Asylum Bound
Page 16
I stop and shake my head before the hot tears building in my eyes spill over. “I feel like I’m stuck in one of those nightmares where no matter how hard I scream, no one can hear me.”
Except for me. I can always hear you.
“Shut up.”
Just like you can always hear me.
Bentley cocks his head. “I didn’t say anything.”
I focus my attention on a single square on the ceiling. “I just thought I could trust Adelaide, you know? Just a little bit. Just…just till I got through this.”
“I told you, Thalia, you can’t trust anyone,” he says, softly.
“I know I can’t trust you, I just…”
“Thalia.” The way he says my voice makes it impossible not to look away from that single spot on the ceiling and back down at him. When I do, that sadness is there but it’s hardened a bit. He’s looking at me intensely, his brow slightly furrowed and serious. “Thalia…you’re not going mad.”
I let out a half bark, half laugh. “Really? Well thank goodness that’s been cleared up.”
“Please, Thalia. What I’m trying to say is…”
Here, Bentley looks over his shoulder as his voice drops. He isn’t scared, exactly, but the caution is heavy in his tone.
“Really, Thalia. You haven’t noticed it?”
I feel a prickle on the back of my spine. I glance between me and Bentley and the door to the cafeteria. I’m suddenly very aware of how alone we are. That door might be right there, but if Bentley wanted to hurt me…
It would be just like him, just like this place, for Bentley to turn out to be the secret serial killer after all. Just waiting, biding his time, trying to get close to me.
I swallow hard and try to keep my voice from wavering.
“Noticed…what?”
“This place. The inmates…” He glances back over his shoulder again, then shakes his head. “Thalia, do you trust me?”
“Bentley…”
I feel my throat constrict a bit. There’s a pressure at the back of my head. My heartbeat quickens and my palms grow sweaty.
It’s this place. It makes me jumpy. But what if I have good reason? Why…why should I trust Bentley at all?
As if sensing my thoughts, he suddenly straightens up and shakes his head several times as if to clear it. “Of course not. Sorry, Thalia. I must be scaring you.”
“Not at all,” I say, no amount of fear able to keep the sarcasm from my voice.
“Here.”
Bentley fishes into his pocket and pulls out a small, slender object. It takes me a second to recognize it when he holds it out to me.
It’s the broken heel of my stiletto…but it’s been whittled down even further to a truly wicked-looking point.
“What the hell is that, Bentley?”
“I’m giving this to you in good faith. As a guarantee.”
I look at him sideways and he takes a deep breath.
“If you get scared, or if you think I’m going to hurt you, or…or even if I stand too close to you or…or whatever…” he starts, still holding out the stiletto-turned-shank, “Just stab me with this.”
I stare at him a moment.
This boy is crazy.
It’s one of those rare moments where I don’t disagree.
“Bentley…”
“Wait,” he says. “You stab me or slash me or whatever…and Kingsley’s going to come out. You know it. Remember this?”
He points to the faint red mark on his cheek, and my spinning thoughts pause.
“So that’s how you…”
“Not always,” he says. “Sometimes it just happens. But you hurt me with this again, and it’ll at least buy you some time.”
“Yeah, and bring Kingsley back.”
Bentley grimaces. “Which, I can guarantee you, neither of us wants.”
I think on it for a minute, then take the stiletto. He must be pretty desperate if he’s willing to let Kingsley take back over.
“So, what’s so important? Why do you need me to trust you so bad?”
Bentley nods down the hall, towards the stairs at the far end. “You said you wanted to know why everyone started acting differently last week. Why it’s such a big deal that you still have a chance of getting out?”
I tilt my head to the side. I can hear trays moving on the other side of the door. The hallway will be flooded, and soon I’ll be expected to report to grief therapy. I’ve been a model patient lately. If I didn’t want to get out badly enough before everyone started acting like I have cooties, I sure do now.
But then…I also want to know what Bentley is willing to sacrifice his consciousness for. I need to know.
“So then, tell me.”
“Some things you just have to see to understand.” Bentley holds out a hand. “So, now you know my secret, my weakness…do you trust me enough to let me show you?”
I weigh the weapon in my hand. He knows I’ll use it. He knows I’ve used to twice before.
No, I don’t trust Bentley, but I trust myself.
So, I take his hand and follow him anyway.
24
Thalia
I know the makeshift shiv in my hand wouldn’t do much in the case of a real attack, but it stills the knot of fear in my stomach.
I shouldn’t trust Bentley. I can’t trust Bentley.
But my hand in his feels so right. Maybe it’s just that it’s the only human contact I’ve had in weeks that didn’t involve me being thrown around…but I find myself dreading the moment that he lets go.
Here I am, being led towards some secret he swears I have to see in order to believe…and I’m thinking about how much I crave the touch of skin. Kind skin. Warm skin. Skin that heats and reddens when he catches me staring at the top of the first flight of stairs.
I drop his hand and immediately regret it.
He stops and thinks for a moment, his eyes scanning the long hallway before us. “You sure you’re ready to see this?”
“If you’re talking about your Johnson, then I really don’t think we’re on the same page.”
His face reddens even more, and the adorableness of it makes the not-so-ladylike lady between my legs ache.
“Not exactly. But it might help you trust me, in the future.”
He holds out his hand to me again, his face still slightly flushed, and after only the slightest hesitation, I take it and head up another flight of stairs with him, then two more.
As soon as we step out onto the top landing I stop and plant my feet where I stand.
The evenly spaced doors on either side of the hall are identical to those in the hallway on the floor below. I don’t need to look inside the rooms to know where Bentley’s led me.
“Uh huh. Explain to me why we’re in the men’s dorms.” Or, more accurately, quarters. Cells. Something of the like. Adelaide was quick to correct me on that when I got here.
I get that pang again, but this time it’s not for the friend’s I’ve lost on the outside…but for the ones I’ve lost more recently.
Bentley just pulls my arm from where I’ve crossed it in front of my chest and drags me down the hall.
“It’ll be worth your time. If it isn’t…then…well, I give you permission to stab me just for the fun of it.”
“Duly noted. Things have been feeling rather…stale…of late.”
We walk past the regular rooms to another door at the end that Bentley has to unlock with a key from his pocket. This heightens my interest slightly, since it’s the first locked room aside from the solitary confinement cell that I’ve come across so far. Whatever lies on the other side of those doors makes even Bentley pause for a second.
“Thalia…what I’m about to show you…”
“Stop,” I whisper. “You’re scaring me.”
I mean it as a joke, but Bentley looks back at me in a way that leaves me taken aback.
“I just…it’s going to change the way you look at me. At Adelaide. At everyone here.”
“You say that…”
Bentley shakes his head, steels himself up, and opens the door just wide enough for us to slip through.
Another, shorter hall is on the other side. To the left are several large, barred windows looking down on the front lawn. Some of the morning classes have started, meaning I’m probably already late for more grief therapy that mostly involves me re-living terrible childhood trauma for the rest of the class’ enjoyment.
Where the inmate dormitories are bare, the hallway here is lavishly furnished. The crown molding has been freshly brushed with gold leaf, the rugs don’t wear at the corners from years of use, and some of the figures in the paintings actually appear to be smiling. Smiling.
I knew there was a clear hierarchy to this place, but I didn’t know that included a secret basically-palatial wing.
I’m about to ask Bentley if he really brought me all the way up here just to show me how the other half lives when a noise coming from down the hall stops me. It’s muffled enough that I can’t make out what it is—but it’s definitely, or at least probably—human.
“There’s something you should know about Price.” Bentley bars me from moving further with one arm. “He’s worse than the rest of us. Or, at least, worse than most of us.”
I look up at him, his face a mixture of guilt and mystery, and then quickly duck under his arm before he can change his mind and take the high road. His feet pad after me in the hall, but he has to move slower than me to keep from being heard.
The closer I get to the room, the louder the sounds are. Sighs, grunts, the weight of a hand thumping against the wall.
As I draw closer, I know immediately what it is.
It’s primal and unmistakable.
Bentley stands so close to me I can feel the brush of his fabric on my arm, smell the scent of him, hear his own breaths as he tries to keep quiet.
“You led me up here…because Price is having sex?” I whisper, my voice so barely above a rush of air that at first, I think he doesn’t hear me.
To my heart-thumping horror he just reaches forward and ever-so-carefully pushes the door open a crack.
It isn’t locked. After all, who else would be up here.
On the other side of the door is a meld of bodies pressed together in the darkness. Skin on skin. Hot breath. That sticky scent of bodily fluids.
My sensible side screams for me to look away, but that isn’t the side of me that’s in control any more. As soon as I glance inside, I can’t look away. It’s mesmerizing and tantalizing and forbidden.
All I see are glimpses through the crack in the door. A strong shoulder. A bared thigh. A woman’s exposed breast. That unmistakable glint of Price’s golden hair.
A long, forked tongue.
Wait, what?
No, no. A normal tongue. Hands trailing over bodies. The glisten of sweat on skin.
A long, whip-like tail snaked between bodies. Teasing. Testing.
This isn’t all. It’s him…it’s all of him. He’s transformed. It’s Price…but…it’s also something else.
What the actual fuck.
My face must have turned a deathly shade of gray, because suddenly Bentley is shutting the door and reaching for me…my own horror mirrored on his face.
I stumble back a step, two steps.
“Thalia…I warned you…”
I keep backing away.
I can’t have just seen that. That isn’t possible. People don’t have forked tongues. They don’t have tails.
But you did see it. I saw it too.
Bentley is reaching for me, but I pull away…even though I can’t look away from his face. I know, looking there, that this is what he brought me here to see. This is what he needed me to see.
“Thalia…” he mouths.
I shake my head. He mouths something else, but I can’t hear him over the pounding of my own blood.
What is Price? Was that Price…or was it some horrible monster I’ve only imagined?
“Thalia…” Bentley mouths again, but the rest of his words are lost on me again.
Maybe I was drugged. Maybe there are gasses making me hallucinate.
Thalia.
This time, I hear him.
Not a voice. Not my voice.
But Bentley. In my head.
Thalia, I just wish you’d listen to me. I just wish you’d let me warn you. This place…the people here…how can I tell you how much danger you’re really in?
My eyes widen, and for a second, I stop my slow backwards decent down the hall.
“Warn me . . . of what?”
Bentley stops too, and his eyes widen. He stares for a moment, and this time, I know his mouth doesn’t move.
Thalia? You…you can hear me?
I clamp one hand over either side of my head.
“No. No…no!”
His lips aren’t moving, but he won’t shut up.
Please, Thalia, tell me you can’t hear me. Tell me you aren’t one of us.
“Stop it, Bentley, stop! Get out of my head!”
I’m shouting now. It can’t be helped. I know it’s stupid. I know Price will hear. Price or…or whatever monster is in the darkness behind that door.
Thalia…
And it’s just too much. This is just too much. I could handle the voices. I could handle the…monster. But this. This invasion into my mind, my own sanity.
It’s just too much.
Bentley takes another step towards me, and I lash out with the makeshift shiv. He leans back, and I narrowly miss slashing him across the face again.
I run. I don’t make it more than a few steps before his voice, in my ears and not my head, makes me turn.
“Thalia…”
He stares down at his hands cupped in front of him, where a deep gash has appeared across his palm. I might have missed his face, but I didn’t miss him.
He looks up at me, and I see the moment Bentley disappears.
In his place, is Kingsley.
A monster, just like the rest of them.
A monster, just like me.
~ End of Part I ~
Author’s Note
Thank you for taking the time to read the first part of the Asylum Bound duology!
Part II, Asylum Break, is up for preorder with a tentative April 2021 release date. I expect it to be out much sooner (don’t want to keep you waiting too long!) but also want to make sure Part II brings everything to a proper conclusion without being rushed.
If you enjoyed Asylum Bound, please consider leaving a review on Amazon!
This book couldn’t have been made possible without the support and encouragement of my friends, family, and readers like you.
With love,
Analeigh
Also by Analeigh Ford
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Asylum Break
The Forgotten Affinities
Absorb
Adapt
Abandon
Academy of the Dark Arts
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