Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 44459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 222(@200wpm)___ 178(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 222(@200wpm)___ 178(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
What the hell?
I charged forward, but his partner yanked the gate closed and locked it, trapping me in the dark car. It meant all I could do was stare in surprise as she fought against the guy who’d captured her.
“Let me go!” Her feet weren’t even on the ground, and they flailed, trying to find something to push off.
“Hold her still.” The guy who’d locked the gate suddenly had a white rag in one hand and a small brown bottle in the other. I didn’t know where they came from, but it was disturbing to watch him douse the rag with liquid from the bottle. Something very much like fear gripped me, turning my muscles to stone as he stalked toward a squirming Chelsea.
When he pressed the rag to her face, covering her nose and mouth, her eyes went impossibly wide.
“No.” I grabbed the bars of my makeshift cage, making them rattle.
“Be quiet,” the man holding the rag ordered.
Because I was still in Void and wasn’t supposed to talk.
The jerky movements of her legs began to slow. Her eyes lidded, and tension slipped out of her body, making it grow heavy and limp in her captor’s arms. I clenched my fists on the bars so hard, the edges bit painfully into my palms.
Being powerless to stop them was the worst feeling ever, and all I could do was watch as Chelsea lost consciousness and was dragged away, down the hallway and out of view, by the guy who’d held her. The guy with the chloroformed rag tossed it aside and sauntered up to the elevator. His face was smeared with a sickening smile.
When he peered at me through the bars and scanned me from top to bottom, he reminded me of a butcher evaluating where the best cuts of meat would be. Finally, he pointed to the medical ID band wrapped around my wrist. “I’m told you need to be cleansed of your sins. I can help with that.”
I pushed off the gate, giving it a final rattle, and stepped back to give myself space. I’d never been in a fight before, but anger pulled everything in me taut, and I adjusted my posture to be confrontational. I wordlessly asked the guy to come join me inside the cage and see what would happen.
He didn’t though.
On some level, I was aware this wasn’t real. It was all part of the experience, part of the show, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to process it anymore. There were urgent things stealing my focus away from reality—mainly, how I was going to get out of the fucking elevator and find Chelsea and how I was going to do any of that without killing this guy first.
I was fully invested now, completely immersed in the story. I needed to be the hero who got the girl in the end.
“Do you want to keep going and be cleansed of your sins?” he asked.
I clenched my jaw and kept my furious stare pinned on him, forcing my head to slowly bob in a nod.
“All right.” He looked pleased. “But it’s important you know you need to save yourself. There’s light hiding inside the evil, and if you can find it, you’ll be redeemed. Understood?”
I pushed out another nod, but he didn’t believe me.
“Then repeat it,” he demanded.
My tone was ice. “There’s light hiding inside the evil, and if I find it, I’ll be redeemed.”
His pleased smile returned. “Good. Come with me.”
The guy moved at a snail’s pace when he unlocked the gate, opened it, and gestured for me to join him on the second floor. I didn’t get offered a hand to help me up, but that was probably for the best. I didn’t know what I’d do if the guy let me put a hand on him. It was taking every ounce of my strength not to swing at him.
He picked up the lantern and took off in the opposite direction from where his partner had dragged Chelsea, making me hesitate. I wanted to go after her, but the guy was moving away at a fast clip and had the only source of light. The other way was pitch-black.
I clenched my fists and headed toward the guy with the lantern.
This floor of the castle wasn’t like the others. It wasn’t carpeted, and the walls were bare, reminding me of a sub-basement. Pipes and conduits snaked across the ceiling, leading me to believe this was a staff-only section of the old hotel.
The guy was hard to keep up with. Oftentimes he’d disappear around a corner, and it was the glow of the lantern I began to chase more than him. We seemed to weave erratically through a maze of rooms for no reason.
I momentarily lost track of him in the commercial kitchen, but then I caught the light from the lantern and ducked through a low rounded doorframe.