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“You didn’t think of that, did you?” Valtu goes on.
“Will you shut the fuck up,” I snap at him, baring my fangs.
“Oh no, what’s going to happen? You going to let your beast out of its cage?”
He says this as a joke, because he’s a fucking smartass, but suddenly I’m struck with a terrible idea. One that might be a huge mistake, but may be the only chance we have.
“What?” Valtu says slowly, studying me.
I look at him, feeling a new spark inside me. “You’re right.”
“About what?”
“I should let the beast out of the cage.”
Valtu blinks at me in surprise. “I was kidding, Solon.”
I shake my head. “And I’m not. Jeremias may know me, but he doesn’t know the beast so well. He warded these chains to keep me here, not the beast. I could break out of here.”
“And kill me in the process!”
I shrug, not really caring if I do. “I might not. You’re going to die here anyway. Wouldn’t you rather take your chances?”
“An eternity of suffering versus being ripped to shreds and possibly eaten by you?” He shakes his head, looking haunted. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”
I grin at him. “If I can give you one piece of advice, try not to piss me off after I turn. It might just save your life. In fact, just go completely still and play dead. That should do the trick.”
“You’re not seriously going to do this? Can you even do this?”
“I’ve never called on the beast before,” I admit. “I’ve always done what I can to keep it away. I guess we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
And I have enough anger and determination inside me to push that lever over to the other side.
I just hope to hell that the beast knows what it’s doing.
I hope Lenore has the power to hold me back. Perhaps even kill me, if she has to. As long as I save her life, that’s the risk I’m willing to take.
17
Lenore
I’m submerged in a world of red.
The blood goes into my eyes, into my nose, into my ears, a thick toxic feeling that’s unlike any blood that could ever sustain life. The only thing this blood could sustain would be something dark and evil.
Someone like Skarde.
And there is no escape. The deer skull creature is pulling me under and under, making my limbs move, making me swim toward the bottom, this dark red bottom we never seem to reach.
Then, after what feels like forever, there appears a light. Something faint shining through the blood. The further we swim down, the closer we get, I have this feeling like it’s a piece of glass on the lake floor, or maybe a mirror. But then it gets bigger and bigger until I realize I’m looking up at a surface of water, a big sky beyond.
The fuck?
Now I’m swimming up, not down, and breaking through the surface, gasping for breath.
And I realize that I’m free. That the deer skull thing is gone and it’s just me, all alone, in the middle of a bloody lake.
Except this isn’t the same lake I came in through.
For one, there’s a dusting of white snow on the ground, for two there’s a thick red river running away from the lake and disappearing over the edge of a bluff. The trees here are sparse, their leaves and needles red and littered on the ground like splattered blood, and beyond them it’s like an endless space of nothing.
Suddenly I’m remembering back to when I used to have dreams about Skarde. I never saw him, not clear enough to know what he really looks like, but I saw the Dark Order in those dreams, and they were always in a snowy barren landscape, just like this one, blood splashed around in patterns of crimson.
Well, now what? Do I dive under and look for the way back out?
But before I can contemplate that in a serious way, Kaleid and Natalia burst through the surface, spitting out blood.
“There you are,” Kaleid says to me, quickly swimming over at vampire speed so he’s beside me in a second, grabbing hold of my arm in a manner that’s way rougher than I’m used to.
“Hey,” I tell him.
“Can’t have you thinking about going back,” he says to me, hauling me out of the blood. And by hauling, I mean he’s actually dragging me on shore as I struggle to get my footing.
“Be nice, Kaleid,” Natalia says, coming out of the lake after us. “Just because Solon isn’t here doesn’t mean I will put up with your garbage.”
Kaleid laughs and lets go of me in such a way that I fall to my knees in the snow, suddenly weak and clumsy.
“Bastard,” Natalia hisses at him. She marches over to me and pulls me up to my feet. “Sorry about that,” she says to me. “This world is already getting to him.”
