Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
It felt like a million tiny mouths were kissing her and biting her all at once and it was awful.
Dios… please, Blessed Virgin, it hurts—hurts so much! Oh please, please stop, I can’t stand much more!
The tentacles dragged her through the thick ooze, pulling her deeper, rolling her like dough in the monstrous bath of black goo. She kept trying to grab onto something—anything—but there was nothing solid to hold onto. Only the tarlike substance and the endless, writhing limbs.
Her vision blurred. The edges of her sight began to dim as the world around her started to fade. But Noelle knew she couldn’t allow that.
No… don’t faint… don’t faint… if you pass out, you’re dead. You’ll drown for sure. Stay awake! Stay awake! she ordered herself.
She fought—kicking, twisting, clawing at the creature’s limbs. But she might as well have been fighting steel cables. Even when she bit down hard on one of them, the tentacles didn’t loosen. If anything, they tightened even more, continuing with the savage suctioning of every square inch of her skin.
Time ceased to mean anything.
Her chest was on fire. Her muscles screamed. Her skin felt like it was being ripped away in strips, only to remain whole by some terrible miracle.
It was unbearable, yet Noelle had no choice but to bear it.
She didn’t know if minutes passed, or hours, or if this horror had swallowed her whole and this was her life now—sucked and scraped and dragged through a nightmare beneath black water that wasn’t water at all.
Then—at last—the tentacles loosened. One by one, the suction cups disengaged with horrible pop-pop-pop sounds that echoed inside her skull.
The thick tentacle around her waist lifted her—hoisting her like a rag doll—and pushed her upward.
Noelle broke the surface of the goo one final time, limp and gasping.
Her elbows hit the cold metal edge of the pool, and the creature shoved her fully out of the black goo. She sprawled there, naked and shivering, black sludge dripping from her body in thick, ropey trails as she tried desperately to catch her breath.
Her skin felt like it was on fire—every inch tingling and raw, as though she’d been scrubbed with sandpaper made of stinging nettles. Her lungs heaved and her whole body trembled uncontrollably.
I’m alive… I’m alive… Dios, I can’t believe I’m still alive…
But she didn’t feel safe—not a bit.
Noelle felt like she’d just crawled out of a nightmare—and she had no idea when the next one would begin. What if the tentacle monster dragged her into the pool again? She needed to get up—needed to get as far from the edge of that murky blackness as she could.
But she couldn’t move. She was frozen—her traumatized brain still trying to process what had happened to her.
She lay curled onto her side, trying to catch her breath, the cold of the metal platform seeping into her bones. Her heart hammered a frantic, painful rhythm against her ribs as she coughed and choked, trying to expel the black goo from her lungs and throat.
Had she thought Lupin’s workroom looked like a spa? Well, she had been wrong.
This was no spa—this was hell. Or else, some hellish nightmare.
And try as she might, Noelle couldn’t wake up.
15
BURN
Burn couldn’t breathe.
The cell felt too small…too close…too dark. The air tasted like metal and fear and ancient pain. It pressed in on him from every side, crushing his ribs like a vise.
But none of that mattered.
All he could feel—deep, deep down in the marrow of his bones—was her.
Noelle—she was in danger and in pain. He didn’t know how he knew it—they had no Soul-Bond between them—but it was undeniable.
Her terror washed over him in sickening waves that made his stomach twist and his heart slam against his ribs. Her pain was a raw, sickening sensation that made his own nerves sing with agony.
The woman he and Bright both cared for was in trouble and there wasn’t a single Goddess-damned thing he could do about it. He couldn’t go to her, couldn’t save her—couldn’t even get out of this fucking cell!
With a snarl, he slammed his fists into the bars again. The impact jarred his knuckles up to his shoulders. Blood smeared the cold metal, and sparks snapped from the manacles around his wrists, burning tiny black marks into his skin.
Burn didn’t give a fuck. And he didn’t stop either. He hit the bars again and again. But the metal was too strong to break.
He braced his boots against the floor and pulled with all his strength, muscles bulging, veins standing out across his forearms as he tried to wrench the bars apart.
Nothing—it wouldn’t bend either. The metal didn’t budge so much as an inch.
It was made of some unholy Skow alloy, Burn thought—cold, unyielding, and unforgiving.
Just like the bastards who had torn apart everything he’d ever loved.
His breath hitched…his vision blurred.