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Revenge had been a long time coming.
It had taken nearly forty-eight hours for search-parties to find me after I crawled out of the mine and ran blindly into the woods. I was dehydrated and barely lucid when I was finally found, strapped to a gurney and wheeled into the back of an ambulance. When they let me out of the hospital, with a bottle of pills and a therapist’s recommendation that I be “watched carefully,” I returned to school with a kitchen knife in my backpack, went straight up to Victoria Hadleigh in the middle of second period, and tried to slit her throat.
She’d tried to kill me. It had only seemed right I return the favor.
So much of what happened after the police found me was a blur, smeared like paint. I hadn’t been sleeping, I’d barely been eating. I was doubting everything I’d seen, everything I’d heard. I’d sat there and had doctors socalmlyandpatientlytell me I was delusional. I’d had police laugh at me. I’d had friends and family turn their backs on me. All the while I’d lie awake at night, terrified to close my eyes because I knew the nightmares would close in, terrified to leave the house because I could still hear thatvoicecalling me.
There were months of court cases, meetings with lawyers, meetings with psychiatrists. Evaluations, tests. My mother telling me how lucky I was the Hadleighs were being sounderstanding. Then, finally, commitment. Sent to a hospital with locked doors and quiet hallways. More pills. Watched 24/7.
At least in there, I hadn’t had to endure my mother looking at me like I was a rat that had crawled into her house. At least the woods were on the other side of a large brick wall, and although I’d sometimes hear howls in the night, there was no more scratching outside my window. At least in there, I managed to survive until I was eighteen, and they told me I was “rehabilitated.”
But three years in the hospital had given me a false sense of security. The Eldbeasts couldn’t reach me in there. Only once I was out did I realize just how persistent they were.
Wherever I went, no matter how far I ran from Abelaum, they came. I had to learn their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities, where to shoot, to stab, to crush. I learned the dark was never safe, but daylight usually was. I learned how to sift through the myriad of legends and myths to find nuggets of truth — truth I could use to protect myself, truth I could use to make sense of what had happened.
No matter where I ran, no matter how far I went, the God knew. It clung to me like a stain I couldn’t wash away. It came to me in dreams. Grasping tentacles. Endless darkness. Visions of impossible things, of a twisted world beyond reality.
God owned the Libiri, and the Libiri owned Abelaum. Like fungal roots, spreading far and wide, choking out all they encountered, so too was their reach. They recruited in whispers, in nudges. They captured curious minds and reassured fearful ones.The Deep One is watching. The Deep One is merciful. The Deep One will rise.
Complete the sacrifices. Free the God. Serve with loyalty as humanity falls under the rule of an ancient deity.
Marcus was only the first. Two more sacrifices were meant to follow. Two more tragedies. I wouldn’t let them win. I wouldn’t let them make those twisted visions I saw in my nightmares a reality.
They’d tried and failed to make me their victim. What remained of me was what they’d made of me: a shadow of their evil, an echo of pain, a storm of their own creation.
A storm that would destroy them, even if it meant destroying myself in the process.
9
I ran through the dark, lungs burning, legs aching. The ragged wounds on my chest were still bleeding, covered in mud. Twigs and stones cut my bare feet, branches whipped at my face. I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. The woods were endless, the darkness so potent that I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me.
I’d crawled out of the mine. I’d ripped off fingernails trying to grip the muddy, slick walls of the shaft. I’d screamed my throat raw calling for help.
This wasn’t a nightmare. This was all too real.
I stopped, my stinging feet stumbling as I came to a halt. The darkness was full of vague shapes, my terrified mind creating phantoms out of shadows. But there, ahead of me, a pair of golden eyes glowed in the dark.
I was rooted in place, my limbs frozen with fear. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it wasn’t human.
I was still being hunted.
It had been a long time since I’d last set foot in Abelaum’s woods. The rich scent of the damp loam was tinged with mold, the sharp smell of the pines triggering a tightness in my chest that made it difficult to breathe. I stood at the edge of the trees, staring into the shadows, and all I wanted to do was run the other direction. The impulse overtook the entirety of my brain, a frantic scream I was unable to block out, every limb tingling with the sense of danger.
I waited, listening to the wind whisper through the boughs of the towering trees. I listened for the voice that would call to me. I waited for the cold shiver up my spine that told me when Its eyes were on me. The Deep One was trapped underground, but Its influence reached far beyond that: a network of roots that grew ever farther, greedy with hunger.
At least for tonight, the woods were quiet.
I was stone-cold sober. Tonight, I’d seal the deal. I knew now that it wasn’t just about my soul. Sex, power, domination — this demon was playing some sadomasochistic game where I was both the prize and the pawn. If that was what the demon wanted, if that was what would secure his help, so be it.
It sickened me that I felt attracted to him. He wasn’t something I should have enjoyed; he was something I should have dreaded. But I could so vividly remember how he’d felt inside me, how he’dtasted. My treacherous body craved the pain I’d experienced with him, the exquisite agony of being taken by a monster.
With a deep breath, I stepped into the shadow of the trees. My heart hammered against my ribs, aching with every step I took. This feeling was suffocating, but it wasn’t only fear. It was excitement. It was a bizarre thrill. It was erratic anticipation.
It was hunger and lust, and — strangely — hope.
I’d struggled for years to survive. I’d learned how to make myself into a weapon. But soon, I’d have a new weapon. I’d have the power to rival my enemies.
The demon hadn’t given me specific instructions. The longer I walked, my senses on high alert for the slightest unusual sound, the more my uneasiness grew. Every step was an internal struggle, a battle against my own mind. The darkness wasn’t safe, and I’d gone years knowing that once the sun set, I would be hunted.
