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“You know how long you’ve been here?”
“No—” But I wasn’t sure if I was saying his name or if I wanted him to shut up.
“Seventy-one hours.” He started to laugh, and in the background I swore I could hear Panic tittering with him.
I shook my head furiously. My hair swatted my face and my lips with each vigorous shake, but I kept shaking my head because it was the only way to keep Panic from licking me all over.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered fiercely.
“Doesn’t matterwhat?” No was taunting me. Why?
“Doesn’t matter how long I’m here! He’ll find me!”
“No one will find you—”
“Yes, he will—”
“No, no, no,” he sang, and Panic sang along with him.
“Yes,” I shouted. “He’ll find me! Because Helios loves me—”
He answered in his singsong voice, “Who’s Helios? I don’t know no Helios. Helios made a fool of us all—”
“He’s Helios Andreadis, the President of the Afxisi—”
Lights suddenly switched on, blazingly bright, blinding me for a second. For a second, I was terrifyingly disoriented, feeling like I had been transplanted from a dungeon to the operating ward of an asylum.
Something rattled, the sound of chains being yanked down, and when I forced myself to look towards the sound, I saw a man calmly releasing himself from his restraints.
“No?”
The man glanced at me—
One eye pulled down by sunken skin, the other half turned into a maze of scars, and sneering, drooling lips.
“My name is Manolito Chavez, MJ. It’s been a pleasure getting to know you, my dear. Your strength has amazed me all this time, but I knew there had to be a reason for it. You thought someone would come after you, didn’t you?”
The lips folded into a smile, making the face more grotesque. But what really made me want to throw up was the look in his eyes. He wanted to devour me, bit by bit, and he wanted me to cry with every inch he ate.
Something told me that my flesh wouldn’t be the first this man’s tasted, literally.
“And who knows? Perhaps he might have succeeded. But now that I know his name, I know what to look for. I know who to hide you from. I’m sorry to say, my dear, he will never find you again.”
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I screamed the word inside my mind. I would rather die than let him know how much he had me terrified. I tried to summon Helios, but it seemed even his image, his voice, was blocked from my mind.
NO, NO, NO!
This time, I knew I wasn’t saying his name.
This time, I knew there was no escape.
Swish.
