Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49441 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49441 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
And like that, the whole maze fell away, leaving us in the open field. Turning, we both saw the headlights of his driver’s car making his way back to pick us up.
Then, just like that, the vision fell away, leaving in its place an opening back into the hedge, miraculously no longer burnt up.
“Do you see it?” I asked Nathaniel.
“Yes,” he said, hand squeezing mine. “We go in?” he asked.
“Seems like the only move forward,” I said.
Though I added silently, come what may.
And that was pretty reckless of me.
Because what was to come was watching the man I was starting to really like die before my eyes…
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nathaniel
As soon as we walked into, somehow, the crystal ball, seeing it fall away, leaving us in what felt like the beginning of the maze yet again, though the vines were now missing, I felt it.
A cold, coiled dread working its way up my spine, wrapping itself around my throat.
I didn’t understand the sensation, or why it suddenly felt like my chest was getting tight, and my face going fuzzy.
And then…
“What’s wrong?” Roxanne asked when I pulled to a startled stop at my sudden realization.
“Nothing,” I insisted. Though she didn’t look convinced, she kept trudging forward.
I fell half a step back, so she couldn’t look directly at me, still with our hands entwined, and acted on the very human urge I felt burning in my chest.
To take a breath.
I thought it would feel strange, that it would take a moment to remember how to do it. But the act was instinctive, the most base human instinct to survive involved sucking air in through the nose and feeling it expand your lungs.
The urge to cough overtook me. Like my lungs were full of dust that had settled over the past three hundred years.
I fought that back, not wanting Roxanne to know what was happening to me, figuring I could try to discreetly take breaths when she wasn’t focused on me.
“I thought I was supposed to be the lazy one?” Roxy asked, shooting a grin over her shoulder at me.
“I’m just letting you… ow,” I hissed, feeling something slice across my arm, cutting through the material of my shirt and jacket to split open my flesh.
“Was it one of those stupid vines?” she asked, turning back to reach for my arm. “Punishing you for your sudden sloth, perhaps?” she teased, but the smile fell as she looked at the wound.
“What is it?” I asked, looking down but mostly seeing the bunched fabric of my jacket.
“Get this off,” she demanded, not waiting for me to act but roughly stripping me out of the jacket.
I’d fantasized about her taking my clothes off more times than I was willing to admit. But there was nothing sensual about this moment.
Her hands went to my shirt, grabbing both sides of the slit material and ripping them wider, so she could inspect the wound better.
“Bad?” I asked, feeling the burn of it.
It didn’t feel like a typical cut, either. That kind of heated sting.
This felt unnaturally painful, a stabbing, throbbing sensation that was, alarmingly, spreading up my arm.
“Roxy?” I asked as her eyes went huge.
“Get this off too,” she said, frantically working at my buttons with clumsy fingers, her hands shaking.
Whatever was going on, I think we can conclude it was not good if she was reacting that way.
Even as she freed all my buttons and moved to push the material of my shirt off of my shoulders, I knew she was right to worry.
Because when I tried to lift my arm to help her take the shirt off, my arm didn’t budge. I couldn’t make it move.
And the pain? It was moving up to my shoulder now.
“No no no no no,” she whimpered as she took me in.
Trying to steel my own nerves to be strong for her, I glanced down to see what she was looking at.
My skin, usually pale and smooth, was a mottled red. And spiderwebs of mulberry-colored lines were moving their way up my skin.
“I can’t move my arm,” I told her, watching as her green eyes flicked up to mine, horror making them rounder as water flooded them. “I think if it keeps going, it will paralyze me completely,” I added, already feeling the dead weight of my shoulder.
I didn’t want to say it, but I didn’t want to think about what was going to happen when it made its way to my throat, my chest, my lungs.
“What could be doing this?” she asked, her voice taking on a hysterical edge. “What… infects vampires like this?”
“Nothing,” I told her, feeling the pain start to pierce down my back, a thousand little knives searing my flesh at once as I tried not to cry out, not to panic, not to stress out Roxanne any more than she already was.