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It looked a little different than it had a moment ago, blackened and bleeding, with bare knuckle bones protruding from ruined flesh. It matched the face above it, which was almost unrecognizable. Demon red eyes looked out of a mask of charred skin that had partially flaked off, including the part that had once covered the now hairless skull. One cheek was split open, the guard uniform he was wearing was smoking, and half of the breastplate had melted to the burnt torso.
It looked like Lawrence hadn’t come apart fast enough this time. But he hadn’t died, either. A fact he demonstrated by sending me staggering back against the floor. He tried to shove a boot through my skull next, but I grabbed it—hot, melting rubber, shit—and twisted. I heard his knee pop before I felt it, before he screamed and grabbed my hair, jerking me up and throwing me face-first into the wall.
Right before I whirled and kicked out with everything I had left, sending him flying back into another memory. Of an earthquake-fueled rock fall that had very nearly caved in my head once, a few hundred years ago. And then I turned and scrambled away, trying to look ahead and behind at the same time, my eyes watching half a mountain slough away into billowing dust, while my feet—
Splashed down in a puddle.
The puddle was on wet cement. The cement was in a warehouse. And the warehouse looked to be on the edge of what passed for civilization.
Shit. I immediately spun back around, looking for the way out, because I must have accidentally fallen through one of the flickering memories that formed the obstacle course outside. But there was no door, no square of boiling darkness, no furious pursuer.
Just a drab, water-stained wall, a couple of broken pallets and the puddle. The puddle was water. I looked up.
And a great drop of tar-laced rain hit me square in the face.
Great.
I looked back down, holding my eye and wondering: Now what?
I honestly had no idea. I was panting with exhaustion, my wrist was on fire, and now I was half blind. I wasn’t going to win a fight like this. If Lawrence found me, I was toast.
Of course, I probably was anyway. I didn’t recognize this place, so it must be one of Dorina’s memories. And since I didn’t even know how to navigate my own, the chances of figuring a way out of hers didn’t seem so great. So I went in instead, because it was either that or wait around to die.
Although it smelled like something already had.
Maybe a lot of somethings, judging by the stench. But it wasn’t the old, familiar stink of putrefaction that caught my attention as I passed behind a wall of crates. It was the fact that whatever had died in here wasn’t exactly—
Human.
I stopped abruptly, staring at the remains of what looked like hundreds of creatures, stacked against the far wall in cages three and four high.
Most were various species of fey I had encountered through the years, along with what might have been shifters. Others…I didn’t know about the others. And I doubted that anybody else would have, either. The monsters who had engineered these crossbreeds hadn’t been concerned with viability or quality of life or anything but their intended outcome.
I wondered how many creatures they had killed along the way.
I wondered if those hadn’t been the lucky ones.
Because it looked like they had just abandoned this place, once they’d finally achieved the result they wanted. Or maybe the Circle had gotten too close, and the conspirators had decided to walk away, leaving us another cache to find. Only we wouldn’t have learned much from this one.
Because they hadn’t bothered to open the cages before they left.
And the contents hadn’t managed it themselves. There were signs that a number had tried, biting and clawing at the bars, before succumbing to hunger or thirst. Or in a few cases, to their fellow experiments. But it didn’t look like any had made it out.
Or maybe I spoke too soon.
A bunch of boxes formed a tall line facing the cages, blocking off the view of at least half the wall of horrors. That was true even when I got close, drawn by morbid curiosity and a weird sense of hope. And found a woman kneeling on the floor.
Her head was bowed, but not in shadow. A beam of moonlight was filtering down from a high window, illuminating her like a spotlight. As a result, her face was mostly still visible.
And her face was mine.
I had a killer on my trail and, given his track record, he wouldn’t take long to find me. I should get moving, should try to find a defensible position. Should try to figure out how to fight something that could dust away to powder in the blink of an eye.
But I didn’t move. She didn’t seem to notice me, or even look up. But I…couldn’t look anywhere else.
She looked like a vampire.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but we weren’t twins, despite the superficials. She had my short dark hair, my features, my height, even my basic style of clothing. At least, the kind I wore when I wasn’t going to the party from hell: black jeans, a black tank top, a black leather jacket. She had on rubber-soled shoes instead of my usual ass-kicking boots, maybe because she didn’t need any help in that department.
