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“You’ve never apologized before,” Absolon scoffs, lifting his hand away. “Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental.”
“Never,” Wolf says as he comes at me with the rope. “It’s always hard when it’s a pretty girl.”
I glance at Absolon, who is sucking the blood from where I bit him, blood on his lips, the same that I still taste on mine. Blood that tastes sweet. He nods at me, brow raised delicately. “My blood looks good on you.”
Then Wolf is grabbing me from behind and I’m trying to run and scream and Absolon is slipping the fabric over my mouth, wrapping it again and again, as Wolf holds my hands behind my back, binding my wrists, then my ankles.
I’m tossed onto the mattress, landing on my side, and then Wolf extends the rope into the wooden slat wall of the storage area behind me, anchoring me in place.
I lie there, staring up at these two men in their tuxedos, the footsteps getting louder above, the floor shaking.
“Time for a drink?” Absolon says to Wolf.
Wolf dusts off his hands and grins at him. “Is the Pope Catholic?”
Absolon gives him a withering look and the two of them walk toward the door, Absolon stepping out first.
He also closes the door.
His face is the last thing I see before he turns out the lights.
Chapter Six
A red crescent moon.
I’m a child, standing below it in the middle of a clearing.
The forest in front of me is black in the night, the treetops visible against the star-speckled sky. There’s rustling in the forest, the feeling of something coming out of it, wanting to hurt me.
Monsters.
I stand, feeling the moon seep into my veins, filling the well inside me with pale gold.
Two figures burst out of the trees, running fast.
I watch them, silent, knowing they’re here to do harm.
But they run past me, on either side, a man and a woman, cloaked and too blurry to see clearly.
I whirl around, watching as the two figures head for the house by the sea.
My house.
Where my parents live.
Suddenly the fear is real.
I’m screaming, running after them, my little legs too slow, and then I’m falling, crawling, watching as the figures disappear into the house and the house goes up in flames.
I scream and I crawl and I keep going.
The moon switches position in the sky, rising in front of me.
Red tears spilling from the crescent.
Raining blood.
And I keep crawling, until I’m right at the flames, until I am the flames.
I am the flames.
Drowning in the moon’s blood.
Sinking into the red.
Down, down, down.
And then…
I’m awake.
The dream fading away like fog.
I’m lying on my side in total darkness, bound at the wrists and ankles, my skin aching against the rough rope, the gag cutting into the corners of my mouth.
I’m alone.
And yet not alone.
Because there’s something…else.
Something crawling over my legs.
Over my back.
In my hair.
Across my face.
I scream, my cries muffled, and try to sit up, spinning around, rolling on the floor, pure horror tearing me apart. I fight against the ropes, still feeling tiny rough things brushing over my legs, skittering over my skin.
The door to the room suddenly opens, a column of flickering light with Absolon’s broad-shouldered silhouette.
He flicks on the lights overhead, my eyes burning from it.
I manage to turn away, just in time to see spiders running away in wafts of black smoke, disappearing into the wooden slats behind me.
I scream again, trying to get away, except I’m still attached to the wall by the rope, and then Absolon is grabbing me by the waist and hauling me up, carrying me until he places me on the wooden chair within reach.
He eyes me with amusement, as if the whole fucking thing is funny, but I can still feel them on me, and I cry out, muffled by the gag, squirming in the chair, my heart pounding.
“Oh, please. Calm down,” he says to me, pressing a shockingly cold hand on my shoulder, but it does nothing to calm me. “Or do you need to be tied to the chair too?”
I growl at him, trying to kick him in the balls.
He captures my calf in his hand, nails digging in, growling right back.
“Fine,” he says gruffly. “Your choice.”
He takes the ropes and makes quick work of it, tying my hands behind the chair, spreading my legs, tying each ankle to the legs of the chair.
Then he steps back, giving me a look of marked disapproval.
“You could make things so much easier on yourself, Lenore,” he says. “You know I’m the one who might save you in the end.”
“Fuck you,” I try to say through the gag.
“What was that?” he asks. Then he leans over and I catch his scent, like roses and tobacco and cedar, a smell that floods every part of me. Something about it makes my heart pump harder, my skin growing hot.
