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Pushing off him, I swipe up my gun, holding it on him and watching him tremble, as I back myself out of the room. The urge to keep searching the swamps for Céleste is divided by my need to get to Frannie. There seems to be a connection between them, and my hope is that if Frannie leads to Jude, then Jude might lead to finding Céleste.
I race out of the cabin toward the only lead I have.
47
Céleste
Four hours earlier …
Long blink.
Overcast sky. Treetops. Crows.
Long blink.
Overalls. A shovel. Ratted mop of hair sticking out beneath the curve of long black horns.
Long blink.
Trees in my periphery. An intense burn climbing my spine. Pain in my ankle.
Long blink.
A scratching sound crackles at my ears.
Skrrrrt. Pause. Skrrrt. Pause. Skrrrrt.
An incessant pulsing throbs inside my head, as if my brain has ballooned inside my skull. Wincing at the pain, I lift my head, and find my legs outstretched, caught in the grip of an enormous figure that drags me along. Through a dreamy haze, I focus on the scene before me, trying to discern if it’s real, or not. My head feels heavy, too heavy, and I fall back against the hard surface, screwing my eyes shut against a zap of pain that shoots into my nose.
Skrrrt. Pause. Skrrrt. Pause. Skrrrt.
I let out a quiet moan and will myself to sit up again. Just as before, I’m staring at a beast of a person, dragging me through the forest. Not a dream.
More lucid this time, I glance around at the passing foliage and brush, and my chest freezes with panic as the realization washes over me. Reaching out, my hand catches on a thick log, but its bark tears at my fingers as my body is wrenched away, and as the misty haze fizzles away to the sharp edges of reality, fear explodes inside of me on a rush of adrenaline.
“Hey! Hey!” I kick one of my legs free, but it doesn’t seem to deter my captor, as he continues to drag me along like a robot. Another barefoot kick to the hand holding my other ankle does nothing to falter his grip. “Let me go!”
With both hands, I reach for the upturned root of a passing tree and kick at the same time.
His grip falls away.
Turning onto my belly sends a streak of white-hot pain across my skin, where the surface tears at it, but I ignore the burn and claw at the ground. Hands grapple for my ankles again. I kick out. My legs are swallowed up by thick unyielding arms that bind them so efficiently, I can’t so much as wriggle. A tickle of nausea flutters in my stomach as I’m thrown up into the air like a sack of potatoes, and I come smacking down hard against his backside. Pressure flares inside my skull, pulsing up into my nose, while I hang upside down. I can’t so much as scream, for fear my head will explode. The burn in my sinuses has me screwing my eyes shut, waiting for it to pass.
Blood dribbles down onto my arms that hang uselessly beneath me.
I dig my fingernails into the fleshy meat of his back, but a hard pinch of my thigh brings my attack to a halt and I let out a cry at the deep and burning pain that I’m certain comes from broken skin.
Dizziness settles over me again.
No, please. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out.
The scene shrinks. Smaller. Smaller.
* * *
Fingers brush over the scar on my thigh. My attacker grinds his hard bulge into my trapped legs, humping against me, his face concealed behind a goat skull mask.
“Good boy, Jacques. Das a good boy! Now git off her.” At the sound of a female voice, I look up to find a second figure, also wearing a goat skull, standing over me. Head tipped to the side, it appears to study me for a moment. “Mais la, you look jus’ like your momma did when she was a ‘tit fille.”
