Chapter 209. Samhain VI
Maisie
I woke to a violent, throbbing pain in my skull and the roar of an engine.
My body rocked hard to the side, slamming me into cold metal. I tried to move and immediately realized I couldn’t. My wrists were bound tightly behind my back, the rope biting deep into my skin. Something rough and dry was stuffed between my teeth, tied cruelly tight at the back of my head.
A gag.
Panic clawed up my throat.
I twisted violently, kicking out with my legs as I tried to orient myself in the suffocating darkness. My shoulder scraped against something hard. The air smelled like oil, metal, and dust.
I was in a trunk. I was in the fucking trunk of a moving car.
A muffled shriek of outrage tore from my throat as I thrashed, ignoring the way the ropes tore into my wrists.
I rolled onto my side, heart hammering so violently I could barely think. I needed to get out. I needed to get out now.
My fingers stretched desperately behind me, fumbling along the cold metal until they brushed against the edge of the trunk latch.
Hope flared in my chest and I clawed at the latch, nails breaking, skin splitting as I fought to hook my fingers around the release.
The car suddenly jerked as the latch gave way.
The trunk flew open and I tumbled out into the night.
I hit the ground hard and the impact knocked the air from my lungs. Stars exploded behind my eyes. For a second, everything went white.
The car screeched to a stop a few feet ahead, tires kicking up dust.
I was gasping, trying to push myself up with my bound feet, when the car door screeched and two sets of heavy footsteps approached me.
The full moon casted a glow onto their unfamiliar face and my stomach tightened with fear when I recognized their red gazes.
Rogues.
I shoved up to my feet fruitlessly, aiming for a run through the endless, empty road that looked familiar with every passing second.
But rough hands grabbed me. One by my arm, another by my hair, yanking me upright. I screamed into the gag, kicking out blindly and thrashing harder. My heel connected with something solid and one of the men cursed, his grip loosening for half a second.
But it wasn’t enough.
They dragged me forward anyway, my feet scraping against the ground as I twisted between them.
My heart was pounding so hard it hurt.
We were at the Ridge.
At the base of the accursed mountain.
I could feel the charged air licking across my skin. I could feel the same heaviness I felt whenever I was behind that bookshelf at Greymoor. It was much, much worse tonight than it had been that day when I sleepwalked here.
There was a greenish-purplish tint in the sky close to the top of the mountain, and it was such a terrible moment to realize it, but it dawned on me that the Ridge possibly wasn’t the only place with the veil between the worlds thin.
The school was, too.
And I never would have noticed it because it was my first Halloween at Greymoor. And my first Halloween as a Lycan.
"Let me go!" I screamed into the gag and they dragged me back to the car.
And for a second there, I thought I heard a rustle in the trees to my left and caught sight of a pair of golden, glowing, werewolf eyes.
But I must’ve imagined it because it was gone in the next second.
There was a figure a few feet away, silhouetted against the headlights. I caught a glimpse of silver hair tucked under a black baseball cap. A pair of running black sweatpants and a baggy hoodie that made the figure appear bulkier than they really were.
And when I was shoved down on my knees in front of her, Tessa smiled down at me.
The gag muffled my furious sounds as I glared up at her, chest heaving.
"Take out the gag," she purred. "I want to hear her beg."
The bulky rogue to my left yanked back my head and tore out the gag so harshly, he nearly took out my front teeth with it.
Blood pooled in my mouth and I turned my head and spat it directly onto Tessa’s shoes.
Her smile died. And it really was no surprise at all when her palm cracked across my face.
The force of it whipped my head to the side so violently that I lost my balance. I crashed sideways, my head slamming into the stone with a sickening thud.
Pain exploded through my skull and the world tilted and blurred.
I heard the crunch of gravel before I felt cold slender fingers grasp my chin, yanking my head forward at where Tessa had crouched down in front of me. "You never should’ve pushed me, mutt."
I tried to jerk away, but she only pressed her fingers in harder, breaking skin. Blood trickled down my cheek and onto her hand, but she didn’t seem to care.
Blood ran down my face, dribbling down my neck.
And then she gave a small nod to the man on my left and he produced the largest syringe I had ever seen in my life.
It was nearly the length of a forearm, the kind used on animals. Or monsters. The liquid inside was a murky, unnatural gray. The color of ash.
There was enough ash in there to kill a giant in seconds.
"This is insurance, of course," she said with a smile. "There’s still enough left in the remedies the healer prepared."
My eyes widened and she giggled, a sick sheen brightening in her eyes. "That weariness? That fatigue? Being unable to fight back even now? It began so slowly, you probably didn’t notice you were becoming a weakling." Another breathy giggle. "It was my idea actually. Blockers in a few of the tonics. Blockers and traces of ash in the other half."
I was going to puke.
"And when the blockers got detected, the Queen predicted that they would demand a remedy. That was where the larger doses were. Whatever brief relief you felt came from the removal of the blockers. But on the off chance that there’s not enough in you for this to work," she shook the syringe. "That is where this comes in."
I thrashed violently, a raw, panicked sound tore from my throat as I tried to scramble backward, heels scraping against the gravel.
"No—" The word came out in a rushed frenzy. "No, no, no—"
She sighed. "Hold her down."
My body bucked violently beneath the weight of the two rogues, my bound wrists twisting so hard behind my back that I felt something tear.
"If I die, they’ll die, too," I choked out, eyes burning with hatred and yet, I whimpered, "Please don’t do this."
Her mouth curved. "They’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of it when you’re gone."
I thrashed, trying to turn my head away, trying to make myself smaller, trying to disappear into the ground.
"No—no!"
She ignored me.
One of the rogues grabbed my hair and yanked my head to the side, exposing the side of my neck. I screamed, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t stop this.
Tessa crouched beside me. The tip of the needle hovered just above my skin.
She looked down at me, her expression almost serene.
"I tried to warn you, you know," she murmured. "But you never listen. Home wrecking whores like you never do. I suppose in your next life, you’ll learn to stay in your fucking place."
Then she drove the needle into my neck.