making my eyes bulge in my head.
“Stop playing with the sacrifice and call her mate already. She can’t talk if you crush her larynx, you idiot,” the witch admonishes him from my right, still painting with my blood on the floor.
The rogue finally lets me go with a sly smile and an icy glare. “This is how this is going to go. I’m going to call your mate, and you’re going to convince him to come get you.”
Panic trashes beneath my skin with the force of a hurricane. I can’t let them lure Logan here. They’re going to kill him. “No, just leave Logan alone. You have me. You don’t need him.” I swallow hard. “Please.”
“Actually, for the spell to be completed, I need the hearts of two fated mates,” the witch tells me as she lifts from her crouch and judges her bloody circle. “Perfect,” she mumbles to herself.
Clayton taps on the screen and then puts it on speaker as it rings.
Logan answers on the first ring. “Who is this?” he asks.
The rogue brings the phone to my lips and mouths at me, “Talk to him.”
I press my lips in a thin line and give him a defiant glare. Silence stretches between us, and then Logan’s voice breaks through. “Ava?” He pauses before inhaling sharply. “Ava, is this you? Where are you, baby? Please talk to me.” His voice is coated in desperation, and I can almost see the anguish etched on his face as if he’s in front of me.
“She’s right here,” the rogue answers after a few moments and pushes his thumb into the deep gash in my forearm.
My eyes roll to the back of my head, and I bite my tongue so hard I draw blood, but I refuse to scream and do his bidding.
“Oh, you wanna play, little bird? Let’s hear you sing.” A sadistic smirk lifts the corner of his lips, and something flashes in his eyes before he takes out a knife and stabs it into the middle of my right thigh.
This time, I can’t stop the bellowing scream that rips from my lungs as he twists the blade. The metal slices through skin and bone and burns my flesh from the inside out. The acrid smell of charred meat—my own charred meat—coats my lungs, and the fiery pain is so intense I throw up in my mouth.
“AVA! What the fuck did you do to her?” Logan snaps into the phone.
“I just stabbed her with a pure silver blade, and I’ll do worse if you don’t listen carefully to my demands.”
“What do you want?” Logan seethes.
“I’m going to send you a location, and you’ll come here alone. If I sense you’re not, she’ll be dead before you can lay eyes on her. And make it fast. I don’t like to wait. For every ten minutes that pass, I will carve a new mark into her skin and make her sing like the pretty little bird she is.”
Logan’s voice softens, and I can hear his ragged breaths through the phone speaker. “Ava? Hang tight, baby. I’m coming to get you, all right?”
“No, Logan! Don’t! They’re going to k—” I try to warn him, but Clayton ends the call abruptly and twists the knife again, eliciting another agony-filled scream from me.
He curls his upper lip in a sneer. “You. Only. Speak. When. I. Allow. You. To.”
34
Ava
There are eighty-six scratches and dents in the wooden wall in front of me. I would know. I’ve counted them all. Over and over again. True to his word, Clayton started carving me up like a Halloween pumpkin the moment he ended the call with Logan. Only he grew bored waiting ten full minutes between cuts, so every three minutes, he sinks his blade into me, taking a fresh piece of flesh. The pain scorches me from the inside out. Yet, I don’t make a sound.
Seventy-nine.
