Whole Lot of Trouble
I wake up shivering. I’m cold…so cold that my teeth are chattering and everything—I mean everything—hurts. My head worst of all, but the rest of me is almost as bad. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s being stretched on a rack, and my bones ache deep inside. Worse, I can barely breathe.
I’m awake enough to know something is wrong—like really wrong—but not quite awake enough to remember what it is. I want to move, want to at least pull the blanket from my bed up and over me, but the voice deep inside me is back. And it’s ordering me to lie still. Ordering me not to move, not to open my eyes, not to even breathe too deeply.
Which won’t be a problem considering I feel like a fifty- pound weight is crushing my chest—kind of like how I felt when I was fourteen and got pneumonia, only a million times worse.
I want to disregard the voice, want to roll over and find a way to get warm again. But flashes of memory are starting to come back, and they scare me into lying very, very still.
Jaxon, with hellfire burning in his eyes, shouting for me to run.
Lia brandishing a gun.
Jaxon falling over, passing out.
Lia screaming at me that everything is all my fault right before she—
Oh my God! She shot Jaxon! OmigodOmigodOmigod.
Panic slams through me, and my eyes fly open before I can think better of it. I try to sit up, determined to get to him, but I can’t move. I can’t sit up. I can’t roll over. I can’t do anything but wiggle my fingers and toes and move my head a little, though I’m still not coherent enough to figure out why.
At least not until I turn my head and see my right arm stretched out to the side and tied into an iron ring. A quick glance to the other side shows my left arm in the same predicament.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that my legs are tied down, too, and as more of the fogginess fades, I realize that I’m spread-eagled on top of some kind of cold stone slab. And I’m wearing nothing but a thin cotton sheath, which, honestly, is just adding insult to already egregious injury.
I mean, she drugged me, shot me, and tied me up. She has to freeze me as well?
As my memories come flooding back, adrenaline surges through my system. I try to tamp it down, try to think around the sick panic winding its way through me. But with the cold and the drugs and the adrenaline, clear thinking isn’t exactly easy right now.
Still, I have to figure out what happened to Jaxon. I have to know if he’s alive or if she killed him. She said she wasn’t going to, but it’s kind of hard to trust anything she says considering her original invite for tonight was for mani-pedis
and look where I am now.
Just the thought of something happening to Jaxon has emptiness yawning inside of me. Has my panic turning to terror. I have to get to him. I have to figure out what happened. I have to do something.
For the first time since coming to Katmere Academy, I wish I had some supernatural powers of my own. Namely the power to break through rope. Or teleport. Hell, I’d even take a shadow of Jaxon’s telekinesis at this point—something, anything that might possibly get me untied and off this horrible rock.
I shake my head a little, struggle to clear the light-headed, packed-with-cotton feeling that’s going on in there. And try to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to get these ropes off me before Lia comes back from whatever level of hell she’s currently visiting.
Wherever I am, it’s dark. Not pitch black, obviously, because I can see my hands and feet and a little beyond where I’m lying. But that’s it. Only about four feet past my hands and feet in every direction, but after that it’s really dark. Like really, really dark.
Which isn’t terrifying at all considering I’m in the middle of a school filled with things that go bump in the night. Lucky, lucky me.
I think about screaming, but the chill in the air tells me I’m not actually inside the main school anymore. Which means there probably isn’t anyone around to hear me—except Lia, and I definitely don’t want to attract her attention one second sooner than she wants to give it to me.
So, I do the only thing possible in this situation. Strain
against the ropes as hard as I can. I mean, I know I’m not going to be able to break free from them, but rope stretches if you pull on it long and hard enough. If I can just get some wiggle room around one of my wrists, I can slip my hand through, and I’ll at least have a fighting chance.
Okay, maybe not a fighting chance. More like a teeny tiny chance. But at this point, I’m not exactly complaining. Any chance, no matter how small, is better than just lying here, waiting to die.
Or worse.
I don’t know how long I tug and strain against the ropes, but it feels like a lifetime. It’s probably more like eight to ten minutes, but terrified and alone in the dark, it feels like so many more.
I try to concentrate on what I’m doing, try to put all my focus into escaping and nothing else. But it’s hard when I don’t know where Jaxon is, when I don’t know what’s happened to him or if he’s even alive. Then again, if I don’t get out of here, I’ll never know.
It’s that thought that has me pulling harder, twisting back and forth with more determination than ever. My wrists hurt now—big surprise—the rubbing back and forth against the ropes chafing them raw. Since I can’t do anything about the pain, I ignore it and twist faster even as I strain to hear any sound that might indicate Lia is coming back.
For now I don’t hear anything but the rasp of my wrists against the ropes, but who knows how long that will last.
Please, I whisper to the universe. Please, just work with me a little here. Please, just let me get one arm free. Please, please, please.
The pleading doesn’t work. Then again, I didn’t actually expect it to. It didn’t work after my parents died, either.
The chafing on my wrists has given way to intense pain— and a slippery wetness that I’m very much afraid is blood. Then again, the fluid is making it easier to turn my wrist now, so maybe bleeding isn’t the worst thing that could happen in this situation. At least if it helps get me out of here before a vampire or seven show up to finish me off.
For the first time, I understand—really understand—why an animal caught in a trap is willing to chew its own foot off to escape. If I thought it would give me a fighting chance, and if I could reach my wrist, I might be tempted to do the same thing. Especially since this yanking and pulling doesn’t seem to be—
My left hand slips, nearly comes out of the rope. I’m so surprised that I almost cry out in relief and maybe blow everything. Paranoid about letting a sound escape— although I don’t actually think it’s paranoia considering the situation I currently find myself in—I lock my jaw in place to keep the sounds of excitement and pain from spilling out into this pitch-dark room.
Ignoring the pain, ignoring the panic, ignoring everything but the fact that I am so close to getting one hand free, I twist and strain with every ounce of strength in my body, so hard and so long that it’s almost a shock when my hand finally slips free from the rope.
The pain is excruciating, and I can feel blood running down my hand, slipping between my fingers and along my palm. I don’t even care, though, not now when I’m so close to finding a way out of this. I twist my body and reach for my
other wrist—not the easiest thing to do when I’m spread- eagled. With my legs tied as tightly as they are, I can only twist a little bit, but it’s enough to reach my right hand.
Enough to maybe have a fighting chance at breaking completely free.
Slipping my fingers in between the ropes and my right wrist, I start pulling as hard as I can. The bizarre twisting adds another layer of pain to the mix, but once again I ignore it. I’m pretty sure any pain I feel now is nothing compared to what I’ll feel once Lia decides to…do whatever it is she’s planning on doing.
Finally, the rope on this wrist slips, too, and I manage to slide my right hand free as well. Somehow the hope that comes with that little bit of freedom makes me panic more, and it takes every ounce of concentration I have not to cry as I sit up and start fumbling with the ropes around my ankles.
Every second feels like an eternity as I strain my ears in a desperate attempt to listen for Lia. I don’t know why it matters so much; it’s not like I’ll be able to lie back down and fake it if she shows up. All this blood pretty much negates any chance of that ever happening.
Just the thought has me doubling my already frantic efforts, yanking on the ropes and pulling against them until my fingers and ankles are as raw and bloody as my wrists.
The rope around my right ankle finally gives a little bit. Not enough to get my foot through, but more than enough to have me concentrating solely on that side.
Another minute and a half, I’m guessing, and I’ve got my right foot free, which leaves me to concentrate on the left
foot with everything I’ve got. At least until a high pitched scream slices through the cold air and has pretty much every hair on my body standing straight up—especially when the scream echoes around and around me.
It’s Lia, I know it. My blood runs cold, and for a second I can’t move, can’t think through the terror. But then the voice is back, cutting through the fear and ordering me to Hurry, hurry, hurry.
I start tearing at the rope, no longer caring if I dig deep furrows into my skin as I try desperately to untie it. Try desperately to escape.
“Please, please, please,” I mutter to the universe again. “Please.”
I have no idea where I am, no idea if I actually manage to get loose if I can even get out of this place without freezing to death when I step outside. Just the idea of being trapped here has the panic simmering right below the surface rearing its ugly head again.
One problem at a time, I remind myself. Get free from the restraints and then worry about what comes next. Everything else, no matter how terrible, is still a step up from being tied to a stone table like some kind of human sacrifice.
My breath catches in my throat at the thought, a sob welling up within me. But I push the tears back down where they belong. Later, I can cry.
Later, I can do a lot of things.
For now, I need to get off this altar or whatever the hell it is. I need to escape and I need to figure out what’s happening to Jaxon. Everything else can wait.
The rope gives—thankyouthankyouthankyou—and I manage to wiggle my foot out without sacrificing too many layers of skin.
The moment I’m free, I jump off the table…and nearly fall flat on the ground. Now that I’m standing, I realize just how woozy I still am. I thought the adrenaline would burn through the drugs lingering in my system, but they must be really strong drugs. Or I must not have been lying on that table as long as I thought I was…
Still, I take a deep breath and focus. Try to see through the dizziness to figure out where I am…and how to get the hell out of here before crazy, crazy Lia finds her way back.
Another scream rends the air, and I freeze—then run. I don’t even know where I’m running to, but I figure if I make my way along the walls, I’ll find a door eventually. And if I’m lucky, it’ll be on the early side of eventually.
But I’ve barely taken a step before a roar follows the scream, this one deep and powerful and completely animalistic. For a second, just a second, I think it might be Jaxon, and a new rush of terror slams through me.
Then logic reasserts itself—I’ve heard Jaxon in many different ways, but never like this. Never like an animal devoid of any human qualities.
There’s another roar, followed by a crash against the wall. More screams, growls, things breaking, another crash.
Lia’s clearly in a fight, and I should use this chance to escape. But what if I’m wrong? What if those growls and roars are from Jaxon? What if he’s as disoriented as I am and can’t defend himself against her?
—
I sprint toward the wall where the noises are coming from. It’s a foolish move—the most foolish—but I need to know if it’s Jaxon. I need to know if he’s okay or if she’s doing to him what she planned to do to me.
I bang my knees against something as I make my way across what I now realize is a massive room. Whatever I hit topples over, splashing liquid onto my feet and the long cotton shift Lia dressed me in.
The water feels disgusting, squishing between my toes and soaking my dress, but I ignore it and keep running as fast as I can. That’s not very fast, given the drugs and my raw, wet feet, but I push on. At least until a thousand candles burst to life around me all at once.
As their flames light up the room, I freeze. And wish with everything in me that I was back in the dark.
