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He chuckles again and starts walking away, leaving her and me on the edge. My hand reaches for her again, inches from her. She scampers a half step away from me towards the front of the gargoyle, finger still on her damn nose.
Dust and debris fall from the stonework, some of it crumbling under her feet.
“Malachi? Please?” Another growl falls out of me, body balanced a few feet from her on the ledge. “Give me a fucking break, will you?”
He stops and swings back to look at me, a low brow conveying his intrigue. “Why are you scared for her?”
“Life?”
“Worthless,” he says, leaning back on a turret and pulling out a hip flask. “Pointless maybe. Make me think more of her than that.”
“What?”
“Malachi says move backwards.” She moves immediately, the pads of her feet creeping the ledge and more fragments falling beneath her. “Why Gray?”
“I want her alive. She deserves-“
“You went three words passed the truth.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I snap, still trying to reach for her. “Stop this. She’s a person not a goddamn trinket for you to pull to bits.” Fuck this. And fuck him. I’m done here.
I inch forward towards her again, glaring at him and ready to snatch at her if I need to.
“Malachi says touch your t-”
“Enough! Yes. Alright. I want her,” growls out of me. “Enough fucking realism for you? Now get her off the goddamn ledge.”
He swigs from his hipflask, some sense of superiority in his gaze, and then starts walking away again towards the door. No Malachi says. No way of getting her off the ledge. Jesus. I reach again, fingers barely a whisper of distance between us, and plead for help from above if Malachi won’t give it.
“Malachi says follow me inside,” mutters back at us.
She steps slowly until she’s back on safe ground, her finger still on her nose, and follows.
Chapter 5
Hannah
Ahand grabs my upper arm sharply, as I get to the door. I loll in its grip, body turning slowly. The fingers pulse on me, as if they’re pounding along with my own blood in a rhythm. Together. Combined.
My teeth chatter, the wind continuing to shower me with rivers of cold blasts.
Lovely.
“Come with me,” he says. Why?
And Malachi hasn’t said.
I shake my head lazily and look back towards the staircase leading downwards. Down - that’s where we’re going. Down and down and down until there’s no further down to go. Rabbit holes. I smile at that and tug my arm from his hold, intent of following Malachi wherever he goes. I want to. I want everything here and nothing that restricts me. Dark, dirty, dangerous – just like me and my new outlook.
A game. Funny.
Malachi says do this. Malachi says do that. It was so far down out there. Nothing but dots of things beneath me in a garden filled with snow and ice.
Malachi says another pill.
“Hannah?” Who is that? A noise, familiar.
Not Malachi.
