Outside her cell, Jared was grumbling as he worked his way through at least a dozen keys. With each failed attempt, the odds that the next key would be the right one increased, and my heart rate increased right along with it. This was one of the most stressful situations I’d ever been in—ever—and I couldn’t do a damn thing to help.
Mari took a deep breath, drawing my attention back to her. She flicked her foot upward, launching the keys almost straight up.
I sucked in a breath.
Mari’s fingertips grazed the key ring, but she couldn’t get a solid grasp.
The keys slipped free and started to drop.
Mari bobbed her head to the side, jutting out her chin and opening her mouth wide. And somehow, miraculously, she managed to snag the iron ring with her teeth.
I blew out a breath, then glanced at Jared.
He was on the third key, or maybe the fourth. It wouldn’t be long until he was in Mari’s cell.
“Hurry, Mars . . .”
“That’s not helping,” Mari sang around the key ring as she stood on tiptoes and lifted her face. Straining against the chains, she reached for the keys with the fingers of her right hand. She snagged the iron ring with her pinky and shimmied the keys higher with the rest of her fingers. Once she had a solid grasp on the key ring, she started trying keys in the lock on her left manacle.
Luck must have been on our side, because the lock clicked with the second key, and one of Mari’s hands was suddenly free.
It was working. I couldn’t believe it. Mari’s crazy, Hail Mary plan was actually working. She was going to get us out of here.
She’d just fit the key into the lock on her right manacle when an explosive crack echoed throughout the dungeon, making my ears ring.
A bright spot of blood appeared on Mari’s ivory blouse, just over her heart. Her eyes widened, and then her hand fell away from the manacle, leaving the keys lodged in the lock. She went completely limp, hanging from that single shackle like a rag doll.
All I could do was gape. We’d been so close, and now Mari was . . . not dead. She couldn’t be dead, not here. But she was out, and there was no saying for how long.
Jared stopped working on the lock to Mari’s cell and backed away a couple steps.
Eyes narrowing to a glare, I slowly turned my head. I couldn’t see whoever had shot Mari, but I had a pretty good idea who it was.
He started clapping, slow and dramatic, and stepped into view. It was Carson, of course. “Nice try,” he said, tucking an antique musket into a holster on his hip. “Close . . .” He held up a hand, thumb and first two fingers held close together, and a cigar appeared. “But no cigar.”
“Punny,” I said, making no attempt to hide my disdain.
Carson grinned. “I thought you’d like that.” He strode closer to my cell, tutting as his gaze lingered on his fallen guard. “Get him out of there,” he ordered, glancing at Jared. “And bring in the table.” He pointed to Mari with his chin. “Get that one strapped in while she’s out.”
A short stool appeared on the other side of my cell door, and Carson eased down, resting his elbows on his knees and interlocking his fingers. “So tell me, Kat, why are you here? Because much as I might like to think it’s to visit little old me, I don’t think that’s the case.” He studied my face for a long moment, and when I didn’t respond, he leaned forward, an unsettling gleam in his eye. “Is it the First? Do you know how to wake him?”
“Fuck off,” I snapped.
Carson sat up straighter, inhaling deeply, and sighed. “You could have made this easy,” he said. “Remember that—you had a chance to cooperate. Nobody had to get hurt.”
I answered him with a renewed glare.
“I have all of your friends . . . even your sneaky big brother.” Carson stood and rubbed his hands together. “If I can’t make you talk, I’m sure they can.”
He stepped back, giving me a good view of the thing Jared was rolling up the aisle toward Mari’s open cell door. I might not have been an expert in old-school torture devices, but even I could recognize a rack. Looked like he hadn’t been kidding about the whole torture thing.
Carson grinned, a cruel glint flashing in his eyes. “We’ll start with Mari.”
Chapter Sixteen
Carson peeled an inch-wide strip of skin off of Mari’s back from shoulder to waist. It was the fourth strip he’d flayed from that part of her body, leaving almost half of her back a raw, bleeding mess. Mari’s whole body trembled as Carson peeled the skin away inch by painful inch, but she didn’t make a sound.
Her silence only seemed to urge Carson on. After he delicately placed the foot-long strip of skin in the bucket near his boot on the floor, he raised the pincers to get started on a new strip without even glancing my way to see if I was ready to talk.
I’d long since retreated to the wall and was hunched in on myself, chest rising and falling with each raspy, heaving breath. I couldn’t tear my eyes from Mari’s back. It was my fault he’d caught her, my fault he was torturing her, and knowing that—owning it—made it feel like everything he was doing to her, he was doing to me, too.
He’d already stretched her. He’d whipped her. He’d shoved things under her nails, and then he’d torn them out completely. He’d pulled her teeth. He’d branded her. He’d tortured her in every brutal way possible save for violating her, but somehow, he always managed to come up with some new hell once she’d healed from his last torture method.
“You have the power to stop this,” Carson told me as he flayed another strip from Mari’s back. “Just say the word . . .”
My heart was screaming for me to tell him to stop. To demand that he leave Mari alone. To tell him whatever he wanted to know. But in my mind, I could hear Dom warning me that once Carson realized I had a way out of Aaru, he would never let me go. More than Mari’s well-being was stake. If I didn’t find a way out of this cell, and soon, more than Mari would pay for my moment of rash, selfish stupidity. The entire universe would pay.
“She won’t . . . tell you . . . a fucking . . . thing,” Mari ground out between panting breaths. I was impressed as hell that she could still manage to say anything even remotely coherent after everything he’d done to her. “Do your worst . . . you mother . . . fucker.”
Carson yanked the strip of skin off Mari’s back with a jerk of his hand and dropped both it and the tongs in the bucket. He took a step back and cracked his neck, then turned partway to look at me. His eyes narrowed in thought.
I bared my teeth to him. “Go to hell, you sick fuck.”
Carson threw his head back and barked a laugh. “Can’t you see, Kat? We’re already there.” He looked at Jared, back to standing sentry outside of my cell. “Bring me one of the young ones . . .” His focus slid back to me as he considered which of my friends to turn his attention to next. “Let’s start with the girl.”
Susie. He was talking about Susie. Poor, sweet, innocent Susie.
“No!” I shouted, lurching to my feet and straining against my chains. “If you lay a finger on her, I swear to the gods, I’ll—”
“What?” Carson said, moving closer to me. He stopped at the wall of iron bars separating my cell from Mari’s. “You’ll do what, exactly? Shout threats at me? Call me names?” He shivered melodramatically. “Oooh . . . scary.” He took a page from my book and rolled his eyes, then turned to Jared. “Why the fuck are you still here? Bring. Me. The. Girl.”
I clenched my jaw and squeezed my eyes shut. Watching him torture Mari was one thing—I knew she could survive it—but watching him do the same to Susie would be another thing entirely. He would break her mind . . . shatter her spirit.
Lex may have forgiven me for my inability to protect the twins, but she would never forgive me for this. Not ever. And I would never forgive myself. What was the point of saving this godsforsaken universe if this was the price? It was too steep. Too high. Too much.
I wouldn’t pay it.
“No,” I blurted bef
ore Jared was out of sight. “Don’t bother.” I licked my lips and looked at Carson. “You win, alright? You win.”
Jared paused. In my peripheral vision, I could see him looking to his boss for instructions.
Carson glanced at Jared and held up a hand, then returned his attention to me. He raised his eyebrows, ready to listen.
I swallowed roughly. “I’ll tell you what you want, alright?”
“No,” Mari gasped. “Kat, don’t!”
But I ignored her. “Just leave Susie alone,” I said.
Carson’s lips curved, spreading into a broad grin, and he laughed joyously. “Wonderful,” he said, wringing his hands maniacally.
“Uh . . . boss,” Jared said, backing closer to my cell.
I glanced at him for a fraction of a second, then did a double take.
Tendrils of thick, shimmering mist were just seeping into view along the stone floor.
My eyes widened. Was this my faux-mist? Or was it the real thing? There was no way to tell from so far away.
“It’s not real, you moron,” Carson snapped to Jared.
The mist edged farther into the dungeon, drawing ever closer.
Very slowly, Jared started to back up. “But—but—”
“But—but—but—but—” Carson moved closer to Mari’s cell door as he mocked his guard. “Grow a pair, Jared.”
Without warning, a silvery tentacle lashed out from the mist and coiled around Jared’s calf.
I gasped and shrank back, deeper into my cell, moving as far away from the mist—and the Beast concealed within it—as possible.
The tentacle snaked higher up Jared’s leg, then yanked his foot out from under him. He slammed backward onto the floor, his head making a sickening crack against the stone, and the Beast dragged him into the mist. I watched until he’d disappeared completely.
Not a second later, a shrill, blood-curdling scream reverberated throughout the dungeon. It seemed to last forever.
As Jared’s scream died out, there was a moment of hushed silence. Of held breath. Of oh, shit.
Then, the mist spat Jared out. He slammed into the wall of iron bars on the opposite side of the aisle from my cell, a mangled mass of bloody, misshapen limbs.
I knew it was impossible for someone to die in Aaru—especially considering we were already dead—but looking at Jared’s body, I wasn’t so sure.
“What is it?” Mari asked, head thrashing from side to side as she tried to see what was going on in the dungeon behind her. “Kat? What’s happening?”
“It’s the Beast,” I said, voice tight with fear. “It’s here.”
Chapter Seventeen
Carson looked at the mist, then at me, then back at the mist. “Kat,” he said, drawing out my name in warning like I had something to do with this—this thing.
“It’s not me,” I said defensively as I watched the mist creep closer to my cell. Why I felt like I needed to justify myself to this psychopath was beyond me, but I couldn’t help my tone.
“Make it stop,” Carson said, panic rising in his voice.
“It’s not me,” I repeated, louder this time. “It’s not mine. It’s the real thing!”
That real thing was oozing into my cell between the bars now. Maybe the Beast hadn’t attacked me back in the woods or down on the ground near the fortress walls, but that didn’t mean we were suddenly all buddy-buddy. Maybe it had just been biding its time. Maybe not attacking was just another of its mind-meddling methods. Maybe this was all a game to the Beast, and now, when I was unable to fight back, it was coming in for the kill.
Panic rising in my chest, I backed away from the cell door and the mist as far as my restraints would let me. It wasn’t that far.
“What’s going on?” Mari said, more of a demand than a question.
I risked looking away from the mist for a fraction of a second. Mari’s back was partially healed, not that that would do her any good if the Beast got its tentacles on her and gave her the Jared treatment. I returned my attention to the mist. A few of the Beast’s tentacles danced around the edges of the mist, creeping ever closer. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them.
“It’s coming into my cell,” I told Mari, trying to keep my voice calm. I actually succeeded. Surprising, considering that my heart was hammering so hard it felt like it was going to pound its way right out of my chest.
“Is it in mine?” Mari asked, craning her neck as far as she could to one side. I thought she could probably see me, but I doubted she could see the mist yet.
“No,” I told her, voice catching on the fear lodged in my throat. “Not yet.”
One of the tentacles wrapped around the iron bar below the lock on my cell door. I watched, entranced, as it coiled higher and higher. When it reached the lock, it disappeared behind the square of iron. A second later, I heard a distinctive metallic clang, and the vine started to uncoil from the bar.
“Uh . . .” I stared at my cell door, disbelieving as it started to swing inward. “The Beast just unlocked my cell. Why would it do that, Mars? Why would it unlock my cell?” Because it certainly didn’t need the door open to get into the cell. It could just snake through, no problem.
Mari returned to looking ahead at the stone walls in her cell. “I don’t know,” she said. “Unless . . .”
A tentacle slid over my boot, coiling around my ankle. “It’s got me, Mars!” Panic made my voice a little shrill. “It’s got my leg!” I kicked out my foot, trying to dislodge it.
The Beast’s hold on my ankle slipped, but it returned a moment later, its grip even tighter. It wasn’t squeezing hard enough to hurt me—yet—but it definitely wasn’t being gentle, either.
“Don’t fight it, Kat,” Mari said, her voice low and even.
“What?” I shrieked. It wasn’t like I could do much anyway, but giving up wasn’t really my style. “You’re kidding, right?” I stared down at my leg, squirming uselessly as I watched the silvery tentacle twine around my knee, climbing ever higher.
“Hey!” Carson shouted. “Get off me!”
I glanced away from the vine making its way up my leg for the briefest moment. Just long enough to see that Carson was struggling to break free from several tentacles himself.
Without warning, the Beast yanked Carson straight into the iron bars of the cell door. There was a loud clang and a sickening crunch, and then Carson’s body went limp.
Slowly, the mist and the Beast within started to withdraw from Mari’s cell.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, chest rising and falling with each heaving breath. “It just took out Carson.”
Wide-eyed, I looked down, watching the tentacle wrap around my waist.
It wasn’t jerking me around like it had Carson and Jared, so I supposed I should’ve been grateful about that. But it was hard to feel much of anything besides terror with the Beast coiling around more and more of my body with every passing second.
The tentacle was almost to my shoulders, and I was expecting it to wrap around my neck next—to choke the afterlife out of me, or possibly just snap my neck. But it didn’t.
Instead, the Beast started up my right arm, stretched out over my head. A few seconds later, it reached my wrist.
“Holy shit,” I repeated, a hint of wonder cracking through my fear as the tip of the silvery tentacle slipped into the lock on my manacle. “Holy fucking shit . . .”
“What?” Mari said, once again struggling to see from her restrained position on the rack.
The manacle opened suddenly, and the Beast uncoiled from around my arm as it lowered the limb slowly, almost gingerly, like it could tell the movement was hurting my shoulder after being chained up in the same position for such a long time. “I think—I think it’s letting me go,” I said, almost not believing the words coming out of my own mouth.
“I knew it,” Mari exclaimed gleefully. “I knew it didn’t want to hurt you!”
“Bullshit,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was too blown away by what
the Beast was doing to feel anything but heaps of wonder and a crap-ton of awe.
“I did know!” Mari said. “Or at least I suspected. I watched you run into the mist from the wall. When the lightning struck, I could see everything. I saw you with Susie and the Beast. And I saw the Beast leave you alone. I saw it make a path for you, almost like it was leading you back to the ladder. And then . . .”
She kept talking, but I barely heard her words. I was too stunned by the fact that the Beast had just freed my left arm, too, setting me free, and it was slowly uncoiling from around my body.
“I don’t think it’s following us,” Mari continued, “I think it’s following you. And not because it wants to hurt you. Maybe it’s curious or—or maybe it knows why you’re here and it wants to help you. I mean, it is a part of this universe, after all, and you’re kind of important to the fate of pretty much everything . . .”
“Yeah,” I said, voice barely audible as I watched the Beast withdraw from my cell completely. “Yeah, I’m thinking that maybe you’re onto something, Mars.” I gulped, the gears in my mind spinning to process what had just happened. It had just freed me—there was no denying that—but why had it acted so hostile when Mari and I first arrived in Aaru? And why had it tormented me by showing me the most disturbing moment from my life? I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
The Beast slowly, almost casually retreated up the aisle, leaving Mari and me alone with the dead-ish bodies of our captors. I watched the Beast vanish into the mist as it withdrew from our part of the dungeon, then shook off the shock and lurched out of my cell.
I made a beeline for Jared’s broken body, searching his bloody remains for his key ring. I found it lodged between two splintered pieces of broken femur. Now, I’d done some pretty disgusting things in my life—most having to do with killing Nejerets—but fishing a key ring out of the inside of someone’s broken leg was up there with the worst of them.
I felt like I was playing a far-too-realistic game of Operation as I reached for the key ring, hand trembling. Thankfully, I managed to pull the keys free with only minimal bone contact and rushed to Mari’s cell door. My fingers were shaking as I worked through the keys, slowing me down, but I found the right one on my fourth attempt.
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