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My head whips around from the floor, hands trying to pull me up. Escape, that’s what I need. Away from this man. He’s confusing. Ominous. And he pushed me down here. Why? Confusion starts taking over, but the sea of bodies keeps moving around me, as I pull up to my feet again, creating a wall too fast to cut through. “You should leave, Mrs Tanner. He was wrong to tempt you here.”
I take another few steps backwards, and a prickly sensation overtakes the fun I was in. I’m shivering under his gaze, scared, and unable to either leave it or rally against it. I grab my head, trying to make sense of the situation I’m in, but the circle keeps spinning, a blur of bodies moving around his perfectly still stance in the middle of it. He’s so big, tall. Hands in his pockets, eyes focused on me and nothing else. “I … I don’t want him,” I eventually manage, stuttering the words.
“Yes you do,” he says, coming closer again. The room shifts with him, the circle spinning around him moving to accommodate his steps. “Be careful with that if you intend to stay. You’ll grieve twice over. It will hurt more if it’s because of him. You should choose someone else.”
My mouth moves, trying to counter whatever he’s insinuating, but everything’s a mess of confusion and misperceptions. Even this fucking room sways and muddles me now, leaving me shivering and trembling in the atmosphere instead of feeling light hearted. I stare at his face, watching as it morphs from amused to malicious. Dark circles form under his eyes from nowhere, veins seemingly visible under his skin.
I clutch the gold chain and back away, heels gingerly moving, but a body slams into me, sending me crashing sideways into the rush of couples. Another jolt and bang and my legs turn me, my head desperately thrashing back and forth to find a path through the endless floor. It doesn’t appear, and I end up twisting and flaying, my body being barged around as all the voices laugh at me.
I shrink inwards, suddenly small and fearful in this maze of corridors and contradictions. I can’t breathe with it all so fast around me, can’t see my way through or find my way out. My throat rattles around words of help, but I can’t get them out. I turn and watch that man following me, the sea of bodies opening for him with every step he takes. He’s laughing at me, a dark cackle coming out of his mouth, as he moves. What does he want?
Gray?
My head shakes. Grieving twice over? What did that mean? One hand leaves the man’s pockets, the fingers reaching for me across open space. I turn and head into the bodies again, raking a way through them without any care for who I knock out of the way. Run. Must run. Get away.
More and more bodies, though. More and more laughing.
I can’t breathe, as I’m banged and bashed. Can’t…
A solid block of chest hits me, hands gripping my arms. I batter my fists at it, head thrashing some more to get away from the man. He’s coming. He is. He’s coming with his eyes and his face of veins and his laughing. The grip of a hand wraps around both my wrists, pinning me still, and then I’m lifted. I feel my weight come off the floor, heels falling from my feet.
“Nooooooo,” screams out of me. “He’s coming!”
My face gets turned into a chest, held there by some force I can’t escape, and I hear a voice mumbling. Another voice joins in, hushed words mumbled under the music that’s still blaring. Can’t understand them, though. Nothing makes sense. It’s all noise and chaos and bad men with veins in their face and fingers that grip tightly. I tap my fingers in his grip, clutching the chain desperately and trying to find a rhythm.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
There isn’t any rhythm, though. No pulse. No sense of a heartbeat anymore.
I’m alone.
Chapter 18
Gray
“Faith will deal with her. Calm down,” he says.
My feet pace the screen like a trapped wolf, eyes looking into the room and the bed she’s laid out on. The dress has been removed, a heavy blanket thrown across her body and tucked in tightly. I sneer and lift out the bottle of pills, meticulously checking each pill as they fall into my hand. They’re exactly what they should be, colours exact, the ingrained stripes in place.
“Gray. She’ll be fine,” Malachi says, as I watch Faith pull a syringe out of the drawers.
The serum gets pulled into it and then injected into Hannah’s arm, regardless of the thrashing still continuing. I know it’s safe. It’s my own serum. But the minutes pass by, Faith’s hands holding her firmly on the bed, and the thrashing continues.
I keep pacing and looking at the gold chain being flung around in her turmoil, part ready to go down there and deal with her myself. It’ll make it worse. I know that. It’ll make her centre on me more when she comes round, make her think I’m her counter, her balance. I’m not. Fucking hero? Unlikely, no matter how much I want in that room with her now.
Thankfully, the lashing out starts to slow before I do something inconceivable and break my own rules. I drink some water, trying to ease my reaction to the stimulant off, and pace some more by the window. Stupid. Idiotic. A smile forms on Faith’s mouth, her body gliding upwards from the bed. She looks at the screen we’re behind and winks at me, as if she’s enjoying my torment up here. Bitch. Never has been anything other than that. And her continued stare at me, head tilted as if she’s trying to work out how to wind me up further, is fucking annoying.
“Why are you so wound up?” Malachi asks.
I turn and look at him, then look straight back at Hannah. I don’t know why I am, but I am. This shouldn’t have happened. She should have been having a good time, relaxing, distracting herself for the time we’re here. This is not how it was supposed to go. Yes, I was playing with fire letting myself connect to her, but she wasn’t supposed to trip out like this. This isn’t the type of distraction anyone wants.
“Did you do anything to her?” I grumble.
“Me? What do you take me for?”
My head swings back sharply, a glower sent straight at him. “She was fine with me. And then not with you. What did you do?”
He laughs and relaxes back into his chair, one heavy booted foot kicked up onto another chair. “I can’t help being terrifying. It’s in my nature.” I glance back at her, watching as she breathes evenly under the blanket. “She was pretty as she ran, though. I enjoyed the stalk.”
