CHAPTER 33
Andi
Andi sucked in air
again, a violent and painful act.
Plink, plunk. Plink, plunk. Plinkplunk, plinkplunk. Plink,
plunk.
It was dark and
chill, wherever she was. She was leaning up against a cement wall.
She couldn’t move her spread and slightly bent limbs, and the
rattling of chains suggested she should not bother to try. A wet
rag was taped into her mouth.
Her arms felt heavy,
something was tickling them, and they hurt.
Plinkplunk, plink, plunk.
She let out a low
hum, then another. She built one note upon the other, and the music
made her throat glow faintly. What she glimpsed made her choke,
shutting off the light.
Swarms of round black
ticks clung to each arm. A few of them moved, but most were feeding
from her flesh—from her smooth underarms, her bony elbows, her
wriggling fingertips, and most of all from the forearm welts she
had inflicted upon herself.
Those that had
swollen to full size were dropping off into large buckets lined up
by her feet. The buckets were about a third full with a thick,
crimson, boiling mixture. New ticks crawling up the wall quickly
replaced them.
It felt like all her
innards were roiling and clenching at once. Her skin
crawled—literally! It felt like a greasy fist was clenching her
throat; she had never been so frightened, or repelled.
She swooned in her
chains and tried not to retch into her gag. This is what you get for sticking with him. This is what
you deserve, for turning Jennifer down.
Plink, plink, plunk, plinkplunk.
For a few minutes,
she let herself hang from her wrists, bile rising from her gut,
swaying back and forth.
Let it be done. What else can I hope for? You win, Skip.
You win.
The answer came from
an unseen source. It was a voice from her past, from a life she
barely lived, in a moment even before her birth—her mother, strong
and vibrant, holding her in her womb, standing up for
herself:
You won nothing! You don’t test me! You don’t control me!
You don’t tell me what I can and cannot do! Screw
you!
SCREW YOU!
Her skin began to
tingle all over—not from the sensation of tiny arachnids crawling,
but from something within. Something was unwinding. Was it her
intestines, her lungs, her arteries? It felt like it was
everywhere. It . . . it wasn’t a scary feeling,
exactly.
I’ve felt this before, she realized. On the bridge. With Mother, before I killed
her.
You’ve failed, came her father’s
voice.
Screw you, her mother replied.
I’m not just a sorceress born in the dark, raised in the
dark, and left to die in the dark. I’m the daughter of the most
powerful beaststalker to ever walk the earth. She wouldn’t just
hang here. She wouldn’t let a slob like Skip bleed her slowly. She
would control her own destiny.
Her torso unfolded,
and four new arms appeared, unrestrained, each holding a
dagger.
And it would start with a weapon or
four.
Once she had cut off
the gag and scraped the ticks off each arm, it was a matter of
finding the right melody to unlock the chains . . . and then a
quick stumble up the cellar stairs. It was a house, she recognized,
between the convenience store and the restaurant. One of the first
they had occupied.
Probably the same one he stored Mr. Slider
in.
She wasn’t sure if
she wanted Skip to be here for a fatal confrontation, or to escape
unseen. In any case, he was nowhere to be found, and she did not
wait for him. She was sick and weak, having left most of her blood
in pails.
In the pails he set
out for her blood. Oh, you bastard, she
thought, crashing and reeling through the room, intent on
flight.
Get to Libby, her mother’s voice told her.
Libby can save you.
She burst out the
back door of the restaurant and into the woods, toward the blue
dome in the distance.
I’ll help them now. Jennifer, her mother, all of them.
They’ll heal me and make me strong again. Then we’ll stop Skip
together.
If anyone can.